Friday May 2

Hi families! Happy May! This week we continued with our Earth Day theme by putting together some paintings from last week (above) into a colorful mural that answers the question "What makes the earth beautiful?"

Below is a short clip of your little music-makers singing Seed in the Ground. We have continued revisiting the song this week as we expanded our learning of plant life cycles to understand the life cycle of butterflies and other animals.

After a few weeks of collecting beads, every child has earned a table pet! Our pets hang out on the tables in the day time and go to daycare when we are not around to care for them. Our Pet Store will be carrying food, blankets, and toys for sale beginning next week!

In math, we began exploring place value. While really we have been playing with the concept all year, this week was the first week we formalized that understanding by grouping counting collections into tens and ones. Then we represented the count in the "say 10 way". In the photo below, you can see that we labeled the bunnies with a 10 and a 9 (or nineteen). The "say 10 way" helps us think of numbers in tens and ones instead of squished together into a number that doesn't always readily name the parts.

After showing the number the "say 10 way", we use the ones to cover the zero and say the number in its standard form. (Below)

We represented the numbers with cards, white boards, tens and one sticks, and written on ipads.

We decorated and flew paper airplanes outside. It was interesting to see how folding the wings differently affected the planes' flights! Folding paper airplanes is such a fun, easy, and cheap project to try at home.

On Thursday, it was B for Butterflies. Did your kindergartener tell you that we recently welcomed caterpillars to our classroom? We've been watching them for a few days, so today, it was fun to learn a bit more about butterflies in preparation for their big upcoming change! We completed a short science lesson that answered the question "Why are butterflies colorful?" Ask your child: "What are some reasons butterflies might want to blend in? What are some reasons they might adapt to stand out in their surroundings? And lastly, how did you choose the colors or patterns in your folded paper butterfly?"

Next week we will complete our NWEA Map testing and I’ll share those results with you before the end of the school year. We’ll also have some fun beginning with the letters C, D, E, F, and G!