Welcome Back!

  IMPORTANT INFORMATION: 

Field Trips:
Please check your email to sign the permission slip and let us know if you can chaperone our upcoming field trip to see the Peking Acrobats at the Berkeley Theater.
We are also planning a walking field trip to the local library, which is set for Tuesday, February 7th. We will leave after lunch at around 12:45 and return around 2. Please let us know if you can join us as a chaperone.


No School on Friday, January 13th for Report Writing Day.

2012 is upon us and the week got off to a spirited start.

We welcomed our new friend Oliver to the class, made January calendars, discussed structures, patterns, wrote about the news from over winter break, and celebrated Animal Day.

Readers' Workshop:
The children will delve deeper into Word Study work this semester. Each half group personalized their folders in preparation. Using the Words their Way program, the students will learn about how words work, develop automaticity in decoding and encoding words, and deepen their understanding of word meanings.

Writers' Workshop:
The students wrote about events from the winter break.

Work Time:
The students explained how our open work time sessions function to our newest student, and the class spent time busy working, building, creating, and imagining.
(These photos courtesy of Kailamae Sands) 

Math:
January Calendars
We made calendars for the new month, complete with all the important events we have scheduled so far. Be sure to post them somewhere at home!

Handwriting/Phonics:
Terry and Tommy learned a new sound, the Vacuum sound, which corresponds with the letter L. Students practiced forming the letters in upper and lower case, and brainstormed words that begin with the letter L sound.

Math:
Patterns and Shapes
The students created color patterns using cubes. We discussed how patterns are described using letters of the alphabet. Children were challenged to make 2 different patterns, record the information, and label the pattern. Nancy Lieblich joined us to continue the children's work with different types of triangles using the Montessori Triangular Box.

Free Friday!

Science:
We began a discussion about structures today marking the beginning of our physical science unit. Together we talked about what we know about structures and what we wonder about them. Many children were very interested in sharing facts and wonderings about pyramids.

Animal Day:
In honor of Levi's Animal Day, his mom, Heather, came in to join us. She read the story Giraffes Can't Dance written by Giles Andreae and illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees. Levi shared some photos of his pets, including pets he is temporarily babysitting for other family members. Then the children made 3 dimensional animals and invented their own animals, such as the Tricken, which is part tree and part chicken. We went outside to play around with the stuffed animals both from home and generously shared by Levi's home collection.

Buddies:
The buddy groups got together to share about the happenings of each others' winter break. Work continued designing vessels of natural materials and the buddies worked on labeling and coloring their drawings before sharing as a group.

Have a great weekend!
Lyssa and Ben