Week's Happenings

Shakespeare

                               Birds         

                                                     Spring

   Shakespeare rehearsals began Monday.  The children are excited about their roles and are having fun.  They will be performing excerpts from their author study of John Burningham.  

In Language Arts the children have been doing their usual routines including working in their "frog books," making books, playing word games, and reading. Also in language arts and projects we held discussions about what they had been learning in Shakespeare rehearsals.  Particularly we discussed language, and the role it plays in performing.  We also discussed the language of objects (stage props) and what they represent/communicate about the performance. During their language arts time the children have been continuing to read about and discuss birds.  They had lots of fun creating bird collages.  They cutout colorful bird pictures from a generous collection of bird magazines donated by Kate's grandma. The children continued to look closely at wings and nests and made observational drawings. Also during language arts we read a few books about spring and created a word web about spring.  The children brainstormed the words for the web.  We will be adding more words to our web next week.

In Science Kate introduced a study of bird bones earlier in the week.  We were not able to have full science classes this week because Shakespeare is scheduled during that time.

In First Grade Math the children have been preparing for performing The Greedy Triangle.  They have been enjoying practicing their roles, and creating "shape" costumes - triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, and octagon, along with the costume for the "shapeshifter," and more.  The first graders also began a unit on measurement.  We began by reading How Big is a Foot? And exploring measuring with our feet.  The children discussed their findings and came up with these conclusions:  "The bigger the foot, the smaller the number," "The smaller the foot the bigger the number."  The children are referring to the number of feet (their feet) it took to measure around one of their peers lying on the floor, for making a bed as in How Big is a Foot? The children learned the standard measurement for foot, and began to explore measuring objects in the classroom.  Also we briefly discussed "square foot," while observing the floor tiles in our classroom.

 

How Big is a Foot?

We love to take turns writing the morning message.

Until next time, Liliana