Fruits and Vegetables

Hello family and friends!

We have had a great week of exploring in the Aalva class. After learning so much recently about the fruits and vegetables that gerbils like to eat, we decided to do a spin off on healthy foods. We've spent a lot of time talking about what's good for our bodies and conducted some science experiments along the way. Our main focus was on fuits and vegetables. We've talked about why they're good for us, where and how they grow, as well as the different parts of the plants they grow on.

Early in the week we introduced the kids to a bar graph. We talked about why it's called a bar graph as well as how to compare its results. After spending a day talking about different types of fruits and vegetables, we made a bar graph of our favorites. We compared the voting results for cucumbers, carrots, strawberries, and bananas. Each child was given a small piece of paper that they decorated in any way to represent themselves on the graph. They then told everyone their favorite produce and glued it on the graph. After all the pieces were glued, we counted and compared the results from each column. We found that the favorite produce in our class was strawberries - which was perfect beause that just happened to be the fruit for snack that day! :)

Another thing we did this week was a sink or float science experiment. We picked out several fruits and vegetables and tested their ability to sink or float. We took this opportunity to talk about being scientist. We discovered that we are scientists everyday even in the smallest ways! We discussed that scientists first need to ask questions about the world around them. Next, they make a guess as to what the answer to their question will be, their hypothesis. Finally, they conduct the experiment to find the results, or conclusions. After talking about the steps a scientist uses, we conducted our own experiment. Each child had a clipboard with a chart in hand. Before conducting the experiiment we wrote our guesses in the hypothesis column. We wrote an "s" for sink and "f" for float. After dropping each piece of produce in the water, we wrote the results that we found, then compared them to our hypothesis column. We were all surprised at many of these results! It was a great time of discussing what surprised us, what we noticed, and what we would like to ask more questions about. I encourage you to try this out with some produce at home. You may be surprised to find out what sinks and what actually floats! The results from this experiment are hanging up in the hallway if you'd like to check them out.

Another science experiment we did this week was dissecting fruits and vegetables. We started by reviewing what it meant to be a scientist and then pulled some produce that we were curious about. We ended up cutting apart apples, bananas, grapes, carrots, and an avocado. For all of these, we cut them in half both vertically and horizonally. We talked about the difference in their appearance between these two cuts. We also talked about some things that surprised us and some things that were new to us. We passed each cut around and allowed the kids to investigate them further. We smelled them, pocked them, and examined them. Here is a short list of a few things the kids found interesting and new during this process:

• Apples seeds are held in small pockets inside the apple's core.
• When you cut an apple horizontally you can see the shape of a star.
• Grapes have seeds! There are some grapes with seeds and some without. They also grow on vines.
• Carrots have small rings inside them and grow inside the dirt.
• Bananas have little tiny brown seeds!
• Avocados have one big seed. (There was a debate on this fact before cutting it open. Half the class felt confident that there was only one seed and others were convinced that there were a million little ones hiding in there.)
• Avocado flesh is both yellow and green. The skin is very crunchy!

Along with our dissecting, we also had a little taste test. We decided to pick some fruits and vegetables that we hadn't eaten at snack yet this year. We taste tested raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes, and avocados. As we ate each of them we discussed how they tasted, smelled, looked, and what they felt like. In describing them we also talked about any similarities and differences that we noticed. Through all this we found some produce that we really enjoyed and some others that we didn't like too much. However, we all agreed that it's important to try new fruits and vegetables since they are so good for us. You never know what you might end up enjoying! The kids have really jumped on the apple bandwagon this week, which kind of surprised me. We eat apples so often that I assumed they would be more interested in something new. That was their favorite to dissect and they've been asking some questions about them and the different types that grow. This worked out great because Michelle is acutally going apple picking this weekend. She said she'd bring back some different types for us to sample next week .We're really excited to taste some different varieties and see which we enjoy the most!

Here is a short list of some standards we worked on this week:

Approaches to Learning:

• Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.

Social & Emotional:

• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Develop strategies to express strong emotion with adult help.
• Participate in group life of class.

Language & Literacy:

• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
• Begin to distinguish between real and make-believe in stories read aloud.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
• Explore books independently.

Mathematics:

• Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Understand and use positional words to describe the location of objects (up, down, in, over, under, behind, on top of and in front of).
• Organize and represent data with real objects.

As a reminder, I won't be doing a full blog post on our short weeks of school (next week) but I will send out an email of what we did along with any reminders that we may have. Also, we mentioned during Open House that the gerbils will be available to take home on any long weekends or breaks. If you would like to take the gerbils home please send me an email, let me know in person, or sign-up on the calendar outside of the classroom. They will just need food and fresh water throughout the breaks. Here is a list of dates through December:

September 25-28 (next week)
October 9-12
October 16-19
November 26-30
December 22-January 4

Thanks for such a wonderful week! Here's a little glimpse into our many adventures this week...

Car racing on ramps!

Bar graph...

Making a hypothesis and recording results...

Dropping in our produce for sink or float...

Dissecting and examing produce...

 

 Taste testing...

 

Wrapping Up Our Gerbil Exploration

Hello family and friends!

It's been another great week in the Aalva class! We spent the week finishing up our study on gerbils. We have asked many questions and found our answers. We've all learned a lot! Even though we are ending this study, I know we will continue to come back to the subject of gerbils as we observe them in our room throughout the year.

Through our study of gerbils this week, we decided to open up our very own pet store! We worked together as a class to come up with a graph of all the things we thought a pet store should sell. We discussed different types of animal food, toys, beds, and grooming supplies. After making our list, I asked the question, "How are we going to get all these materials to sell?". The first response was, "Go to the store and buy them for us, Ms. Rachael!". A very logical answer! But, after a discussion we decided it would be best if we made all these things ourselves. This took us on a mini adventure of project making. We provided the kids with a large supply of materials such as boxes, yarn, glue, scissors, clay, feathers, beads, etc. We told them to use their imaginations and make us a pet store. The results were wonderful! We took everything off the shelves in our housekeeping center and replaced them with animal crates, aquariums, pet toys, food, and even more clay pets. After each item was made, the child priced the object, tagged it, and put it up for sale.

In order to have a functioning store, we decided we would probably need a cash register and some money. We pulled out some pretend bills and discussed the difference between the one, five, and ten dollar bills. We kept all the priced items at $10.00 and under so that we could work on recognizing the numbers 0-10. We were also able to incorporate some addition and subtraction. For example, we worked together to figure out how many one dollar bills we would need to buy a $4.00 cage. Or, how could we combine our bills in order to buy a $9.00 aquarium. We've rotated throughout the week between the roles of working the cash register and being the costumer. The store was a great success! We will be keeping it up next week since there is still an interest in it from the kids.

We also did some research of our gerbils this week through reading workshop. We learned many types of foods that gerbils like as well as facts about baby gerbils. We found out that baby gerbils are born deaf, blind, and hairless. Their skin is so thin that you can tell the color of their eyes before they open and you can even see milk inside their belly so the mother knows when it's time to feed them again! We also found out that a grown gerbil measures about 9 inches long. This fact lead to a fascination with measuring tapes! Some of us went around our room measuring objects and writing our results on clipboards. We were able to compare the length of objects to our gerbil length. We were able to talk about which was smaller, larger, shorter, taller, wider, etc. We also decided it would be interesting to compare our height in inches compared to the height of our 9 inch gerbil. We measured everyone and wrote our name and height (in inches) on the chart for comparisons. It's hanging up in the hallway across from our classroom door if you'd like to check it out.

Lastly, we finished our KWL chart. We went back and discussed the facts that we already knew. Then, we read back over the questions that we had originally asked. For each question, we discussed rather or not we felt that we had answered it throughout our 2 weeks study. Finally, we added to our chart all the things that we had learned about our new furry friends. I was so impressed with the kids. They were naming things that I had completely forgotten about! It was encouraging for all of us to look at our completed chart and see the wealth of knowledge we had gained. During our open house this week, a parent asked if these studies were done individually or as a group. It was a great question and I felt that it would be worth discussing as we wrap up our first study. These explorations that we do are done as a group. There were plenty of times when the kids choose to venture out on their own or in small groups to look at our gerbil books or write or make objects for our pet store or measurements. These explorations are great ways for us to model for them ways to research and ways to expand on their previous knowledge. The explorations we do throughout the year will be done as a whole group. At the end of the year we will ask each child to do their own exploration and become an expert on a topic of their choosing. At this point, the kids will have had a large amount of modeling and experience learning how to become an expert. We will still guide them in their study but it will be done on an individual level. They can then teach their peers and teachers about the subject they've become experts on! Have no fear though...there will be no homework...it'll all be done at school :)

As we have wrapped up gerbils, we've talked a lot about the healthy fruits and vegetables that the gerbils enjoy eating. We thought it would be fun to do some taste testing ourselves to find out what types of healthy food we enjoy too. This will start Monday. We're excited to see where the kids take us this week!

Here are a handful of standards met this week...

Approaching to Learning:

• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questions and adding ideas.
• Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
• Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps

Social & Emotional:

• Respond respectfully to positive and negative feedback from adults most of the time.
• Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.
• Express fears and concerns to familiar adults.

Language & Literacy:

• Incorporate favorite parts of literary texts into play activities.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
• Begin asking "how and why" questions when looking at texts.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• See information by looking at texts, signs, and photographs in the classroom.

Mathematics:

• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
• Show one-to-one correspondence through ten when counting real objects.
• Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4.
• Shows awareness that money is used to buy things and that coins differ in value.

Busy working on an animal bed...

Decorating an animal crate...

Decorating an animal bed...

Making a very fuzzy animal with very wiggly eyes...

Building cat toys...

"I'm making a top so my gerbils can't run away."

Pets for our store...

Team work...

Detailing a fish aquarium...

Waiting in line at the store...

Counting and exchanging money...

Measuring furniture...

Recording data from our measurements...

We measured ourselves too!

Brainstorming chart before opening our store...

Recorded data of our height in inches...

We're Becoming Experts!

Hello family and friends!

What a great week we've had! Even though it was short, it was definiltey busy. The kids have their routine and schedule down to a science by now but we've made a few minor tweaks to the schedule over the past few weeks. Sometimes it takes some time to figure how everything is going to flow but we've finally figured it out!

This week was full of introductions to new things. First, we gained new members to our classroom family...our fuzzy little gerbils! My mom came by the classroom on Tuesday afternoon to deliver them to us, complete with their cage and a supply of bedding and food to get us started. To say the kids were excited is an understatement. We spent most of that time looking at them and asking her tons of questions. We got a basic run down of how often to feed them and how to change their bedding. She didn't know everything but definitely more than we did at the time. I told her to check in with us in a couple of weeks and we will be educating her :) I say this because we have officially started an exploration on gerbils. The kids had so many questions that I didn't have answers to, and were so curious about the new pets that we all decided we should do some research and become gerbil experts!

Our first phase of exploration came from our KWL chart. For each new exploration we work on this year we will make one of these charts. A KWL chart is a list of things that we, K (already know about the subject), W (want to learn more about/questions), and L (what we've learned). Right now we have the K (know) and W (want to learn) sections full. We actually had so many questions that we had to make our chart fairly long! You can check it out on the wall in our reading center. At the end of our exploration we will return to the chart and list all the things we have learned. It's a great way for us to get an idea of what the kids would like to know more about and to show all we've learned!

Our next phase in exploration came from a collection of gerbil books from the public library. We spent one morning in reading workshop looking through the books. We encouraged the kids to get with a reading buddy and simply do a picture walk - flip through the book and look at the pictures together. After they spent some time talking and picture walking we asked if anyone had already learned something new just from paying attention to the pictures. We found that all of us had a new fact to share and most of us had some more questions. We also talked about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. We discovered that reading our gerbil fiction books gave us some great stories and that our non-fiction books about gerbils presented us with some great facts! We will be leaving the books out on our reading center bookshelf for the duration of our exploration. We have also spent some time in writers workshop drawing and writing about gerbils. Some chose to tell a story they created while others chose to state some new facts that they learned. These journal works will be hanging up in the hallway, so stop by and check out all we've been learning!

At the moment we are predicting that our exploration will wrap up after next week but we haven't set a deadline. We want to follow the lead of the kids when it comes to our explorations throughout the year. If they feel that they've had all their questions answered, then we move on to something new. If they feel they have more questions they need answered, then we keep going. Through each of our explorations we will constantly be meeting language, math, science, and emotional/social standards. It's amazing how these things work hand in hand and always fall into place!

Another thing we introduced this week was Math Buddies. Once a week each child will be paired up with one of Rabbi Meir's college students to work on math concepts. This week they met their math buddy for the first time and spent some time with them outside playing games based on basic math concepts. The kids had so much to say when they got back to the room! I'm so thankful that we get to participate in this each week. What a wonderful opportunity for the kids! These math sessions will happen along with our math workshops throughout the week. This week we introduced the kids to math bingo. It was a huge hit! I'm predicting it will be requested each time we gather for math workshop. Right now we have it geared towards number recognition but, like all our workshops, we will be changing concepts as the kids continue to grow and master new skills.

Here is our list of several standards we worked on this week:

Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completeing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
• Show ability to focus attention for increasing variety of chosen tasks and activities for short periods of time (10-20 minutes).
• Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Manage transitions positiviely when told what to expect.
• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others duriing play.

Language and Literacy:

• Recall some details in stories read aloud.
• Explore books independently.
• Show interest in informational texts about familiary objects.
• Relate information from texts to personal experience.

Mathematics:

• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Locate patterns in the environment.
• Count orally forward to twenty and backward from three.

I'm really excited to see where the kids take their curiosity of the gerbils. I'm guessing you'll be hearing a lot about it at home as well :) Here's a glimpse into our classroom this week...enjoy!

We are researchers...hard at work!

BINGO!