Our Paper Mache Explosion!

Hello family and friends!

We have had such a busy week in the Aalva class! You may not believe that statement after I tell you that we only worked on one project, but I assure you, we've been some busy little bees! Coming into the week I was confident that we would wrap up our ocean discovery and we would be well into our study of Passover. Haha! I was so very wrong! However, we are at the tail end of our ocean exploration and will dive quickly into Passover next week.

The project that has taken up our whole entire week is the making of paper mache sea creatures. Honestly, they look so awesome that we don't even care that it's taken us over a week to complete them! If you've done paper mache before you may laugh at the fact that we actually thought this would be a fairly quick project to complete with 4 and 5 year olds! As messy as it may be, we've been having a blast! As you may remember from our previous blog post, each child has been researching their favorite sea creature. This week we decided to make our own. We started by finding bases (that were similar to our creature's body shape) to paper mache around. We used things such soda bottles, cardboard, and bunched up newspaper. After we figured out our bases, we made a glue/water paste (aka: a sticky mess) and cut up stripes of newspaper. Next, we dipped the newspaper in the paste and covered our bases completely. As we covered them we also added characteristics that would make the base look more like our creature, such as fins or spikes. Michelle and I each went through this process one-on-one with the kids. As we made them we looked at books and recalled facts about our sea creatures. This first stage took us about 2 days to complete.

After we formed and glued our bases, we spent 2 days painting our paper mache creatures. Some kids chose to look at pictures in order to match colors, while others chose to paint theirs any color they wanted. Once our creatures dry completely, we will begin adding our details to them. This will start Monday. The kids will be adding eyes, teeth, tentacles, anything that is characteristic to their favorite sea creature. I can't wait to see how these will turn out! We will be hanging them from the ceiling in our classroom as soon as they are completed so be on the lookout! The kids have loved the process and are eager to finish them. After we complete these we will focus on Passover. We've been able to read some stories and start a few Passover activities this week but we're excited to have this as our main focus and learn more about the holiday! I also wanted to share that we practiced Sedar with Morah Devorah and the 3 year olds earlier this week. We all met together in the Smartboard room and the tables were set with plates and grape juice. This was awesome! Morah Devorah took us step by step through the Sedar meal (what we ate, why we ate it, why it's important). We have some pictures below of our time eating together!

I also wanted to take this time to thank Reshma (Vedh's mom) for coming into our classroom to photograph our day. She was able to come in earlier this week and spend some time with us during centers/making our creatures. She did this with the intention of capturing some of Vedh's 4 year old experiences, but was kind enough to photograph the rest of us as well. The pictures I've seen so far are amazing! Thank you, Resh for capturing such sweet moments in the 4's!!

Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities, tasks, and learning centers.
• 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.
• Demonstrate growing initiative in selecting and carrying out activities.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Respond respectfully to positive and negative feedback from adults most of the time.
• Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders.
• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.

Language & Literacy:

• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Begin to identify significant words from text real aloud.
• Begin to ask questions about eh causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
• Explore books independently.
• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.

Mathematics:

• Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
• Generate conjectures abased on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Classify objects in their environment by color, shape, size or function.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.

Practicing our Sedar with Morah Devorah...

 

 

 

Creating our paper mache...

 

Painting our paper mache creatures...

 

 

Also, we found lizards on the playground!...

 



 

Sea Creature Experts: Our Research!

Hello family and friends!

As you may remember from our last blog, we are marine biologist this month! As scientists, we've been spending a lot of time in research. Last week we introduced the kids to a large number of sea creatures. We vaguely explored each creature together as a whole class. This week we wanted to make it more individualized. We wanted the kids to feel that they were real experts. We wanted them to go to their friends with questions about a sea creature and be able to get answers. We started by asking them which creature was their favorite. Which one did they want to research? Which one were they most curious about? Which one did they want to become an expert in? After selecting their creature of choice, we dove into our research.

To start our research we spent a lot of time in books. We had the books spread out and encouraged the kids to look through them and find pictures of their creature. Once they found a book that held information, we sat down one on one and read through the books. We asked questions and tried to find answers. If we couldn't find answers in our books, we turned to the internet. We sat down with the kids and put our questions into Google. We pulled up articles to read and explored pictures. We also wanted the kids to look at a short video of their creature to see it in action. After learning their picks, we found short 2-3 minute videos that gave a general explanation of the creature. Most of our research included: their living environment, what they ate, their behaviors, what parts of the world they lived in, and any other questions that the kids could think of. Between the books, articles, and videos, we discovered that we had learned a lot about our creatures! We were able to tell friends facts about our sea creatures! We were becoming experts!

As experts, we decided that we should share that information with others. We talked about the fact that marine biologist do research and when they make discoveries they share that knowledge with others. That's why we know so much about the world...someone discovered it and they shared it with us! To share our facts we thought it'd be best to write a book about our sea creature. We've written some fiction books throughout the year but never a non fiction. We started by talking through non fiction books with each child. We discussed the different parts of a book and their function. We discussed the difference between fiction and non fiction and why each was important. Each of our book consisted of 5 pages. We became the author and illustrator for each page. We were careful to fill the pages with correct information. If we couldn't remember something we learned, we dove back into our books and searched for answers. Our pages consisted of: the name of our creature, where they lived, what they ate, an interesting fact we discovered, and our favorite characteristic about our creature. I am in.love.with.these.books. Seriously. The attention to detail was amazing. They really got excited about being experts and they took it seriously. They carefully wrote their words and made sure to draw pictures to match their facts. They spent a lot of time working on their books. We didn't expect them to take up the majority of the week but they did. And that's ok! We were glad they got so involved. We'll be hanging them up in the hallway as we complete them so make sure to give them a look. Because of the time in research and book making, we'll extending our study into next week as well. We definitely want to make time for Pesach so when we exhaust sea creatures we'll transition into a Passover study.

I also wanted to take some time to tell you about our "creation station". I know most of you have already figured this out...judging from the large amount of tape and cardboard that has gone home with you the past couple of week :) Our creation station is a place for the kids to use their imagination to create pieces of artwork from recycled or left over items. We took this idea from Rabbi Meir and his "closet of possibilities". The kids are obsessed. We want the kids to have the freedom to make their projects as a process without feeling rushed. We have designated the space on top of our creation station shelf as our "in process" area. Any projects that are not finished for the day or are waiting to dry are put on the shelf to be finished the next day. If you have any cardboard, plastic, wood, etc at home that you are recycling, please feel free to bring it in! We're always looking for some new materials to get creative with!


Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Try to solve problems encountered in play.
• Demonstrate an increasing ability to follow through with tasks and activities.

Social & Emotional:

• Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following direction.
• Participate in group life of class.
• Demonstrate strategies to join play group with adult support.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Retell one or town events from a story read aloud.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
• Explore books independently.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
• use drawings, letters, or words to create narratives about people and things in their environment.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Classify objects in their environment by color, shape, size, or function.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
• Sort and classify objects by one attribute.
• Represent simple two-dimensional geometric shapes.

Exploring ocean life through our science artifacts and books...





We are non-fiction authors!...

 

 

Making projects in our creation station...

 

 

Playground friends!

 

 



Marine Biology!

Hello family and friends!

Our awesome Ms. Michelle wanted to write the blog post for this week...enjoy!!

As you’ve probably heard we have started a new study of exploration. We are studying about the ocean for the next two weeks in our classroom! Marine biology is the study of the plants and creatures that live in the ocean….and we are marine biologists!!!

Throughout the year we have done tons of exploration projects as a group, but this time Ms. Rachael and I have decided to take it to a new level. Your child is going to transform into a marine biologist and learn about the Ocean by themselves with some guidance. One of our goals for this year is to get the students ready for Kindergarten where students will work more independently when learning. Throughout this week and next we will be helping your student learn what that independence should look like. In order to do this we decided that during the first part of this week we would give the students a broad understanding of what marine biology is and then at the end of the week and throughout next week we would let them dive deeper into a topic of their choice related to the subject of ocean creatures.

When we started off this week the kids were really excited about the ocean and marine biology. We got in pairs and did a book walk just like we do with every other exploration we do. But instead of doing our KWL chart first like we normally do, we wanted them to look at books before they asked questions. I think that helped a lot because they were able to see cool things in the books and ask questions about what they saw! I am excited to dive in and start answering their questions.

Tuesday we read A LOT of our non-fiction books that were in our science center. Then we watched a short 3 minute video about the ocean and the plants and creatures that live there. Some of the things we learned from the video were really cool! Some interesting facts included:  the ocean is a habitat, its covers 70% of the earth’s surface, 97% of the ocean has yet to be discovered (which they thought was amazing, the reactions on their faces were priceless!!), not all sand is the same color, and the ocean is made up of salt water.

Wednesday we created a masterpiece!!! If you haven’t seen it yet I must say it is amazing. We started the day off by reading books, looking up pictures online, and brainstorming ideas about all the things we needed in our coral reef. We started off with a 17 foot piece of blue paper, about 7 different colors of paint, and 14 eager students ready to paint! Each student got a portion of the paper to create their masterpiece.  I honestly had no idea they would get into it as much as they did. Every single one of them took their time, really concentrating on the details they put into the painting. As they worked Ms. Rachael and I walked around and asked them about the colors they used, what creatures they wanted to portray in the painting, and how it related to the coral reefs we learned about. Under the mural we have labeled each section with a  name and a quote about what the student painted! 

Thursday I brought in about 30 library books related to specific sea creatures! Of course they were curious about why we needed sooo many books. I told them “you are going to become a marine biologist!” Their excitement was through the roof!!! We told them that over the course of the next few days they were going to research and learn all about their favorite sea animal! Then next week we will put our research together, document our findings, and present it to the class. Everyone has chosen their very own animal. Some of the animals they chose are puffer fish, angler fish, giant octopus, and great white shark! Friday we started going through all of our library books and looking for pictures of our animal. Once we found the pictures we marked them with sticky notes for future reference. Next week we will go back, read what the books have to say about our animals, and start documenting our findings! I am so excited to see how all of their research and hard work pays off!!!

 

Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities, tasks, and learning centers.
• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questions and adding ideas.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Use classroom materials responsibly, most of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Recall some details in stories read aloud.
• Explore books independently.

Mathematics:

• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Classify objects in their environment by color, shape, size or function.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.

 

 

Artist hard at work...

 

 

 We are researchers...

 

 

 

Creating our ocean zones...

 

 

 

Our Purim Celebration!

Hello family and friends!

We have had such a fun week celebrating Purim. We spent the week learning the story of brave Ester who saved the Jewish people from Haman. We read a different book each day that told the story. We spent time talking about the characters and discussing the importance of this holiday. We also turned our housekeeping center into King Ahasuerus and Queen Ester's castle. We added some crowns and costumes to the center along with cardboard boxes to make our castle entrance. We also made masks to wear as a disguise while playing in the castle. The kids dressing in disguise is a Purim custom. It demonstrates the fact that the miracle of Purim was disguised in more natural methods as opposed to an obvious miracle (this is also why the kids wore costumes on Thursday). It was a great week of imaginative play!

We wanted to spend some time this week focusing on the four mitzvah of Purim. The first of these is Mishloach Manot. This is the giving of food to others. To demonstrate this we weaved our own baskets using yarn and paper bowls. After weaving them, we filled them with clementine and homemade hamantaschen that the kids made. After putting food in their baskets, they gave them to a friend in the classroom. As we made these exchanges, we talked about the importance of giving to others and being thankful for what we were given. We also gave extra Tzedakah this week as well as listened to the reading of the Megillah (both mitzvah). The kids made groggers (noise makers) that they shook when the name of Haman was read aloud. We really enjoyed this as the Megillah was read in Hebrew - what an awesome experience! Another mitzvah for Purim is having a festive meal together. While we didn't have an actual meal (other than our fun lunches), we did pull a table into our castle. We discussed the meal and then let the kids have their own meal together. They set out plates, cooked the food in their kitchen, and dined together in the castle.

Throughout the week, the castle became a popular topic of interest. It drew more kids into housekeeping than we've had all year! We thought it would be fun to make our own smaller castles. Each child drew a picture of their own castle complete with plenty of details. They had a lot to say about their castles so we tried to record as much information about them as we could on their drawings. These are hanging up in the hallway so definitely take a peek at them! After drawing our castles, we took them to the blocks center and used the wooden blocks to make a 3D version of our castles. We encouraged the kids to take their artwork with them and use them as a guide as their constructed their castles. As we built both our wooden and cardboard castles, we talked about the fact that many of them are made of stone. We discussed the different aspects of a castle such as motes and walls for protection. We looked at several of our classroom pictures of Jerusalem to learn that it is still a walled city today!

Of course the most exciting part of the week was Thursday (Purim). We loved all the costumes!! They seemed to have a great time showing them off to us and their peers. We spent the morning in the synagogue listening to the Megillah reading and then got to play at the carnival. I was so impressed with the carnival! The older children in the school built games for us to play. Each game had an older student there to show the kids how to play and give out tickets. We let the kids wonder around the room playing all the games that they wanted and when they were done they turned their tickets in for an awesome prize. The kids did a fantastic job with this! It was a great experience for them and we are sending out a HUGE thank you to everyone who put it together! I feel that we all learned a lot this week - not just about Purim, but also about the Jewish culture! We took a lot of pictures this week, so I hope you enjoy them!

Approaches to Learning:

• Reason about events, relationships, or problems.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Try to solve problems encountered in play.

Social & Emotional:

• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.
• Recognize own feelings and describe them some of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Distinguish between descriptions of story events and spoken words of characters.
• Retell one or tow events from a story read aloud.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
• Recall some details in stories read aloud.
• 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.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Locate patterns in the environment.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
• Represent simple two-dimensional geometric shapes.
• Associate time concepts with a clock.

Weaving baskets to give to our friends...

 

 

Sketching and building our castles...

 

 

Imaginative play at it's finest...

 

 

Listening to the Megillah reading...

 

 

Fun at the carnival...