May 7th - 11th

Laurel Creek - May 7th-11th

May is Here!

This week saw the Laurel Creek hive of industry buzzing with late Spring excitement.  We completed our monthly self-portraits, took part in the anticipated Step-up Day, traveled to Eitan's shop to complete our structure work, and closed the week out with a mathematical Grilled Cheese event.

May Self Portraits -- Pointillism

Julianne was in first thing Monday to help us create our May self-portraits.  Last month students used   

watercolor paints and q-tips to "take a line for a walk", producing self-portraits made of one uninterrupted line.  This time around, using the exact same medium and tools, students explored a nearly opposite technique as they rendered themselves as a series of dots.   

Community Meeting
Kate and two members of the Service Learning Council (Including our very own Myles) came in to discuss the upcoming TBS Walk-A-Thon (May 24th).  Your children brought home 5 pledge cards earlier this week. 

Mystery Cards
Students designed and wrote out card for a very special person in their lives.  The mystery will be revealed soon (if it hasn't been already).

News
The Children worked on their 25th (or so) installment of their Weekend News.  What they choose to highlight from their lives is always illuminating and unexpected.

Flower Pressing
Blackberry Creek teacher and flower-pressing expert Kyla was in to help us remove leaves/petals/blossoms/stems from our flower press.  The children then arranged and fastened these materials to bookmarks which were later laminated.  In addition to being an artistic endeavor, it was an exercise in body control (move too fast or breath too heavily and your petals were scattered in an updraft).      

Reader's Workshop
"The Giants" Explored long vowels sounds with particular emphasis on the "bossy e" which commands earlier vowels in the word to speak their name-- tot becomes tote, pin becomes pine etc.  

Small Group Work
A small group looks looks at two different sound that the letter combination ow makes-- one sound in a word like slow and another in a word like down.   

Another group plays a game in which long and short vowels are compared. 

Reader's Workshop
The "Fire Eagles" sort words and play games based on letter sounds. 

Math Workshop
We have begun our unit on measurement.  In this activity we made tracings of our shoes and set about measuring them with snap cubes.  Students worked on estimating the length of various objects,  how to line up your measuring instrument and your object to insure accurate measurements, and what language to use when an object is shorter than, say, 8 cubes but longer than 7.        

Impromptu poetry reading

Terry and Tommy
Our twins have now discovered all but one letter of the alphabet!  This week it was the kissing sound /x/.  

Step-Up Day 
There was much excitement on Wednesday as Laurel Creek Kindergartners hosted students from the ECC students and the LC 1st Graders stepped up to Temescal Creek.  To prepare, 1st Graders wrote letters to both of the Temescal Creek teachers, Nancy and Mike, and the Kindergartners created a tour or itinerary for their pre-school buddies.  

Circle in Temescal 

Math activity 

Getting acquainted and giving a tour

sharing some favorite Choice Time activities

explaining the lost tooth the chart

creating flags

spelling out words on the magnetic easel

showing our buddies the K1 playscape 

Singing Bowl
Practicing mindfulness as we listen to the singing bowl

Structure Work
We made our second and final visit to Zev's dad, Eitan's, shop to complete our structures.  We have gone from idea to two-dimensional drawing to three-dimensional modeling to three-dimensional building.  Students have also experienced the transformation of their concept as they go from one one representational form to another and from representational form to real-life, full-sized object. We are deeply grateful to Eitan for donating his time, space, materials, and expertise to this endeavor.  Thanks so much Eitan!     

framing the walls

How-To Book readings
Students have been proudly sharing their How-to-Books with their classmates.  Here Lyssa follows step-by-step instructions in order to draw a monster. 

Book Time

Grade Level Literacy
The Fire Eagles study and create x-rays as part of their exploration of the letter x.

The Giants create haikus and watercolor paintings as part of their poetry study.

Impromptu recess play

Free Friday

Grilled Cheese Math 

Myles' parents Summer and Katherine donated their time and considerable grilled-cheese-making skills to our Math Workshop Friday morning. Students worked to come up with different ways of   creating a grilled cheese sandwich given the following ingredients: cheese, tomatoes, onions, avocado.  While they sorted through the combinations Summer (on grill) and Katherine (taking orders) made the children's grilled-cheese dreams a reality.  These sandwiches exceeded all of our expectations-- an uncannily delicious blend of crisp and gooey.  Thanks Summer and Katherine.   

To tie in with our current Math unit on money each ingredient was assigned a cent value and when placing your order you needed to pay for your sandwich using the classroom money.

Buddy Time

We ended the week reading with our Strawberry Creek buddies.

Thanks Everyone!  Enjoy your first May weekend.
Ben & Lyssa