Week 30: Didgeridoos, Spring Fun Fair and More!

April 30, 2017kmbeal87 Leave a comment

Mark Those Calendars

Child-led Spring Conferences: Click here for the Sign up genius for June!
Spring Fun Fair Success!
End of Year Assessments: I am doing assessments during the day (Quiet Time and part Exploration). I would do them during lunch, but I need to be outside on the playground with yard duty. My hope was that doing it during the day would save you scheduling 2 days to come in with your child, as opposed to 1.
Community Snack Schedule: This week is the Steinhauer family. Please use the snack signup genius here to sign up for a week to bring snack. Let the Snack Coordinator, Kudsana (kkizaraly@yahoo.com), know if you need special accommodations or are unable to fulfill your commitment. And a BIG thank you to the Ramos/Paiyou family for snack last week!
Staff Appreciation Day: Thursday May 4th
Silent Auction: Saturday May 13th (adults only) at Shir Hadash in Los Gatos. Christina (art coordinator) helped children make a plushy sensory reading rug, now turned wall art decor and it’s lovely.
Staff Development Day: NO SCHOOL Friday May 19
Memorial Day: NO SCHOOL Monday May 29th
Other FUTURE Parent Meeting Dates: Wednesday May 24th, and Wednesday June 14th.

Exploring Sound With The Didgeridoo!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Spring Fun Fair!

Weekly Highlights

Fairies! A fairy door SUDDENLY appeared along with a tiny mail box, and now the children are pen pals with Luna the fairy and her family. Having these visitors has inspired children to try their hand at practicing sentences, practicing neat handwriting, more spelling, and writing questions 🙂 It’s really revved up our literacy curriculum…Gotta love those fairies!
Kinder Pod Performed for Community Sing! The kindergarten pod performed Friday April 28th. They ROCKED!
Science/Art with Amber: An exploration in sound with making didgeridoos!
Spring Fun Fair: Saturday April 29th families gathered for a community extravaganza from 12:00-4:00pm. Room 7 teamed up with Room 6 TKers to run what we decided was a duck pond with prizes to be won! It was a sunny day with clear skies and joyful hearts!
New Art Medium: Air dry clay!
Skill Sharing: We will share every Friday, and Oscar, Maddie K., Ellie Luz, and Tyler shared their skills for us 🙂 Many children have brought in toy items and it’s become a contest. The items kept getting bigger and newer and created an imbalance in the system of power and social status within our classroom, solely
Community Sing: Fight Song!

based on toys being shared. So, we stopped bringing in items and started bringing in SKILLS. Everyone is good at something and this spring is everyone’s time to shine! Take a look at the schedule so far!
Math: We worked on showing math sentences (equations) with base 10blocks: 10’s rods, 1’s units (called “baby ones” or “cubes”), and the 100’s flat blocks. Goals: Understanding that the 10s rod has 10 ones inside of it, the one’s cubes are only representing ONE each, that a larger number can have a combination of 10s, 1’s, and sometimes 100s, and adding can be easier thinking about it in 10s and 1s.
Buddies: They came to our room for math workshop. We played a series of base 10 games and did base 10 activities (since 4th grade is ALSO using base 10 blocks). We also numbered our duck pond ducks for Spring Fun Faire.
Weekly Kid Read-Aloud: Cici
Literacy: Fairy letter writing, handwriting, and story workshop.
Story Workshop: We used the loose parts cart to construct our stories!
Science: A day in the life of a food scientist – spiraling back to the space unit!
Art: Body Tracing!
Just-Right Reading! Each morning, parents can help kids choose leveled books totake home and practice reading with children. Please be sure to return the books and put them in the proper bins!

Buddies: Math Workshop with Base 10 block activities!

Science: A Day in The Life of A Food Scientist!

This week, we did an in-depth dive into food in outer space while touching upon our next curriculum unit of diffusion/osmosis (the spread and movement of molecules).

The high-level objective of these activities:

Talk about some of the food requirements that NASA’s food scientists must meet, and gather data through experiments to make our own conclusions about the type of foods astronauts should take into space.
Learn about weight – how to use weigh scales to measure the weight of items, how to use that information to make decisions, comparing numbers to determine what is heaviest/lightest, etc.
Explore how taste perception is affected by other senses – does something familiar still taste the same if it is repackaged in an unfamiliar form?
Explore how different atmospheres on various planets/celestial bodies affect our own weight
Initial exposure to water diffusion/osmosis

Activity #1: A day in the life of a Food Scientist

The kids had a chance to step in the shoes of a NASA Food Scientist. The astronauts

wanted to take blueberrries on their next flight up into space, and the kids had to conduct experiments to determine which type of blueberry to pack in the shuttle. The kids were told that the blueberries had to be tasty as well as light-weight. There were three different types of blueberries – frozen, dried, and freeze-dried.

The kids conducted two experiments. One was a taste-test experiment, where the kids tried the different types of blueberries and ranked the taste using a scale of

. The other was a weight experiment, and the kids worked together to weigh the blueberries using a precision scale.

The kids were given a template to fill in their results, and then, using that information, they had to determine which type of blueberry they would recommend for the next space mission.

Some concepts the kids were exposed:

We noticed that one child’s freeze-dried blueberry weight measurement might be different from another child’s, but the RELATIVE weight between the different types of blueberries was the same. After looking at some of the data from different kids, the class was able to draw the conclusion that frozen berries ALWAYS weighed more than dried berries, which ALWAYS weighed more than freeze-dried berries. It was a great way to highlight the difference between ABSOLUTE and RELATIVE weights.
The kids were introduced to both qualitative data (non-numerical observations) and quantitative data (numerical, measurable information). Measuring “tastiness” is a qualitative measurement and measuring weight is quantitiative. Depending on the subjective “taste” measurement, not all the children came up with the same recommendation for the astronauts. A great way to highlight how science is not always exact with only one right or wrong answer.

If your child has further interest, this website gives more details about goals that the NASA Space Food Team has.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/space-food-systems

Activity #2: A (lunch)day in the life of an Astronaut

Amber had previously purchased a couple of freeze-dried meals (chicken/rice and

marinara/noodles), so the kids had a chance to experience a typical meal that a real astronaut might have for lunch.

Before taste-testing them, we weighed the food packs before adding water as well as after adding water. We asked the kids to hypothesize whether the weight would be more, less, or the same after adding water. Of course, all of the kids guessed that the food packs would weigh more with the water added. It reinforced the fact that water = heavy and highlighted the benefits of freeze-drying food for space travel.

The kids also had a chance to look at the food before and after rehydration. They were especially wary of the chicken/rice meal, which looked like yellow powder. Freeze-dried noodles look like regular uncooked pasta, so that wasn’t as strange to them.

There was a wide range of opinions of whether the meals tasted good or not, but most agreed that they couldn’t eat meals like this for an extended period of time and it highlighted just one of the (many) luxuries that astronauts willingly give up in the name of science!

Activity #3: How color affects taste!

Amber has already done a number of experiments in the past with taste and how our
other senses affect our sense of taste. For NASA’s Space Food team, one of the challenges is to make food in space LOOK and TASTE the way they were meant to be.

The kids got to be taste-testers in a juice experiment. They first tried a red-colored juice, and were asked to guess the flavor of the juice. They then repeated the taste-test with a dark/purple-ish juice.

For the red juice, kids thought the flavor was:

fruit punch gatorade
apple
pomegranate
cherry
grape

For the purple juice, kids thought the flavor was:

apple cider
kiwi
grape
purple jelly bean
fruit punch
pomegranate
blackberry

Most of the kids were excited to drink the red juice, but initially refused to drink the dark purple juice. When asked, many had a preference towards one juice, saying that it tasted better than the other.

It turned out that the two “different” juices were the exact same (apple juice) that had been dyed different colors! Because our brain has been trained to associate different colors with different flavors, it can affect how we perceive what something tastes like. This activity showed why the NASA team spends effort on how food looks!

Activity #4: “Un-freeze-drying” blueberries

We had some leftover freeze-dried blueberries, and one child wanted to know what happened when we added water to it. So we did an impromptu experiment where we rehydrated freeze-dried blueberries.

In the afternoon, Sadie rang the chimes and announced that the kids could taste-test and observe freeze-dried blueberries that had been rehydrated. The water’s behavior (“moving” into the blueberry) is a loose example of diffusion. Several partook in this opportunity!

We’ll be doing a lot more experiments over the next month demonstrating the concept of diffusion and osmosis (which is just diffusion through a semi-permeable membrane)

Future Ideas:

Going forward, many of the ideas Christine has for diffusion/osmosis may require a fairly long wait-time and little preparation time (e.g. putting raisins in water and observing them 24 hours later). It’s possible we may need to adjust the schedule somewhat… I’ll think about it more and send out more details later.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Read-Aloud Schedule

After hearing Ellie Luz read last month, many other children felt inspired to read to the

Cici’s read aloud!

class, too. They begged me to create a sign-up and kept asking when they would read! So, we took time today to create this list, below. They chose where on the list they wanted to be (knowing the higher or lower they were meant sooner or later), but please talk with your child about when they’re scheduled to read and whether they’ll be able to prepare their book, by then. If your child would like to go a little later on the list, in order to practice a book that he/she is comfortable it be ready to read it on his own, please let me know.

We talked as a class about read-alouds and how children prepared themselves to read for the class. Ellie Luz said that she practiced that ONE book both at school and at home with her family for a month. Genevieve said she practiced it at home a bunch of times and wanted to share it. Dominic and Logan said the same thing! I want to be very clear that this list is not about a list of books that they choose and I read aloud. This is the list that the kids asked me to put together, because they wanted to read a book to the class themselves. If your child’s goal is to do this, but he/she’s not ready right now, I can definitely have him/her go later! For children who aren’t reading yet but volunteered, too, they could simply do a picture walk (narrating the story orally based on each picture)! The last option is perhaps they can read with a partner, taking turns, or they can read a page and I read a page. The bottom line is that I want them to take as much ownership over this activity as possible 🙂

What type of book?

Whatever book they want! From BOB books to picture books. It’s their choice of whatever makes them feel comfortable and CONFIDENT.

List of read-aloud dates and students:

Ellie 3/23
Genevieve 3/24
~~Logan 3/29~~
~~Dominic 3/30~~
~~Jada 4/21~~
~~Claudia 4/27~~
Maddie S./Izzy 5/4
Nakiya 5/11
Pranav 5/12
Tyler 5/18
Maddie K. 6/1
Sthanika 6/2
Sadie 6/7
Donovan 6/8
Quentin 6/9
Oscar 6/13
Byron 6/14
Nadia 6/15
Cameron 6/16

Opted Out (for now?)

Henry

Steele

Nicholas

Nature & Our Garden!

Friday Skill Sharing Schedule (9:00-9:30am)

Children will have an opportunity to explain, demonstrate and field question/comments

Ellie’s share: Art!

on ONE (1) skill of their choice. Some have to decide WHICH SKILL because they thought of two. Those children have an (*) next to their name. They have 5-10 minutes each. You can discuss with them how they may want to show their skill, what props they might need, how they will utilize the space of our classroom safely, and help them prepare for this public speaking opportunity by rehearsing it with them. I will prepare the children to be encouraging, kind, and respectful audience members. Some children already told me what they chose as a skill. So that’s why some names already have a skill in parenthesis. If your child has not chosen a skill, yet, please help them choose and prepare before their debut! Please see the following sign-ups, this week’s in bold:

March 31: Cici (Flexibility), Genevieve (Art)
Tyler’s share: Dance moves!
~~April 21: Byron (Karate) and Nadia (Cat’s cradle)~~
~~April 28: Tyler (Dance moves), Ellie (Drawing), Maddie K (Gymnastics)~~
May 5: Donovan (Hockey), Pranav (Gymnastics), Maddie S. (Gymnastics)
May 12: Dominic (Basketball), Oscar (T-Ball) and Jada (Gymnastics)
May 26: Logan (?) and Henry (Gymnastics)
June 2: Sthanika (_________) and Nakiya (Teaching reading)
June 9: Cameron (Gymnastics) and Nicholas (_______), Steele (Protecting)
June 16: Quentin (Running) and Sadie (Dance moves)

Maddie K’s share: Gymnastics! She actually showed us 3 moves and then had them vote for which one they wanted to try outside!

[Slideshow]

Week 29: Back From Spring Break!

April 24, 2017kmbeal87 Leave a comment

Mark Those Calendars

CANCELLED Parent Meeting THIS week: I sent an email out earlier this evening!
SNACK: Jada’s mom, Amber, prepared all the fixings for the kids to make “donuts” using apples, dyed cream cheese, chocolate sun butter spread, sprinkles, fruit, pretzels, and more!

The meeting we were going to have on Wednesday April 26th 6:30-7:30pm is cancelled. There’s nothing pressing to discuss in person and the sense I feel from everyone is that after a crazy first week back from school, we could all use a break. I emailed the few housekeeping items I had. Thanks for your flexibility!
Kinder Pod Performs for Community Sing! The kindergarten pod will be performing THIS Friday April 28th for the school. Click Kinder Sing Lyrics for Friday April 28 for lyrics to all the songs being sung!
Community Snack Schedule: This week is the Ramos/Paiyou family. Please use the snack signup genius here to sign up for a week to bring snack. Let the Snack Coordinator Kudsana (kkizaraly@yahoo.com) know if you need special accommodations or are unable to fulfill your commitment. And a BIG thank you to the Martines family for snack last week!
Spring Fun Faire: Saturday April 29th 12:00-4:00pm. Room 7 is teaming up with Room 6 to run what we decided was a duck pond with prizes to be won!
Child-led Spring Conferences: Sign up genius coming soon for May/June!
Staff Appreciation Day: Thursday May 4th
Art: Making pom-poms for our pom-pom rug!
Silent Auction: Saturday May 13th (adults only) at Shir Hadash in Los Gatos. Christina (art coordinator) will help children make a plushy sensory reading rug for
our auction item and we need donations SOFT yarn in various ocean hues (blue and green). Thanks!
Staff Development Day: NO SCHOOL Friday May 19
Memorial Day: NO SCHOOL Monday May 29th
Other FUTURE Parent Meeting Dates: Wednesday May 24th, and Wednesday June 14th.

Painting Through Adversity

We read “A Splash of Red,” which was a biography about Horace Pippin, a differently abled painter in the 1800s-early 1930s. He was born in 1888 into a poor country setting, and drew with coal. His drawings won him a set of art tools in a contest he entered, which changed his world by adding COLOR to his work for the first time. He wasn’t able to follow his passion at first because he was the breadwinner of his family as the eldest son. But Horace still dreamed of his passion to paint and wished he could pursue it. He went off to fight in WWI and was shot in his dominant painting arm. Horace struggled to make a full recovery in his weakened arm, but

A-Splash-of-Red-The-Life-and-Art-of-Horace-Pippin-1-2

A-Splash-of-Red-The-Life-and-Art-of-Horace-Pippin-1-1

never did. Eventually, he taught himself how to paint, again, by using his left hand to hold his right hand. It took him 3 years to finish one painting at first. His life’s story, use of bright colors, and his never-give-up attitude inspired a surge in curiosity about painting, blending colors, creating landscapes, and more! Many children talked about the story and brought up his perseverance and how “I still like what he made even after his arm was hurt. It’s better than what I make!” I felt like we were in need of a painting lesson to boost confidence and remind them that he had to practice, just like everyone else. My painting background came into play as I taught children how to create these types of paintings through mini-lessons during Quiet Time or Exploration. They loved and kept asking me to do it every day! It was a nice change of pace from all the drawing lessons 🙂

Weekly Highlights

Field Trip: Monday April 17 9:00-12:30 at the Youth ScienceInstitute/Vasona Park in
Field trip to YSI!

San Jose, CA to learn about Arthropod insects!
Skill Sharing: Many children have brought in toy items and it’s become a contest. The items keep getting bigger and newer and have created an imbalance in the system of power and social status within our classroom, solely based on toys being shared. So, we will STOP bringing in items and start bringing in SKILLS! Everyone is good at something and this spring is everyone’s time to shine. I discussed it with them and then asked the definition of a skill. They gave the definition you see below in the explanation. Then, kids raised hands to volunteer a skill they wanted to share. Take a look at the schedule so far! We will share every Friday, and Claudia shared her skills for us 🙂
Math: We continued work on composing and decomposing numbers with base 10
Writing up strategies used by kids to compose numbers!

blocks: 10’s rods, 1’s units (called “baby ones” or “cubes”), and the 100’s flat blocks. We talked about about numbers can be composed in multiple ways and different people might choose different strategies. We asked questions like, “How did you get 34?…. “How do you know it’s 34?”…”Can you show me your strategy?” Children had a few minutes to work, then we rang the chimes and shared the different ways they composed numbers. Goals: Understanding that the 10s rod has 10 ones inside of it, the one’s cubes are only representing ONE each, and that a larger number can have a combination of 10s, 1’s, and sometimes 100s.
Buddies: We played 2 group games of soccer and chaos tag. Then, they frolicked around the playground!
Earth Day Efforts: We read Peace on Earth in honor of Earth Day this weekend, and it inspired several kids to ask if they could pick up trash during exploration! We gladly obliged and encouraged their stewardship with trash pickers and bags 🙂
Weekly Kid Read-Aloud: Jada
Literacy: Phonics guessing game, handwriting, story workshop and sight words.
Sight word and handwriting practice.
Author Visit: Ryan Higgins, author of Mother Bruce, Be Quiet, and Hotel Bruce visited D2! He read aloud Be Quiet and demonstrated some amazing cartoon skills by making a ‘toadephant’ that was a mix of a tiger’s stripes, elephant’s trunk, and toad’s body!
Story Workshop: Children were so inspired by the toadephant that for Story Workshop they made their OWN wacky creations and created stories around them!
Science: Ink transfer with gak and solar ovens (not as successful as we’d hoped with the rain!)
Art: Making more pom-poms for the sensory rug we’re auctioning for the Spring Fun Fair auction item!
Just-Right Reading! Each morning, parents can help kids choose leveled books totake home and practice reading with children. Please be sure to return the books and put them in the proper bins!
1-on-1 Reading: From now on, I will take emerging and beginner readers (Fountas & Pinnell level A-G) 1-on-1 to practice reading and work on sight words during Quiet Time, and both mid-range readers (H-K) and high readers (L-N, and above) will go with TK teacher Carol for guided readings group 1-2x a week. I also read 1-on-1 with children who ask during exploration, as well.
Lady Bugs: Room 5 collected lady bugs from the garden and shared them with us. We went hunting, too! We examined them closely using out light table and some drew observations.

Field Trip: Youth Science Institute and Vasona Park

Read-Aloud Schedule

After hearing Ellie Luz read last month, many other children felt inspired to read to the

Dominic reading aloud, before break!

We talked as a class about read-alouds and how children prepared themselves to read

Jada reading aloud to the class this week!

for the class. Ellie Luz said that she practiced that ONE book both at school and at home with her family for a month. Genevieve said she practiced it at home a bunch of times and wanted to share it. Dominic and Logan said the same thing! I want to be very clear that this list is not about a list of books that they choose and I read aloud. This is the list that the kids asked me to put together, because they wanted to read a book to the class themselves. If your child’s goal is to do this, but he/she’s not ready right now, I can definitely have him/her go later! For children who aren’t reading yet but volunteered, too, they could simply do a picture walk (narrating the story orally based on each picture)! The last option is perhaps they can read with a partner, taking turns, or they can read a page and I read a page. The bottom line is that I want them to take as much ownership over this activity as possible 🙂

What type of book?

Whatever book they want! From BOB books to picture books. It’s their choice of whatever makes them feel comfortable and CONFIDENT J

List of read-aloud dates and students:

Ellie 3/23
Genevieve 3/24
~~Logan 3/29~~
~~Dominic 3/30~~
~~Jada 4/21~~
Claudia 4/27
Maddie S./Izzy 4/28
Nakiya 5/11
Pranav 5/12
Tyler 5/18
Maddie K. 6/1
Sthanika 6/2
Sadie 6/7
Donovan 6/8
Quentin 6/9
Oscar 6/13
Byron 6/14
Nadia 6/15
Cameron 6/16

Opted Out (for now?)

Henry

Steele

Nicholas

Author Ryan Higgins visits D2!

The kids loved having Ryan!

In the afternoon, the kids got to see a presentation by visiting author and illustrator, Ryan Higgins. Genevieve brought in Mother Bruce a while ago, and children loved it. I wanted to jog their memory a bit so, earlier that morning, I read another one of his books to the class. The kids were then super excited to meet the actual author!

Ryan talked about how, as a child, he loved writing and drawing, even though he wasn’t the “best” in class at writing or drawing. But, because he loved it, he practiced a lot and worked really hard at being an author. This was a good point to make, especially as some of the kids still struggle with

Bella the seal, mermaid, princess fairy (with a crown on her bum!)

being the “best” or over-emphasizing/idolizing others who may be really good at
something. Ryan also read his newest book, Be Quiet, which the kids also enjoyed listening to.

Finally, he did a short exercise where he asked kids to name some animals. He then took three of those suggestions (toad, elephant, and tiger) and drew a hybrid creature that had the features of those 3 animals: The Striped Toadephant. Taking suggestions from the audience, Ryan and the kids fleshed out the character, coming up with a name, occupation, where the creature lived, what it ate, etc. It was a really creative exercise that we incorporated it into our own story workshop the next day after hearing a few of the kids request making their own silly creatures.

NEW! Friday Skill Sharing Schedule (9:00-9:30am)

Nadia shares her skills with a Cat’s Cradle Sting!

Children will have an opportunity to explain, demonstrate and field question/comments
on ONE (1) skill of their choice. Some have to decide WHICH SKILL because they thought of two. Those children have an (*) next to their name. They have 5-10 minutes each. You can discuss with them how they may want to show their skill, what props they might need, how they will utilize the space of our classroom safely, and help them prepare for this public speaking opportunity by rehearsing it with them. I will prepare the children to be encouraging, kind, and respectful audience members. Some children already told me what they chose as a skill. So that’s why some names already have a skill in parenthesis. If your child has not chosen a skill, yet, please help them choose and prepare before their debut! Please see the following sign-ups, this week’s in bold:

March 31: Cici (Flexibility), Genevieve (Art)
Byron shares his prowess at the UNO card game!
~~April 21: Byron (Karate) and Nadia (Cat’s cradle)~~
April 28: Tyler (Dance moves), Ellie (Drawing), Logan (?)
May 5: Donovan (Hockey), Pranav (Gymnastics), Maddie S. (Gymnastics)
May 12: Dominic (Basketball), Oscar (T-Ball) and Jada (Gymnastics)
May 26: Maddie K (Gymnastics) and Henry (Gymnastics)
June 2: Sthanika (_________) and Nakiya (Teaching reading)
June 9: Cameron (Gymnastics) and Nicholas (_______), Steele (Protecting)
June 16: Quentin (Running) and Sadie (Dance moves)

Science: Solar Ovens and Ink Transfer with Gak

SOLAR OVENS

A month or so ago, a few of the Room 7 kids playing outside during afternoon

The solar oven makers!

Exploration noticed kids from Room 12 making solar ovens outside our classroom. Kids from both classes ended up working together to build an oven to heat up marshmallows. It was a really enjoyable experience for our Room 7 kids that participated, so we wanted to set up this activity specifically for our class.

This week, the kids learned about the power of the sun and worked in teams to build their own solar ovens. I explained the basic concept of how a solar oven worked by converting the sun’s energy into heat and then trapping that heat to “cook” something. One child pointed out that a solar oven was similar to the leprechaun trap, except that we were “trapping” heat and not leprechauns!

The weather did not cooperate…but we tried, anyway!

I then assigned teams of 2-3 students to work together as an engineering team to build their solar oven. While we had unlimited access to cardboard pieces, aluminum foil, saran wrap, black construction paper, and tape, each team only got one cardboard box (the oven base). So this was a great opportunity for many of the kids to work with new friends and practice communication and compromise.

The kids first tested marshmallows in their oven, and later got a ziploc bag of gak to heat up. Unfortunately, Mother Nature wasn’t fully cooperating and it was drizzly and cloudy for most of the day, but that didn’t stop the kids from testing their oven and making observations about their marshmallow/gak!

Explain the solar oven as a convention and their challenge!

INK TRANSFER WITH GAK

After the kids had a chance to “heat” up their bag of gak in their homemade solar oven,

The only time we will EVER write/draw on tables 🙂

we showed them an interesting property of gak. We asked the kids to use washable markers to draw/write on the laminate tables. When they pressed their piece of gak onto the markings, they discovered that the ink transferred onto the gak! They could then knead the piece of gak to erase the image and start again. The kids really seemed to enjoy this! Some discovered that their white piece of gak started to turn colors, and a few worked on scribbling and transferring ink to obtain the perfect hue for them. Others preferred drawing elaborate rainbows and designs and watching the picture transfer to their gak

Exploring was fun!

piece. And there were many that enjoyed writing their name or different words and discovering that it transferred backwards!

NOTE: Amber brought up the idea of using other types of ink or medium to test whether that transferred to gak (e.g. newsprint, sharpie markers, crayons, etc). That would definitely make a fun science experiment for kids to do at home if they want!

The ink printing was so cool!

Christine also shared a science model using metal balls and magnets that represented how glue and borax reacted to form gak. The metal balls were the “glue” and magnets were the “borax”. I honestly don’t know that the
kids really made the connection of how this represents the chemical reaction between glue and borax, but many seemed to enjoy just playing with the magnets.

Next week, we’re going to go back to space and freeze dried foods, something we touched upon briefly from the NASA space day and field trip. After that, we’ll move into activities around osmosis/diffusion, and that will take us to the end of kindergarten!

Demo: Using magnets and metal balls to show how borax (magnets) and glue (metal balls) interact to make gak!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Week 28: Spring Green Feast, Pod-Wide Celebration, Passover, and Easter!

April 16, 2017kmbeal87 Leave a comment

Mark Those Calendars

Field Trip THIS week: Monday April 17 9:00-12:30 at the Youth Science
April: A new calendar for a new month!

Institute/Vasona Park in San Jose, CA. Please arrive by 8:30am and label your car seats! See carpool list, below this section.
Community Snack Schedule: This week is the Martines family. Please use the snack signup genius here to sign up for a week to bring snack. Let the Snack Coordinator Kudsana (kkizaraly@yahoo.com) know if you need special accommodations or are unable to fulfill your commitment. And a BIG thank you to the Carroll family for snack last week!
Board Meeting: Wednesday April 19, 6:30-9:00pm
Art: Making pom-poms for our pom-pom rug!
PSC Meeting: Thursday April 20, 6:30-9:00pm
Spring Fun Faire: Saturday April 29th
Silent Auction: Saturday May 13th (adults only) at Shir Hadash in Los Gatos. Christina (art coordinator) will help children make a plushy sensory reading rug for
our auction item and we need donations SOFT yarn in various ocean hues (blue and green). Thanks!
Kinder Pod Performs for Community Sing! All families are welcome to join us on the last Fridays of each month for the sing. However, the kindergarten pod will be performing Friday April 28th for the school. Click here to see all the dates and who’s performing!
Spring Break: Saturday April 1 – Sunday April 16th
FUTURE Parent Meeting Dates: Wednesday April 26th, Wednesday May 24th, andWednesday June 14th.
Literacy: Authoring and illustrating Spring booklets!

Youth Science Institute Field Trip Carpool List

Arielle (Maddie K’s mom -4 kids)

Remember your GREEN field trip shirts!

Maddie K.

Logan

Byron

Sadie

Akiko (Nadia’s mom -2 kids)

Nadia

Dominic

Mercedes (Ellie’s mom – 5 kids)

Ellie

Claudia

Nakiya

Pranav

Tyler

Trevor (Quentin’s dad – 4 kids)

Quentin

Steele

Nicholas

Oscar

Katherine (Donovan’s mom – 4 kids)

Donovan

Cameron

Henry

Genevieve

Priyanka (Sthanika’s mom – 2 kids)

Sthanika

Jada

Weekly Highlights

The Spring Green Feast: On March 31st from 12:00-12:50pm, we’ll celebrate the
Spring Green Feast!

coming of spring having a fun GREEN feast of all green foods provided by the bounty of the earth. Sort of like Stone Soup, everyone brings in an item to make salads, and that item also serves as a side dish for kids to choose from. The Green Feast is to remind us of the wonderful gifts and mysteries of nature’s goodness 🙂
Skill Sharing: Many children have brought in toy items and it’s become a contest. The items keep getting bigger and newer and have created an imbalance in the system of power and social status within our classroom, solely based on toys being shared. So, we will STOP bringing in items and start bringing in SKILLS! Everyone is good at something and this spring is everyone’s time to shine. I discussed it with them and then asked the
Base 10 Mystery Math Challenges!

definition of a skill. They gave the definition you see below in the explanation. Then, kids raised hands to volunteer a skill they wanted to share. Take a look at the schedule so far! We will share every Friday, and Claudia shared her skills for us 🙂
Math: We made April Calendars for when we return, played jelly bean counting games and practiced graphing, and played “mystery number challenges” where children opened differently leveled challenge cards and had to create the numbers given in base 10 blocks: 10’s rods, 1’s units (called “baby ones” or “cubes”), and the 100’s flat blocks. They saw how 10 rods of 10 made a flat 100 block. Children were inspired to make their own challenge cards and have others try to complete them! We also talked about equations with base 10 blocks.
Literacy: Spring Booklets and making complete sentences to describe the different sensory aspects of spring (I feel…I see…I smell….etc.)
Kinder Pod-Wide Spring Celebration: Friday March 31st before the potluck
Kinder Pod-Wide Celebration Lanyards!

(10:30-11:45am). We had some fun activities we will have include visiting baby chicks, making bead worms, eggs-ercise hunts, egg races, egg dying, egg decorating, planting, petting baby chicks, flower printing with vegetables, etc!
Spring Fun: We made little origami baskets for spring time and the children received bubbles and jelly beans inside them on Friday. The baskets served as a way to hold the things they made or won during the pod-wide celebration.
Post-Green Feast Community Outreach: Dramatic play and philanthropy meet in
Happy Passover!

this kindergarten classroom! We had a bunch of food leftover and children decided to play “healthy fast food restaurant.” They used the little dixie cups and leftover foods to make ‘shooters’ or amuse bouches to share with other classes. They proudly walked around the pod and school with a tray welcoming others to try their creations!
Weekly Kid Read-Alouds: Dominic and Logan
Passover: The major Jewish spring festival that commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, lasting seven or eight days was April 10-18th. We read a few books about this and hoped to make macaroons for cooking but the parent willing to do it was unable to come in, last minute. After break, we’ll do it though!
Animal Visitor: Sheila (Claudia’s mom) brought a gopher snake!
Math – Flavorful Graphing!
Literacy: Drawing and writing reflections on their favorite part of space day!
Story Workshop: Children made their story workshop stories with the loose parts cart and we finished sharing the 5 stories from the previous week, on Wednesday via power point. Children have 10 seconds to look at someone’s work, then say what they think it might be. After, either I or they read their story and explain what the parts represent. They have time for 1 minute of questions or comments. So far, everyone has been warmly received and supported!
Science: No science – field trip!
Origami Easter Baskets- Happy Easter!
Art: Making the pom-poms for the sensory rug we’re auctioning for the Spring Fun Fair auction item!
Just-Right Reading! Each morning, parents can help kids choose leveled books totake home and practice reading with children. Please be sure to return the books and put them in the proper bins!
1-on-1 Reading: From now on, I will take emerging and beginner readers (Fountas & Pinnell level A-G) 1-on-1 to practice reading and work on sight words during Quiet Time, and both mid-range readers (H-K) and high readers (L-N, and above) will go with TK teacher Carol for guided readings group 1-2x a week. I also read 1-on-1 with children who ask during exploration, as well.
Field Trip: Tuesday March 28th at NASA Ames Research Center which tied in nicely to the space unit we’re doing.