Can't Wait to See You!

SAGE will begin on Thursday, August 29.

Continuing Our Learning from the Warmth of Our Homes

So we have another snow day ahead of us tomorrow.  If you are tired of being home and want to continue our caves research, use the Padlet wall below to help you explore a virtual cave.  If you have trouble posting on the wall or can't remember how it works, view this screencast tutorial on Padlet:
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cInOVKVoQS.  
Then come back to our wall here, on our D Day blog to share your thoughts and ideas.

After your child has a chance to view the screencast tutorial on Padlet  

Tour the virtual cave. This is my very favorite caves website.  There are many pictures of the different types of caves.  Click on the dark pink links to see them.  Be sure and enter the "Solution Cave."  Solution cave is another name for limestone caves.

Created with Padlet

Be safe, stay warm and enjoy your snow day!

Enhancing Our Learning with Technology

This week, the D Day students learned more about the four kinds of caves and how they form.  Ask your child to tell you a little about each kind of cave.  Today we learned about ice caves and lava tubes.  After viewing and discussing each type of cave, the students did a small illustration to help them remember the characteristics of each type.

Next, the students were introduced to using padlet.com   Padlet is like an online bulletin board.  I created the board and posted it here on our class blog.  I asked the students to share one thing they have learned about caves by posting it below on our board.  Before going to the computer, the students brainstormed ideas they have learned about caves and wrote a draft of their fact/s.

Next, we reviewed our Internet safety rules:

• We use only first names.
• We never post a photo of ourself along with our name.
• We never share our person information.

     This includes:

1. Our last name
2. Our parents' names
3. Our address or phone number
4. The name of our home school, ball team, dance studio or scout troop number.
5. We never share the personal information of any of our classmates or friends.
6. We do not interact or "chat" with strangers on the Internet without the approval of our parents and/or teacher.

For some of our new students, this was their first introduction to staying safe on the Internet.  Keeping these rules in mind, the students made their first post on our Padlet page.

After lunch and recess and Spanish, we learned our next "Habit of Happy SAGE Kids," Listen with your ears, your eyes and your heart.  It is important to not only listen to someone's words, but also to be empathetic to their feelings too.

We ended our day working in the Problem Solver program.  Today's strategy was using a table to solve a problem.

Have a great week!

Sharing Our Learning

The students were introduced to padlet.com, an online sight that allows users to collaborate and share their ideas.  Ask your child what he/she has learned about caves.

Created with Padlet

Using Our Imagination to Explore Chemistry and Analyze Oobleck

This week, our class learned about chemistry from our newest Quirkle, Kitchen Chemistry Kal.  Chemistry impacts everything we can smell, taste or touch.

For this lesson, the students pretended NASA had sent us a substance they collected with a space probe from a strange planet, in a far away galaxy.  The scientists from NASA named the substance, Oobleck, after the Dr. Seuss book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck.  We were told the substance was safe to handle, but we should not eat it.  Our job was to help the scientists by discovering and recording the properties of Oobleck-  and boy did we have fun doing it!   It had many properties that seemed like they were opposite of each other.  It was definitely a strange substance.

Today was the second day of our 7 Habits of Happy SAGE Kids unit.  In this lesson, we learned Habit #1 - Be Proactive.  The students realized that they are in control of their mood and actions.  The next time they're bored, they shouldn't come to you looking for something to do.  It's not your job to solve their boredom!  They learned how to take control of their own feelings/actions and if they're bored, how to be proactive and find something to do. 

In the afternoon, Senora Gates helped us practice our new Spanish words.  This week, we worked on color words, numbers and greetings.  Check out our numbers, music video!

Next, the students worked at their Exploratory center.  Ask your child about their current task.

 

 

 










We ended our day working on our math problem solving skills.












When the kindergarten students finished their math, they had a little time to play, "Spot It," a great game that strengthens perceptions and spatial relations skills.
 

What a busy day!

Taking Off with Jazzy Jet

Last week, we welcomed two new kindergarten students who have moved into our class.  They are great additions to our group!

We started our day by sharing a little about ourselves so the students could get to know each other better.

Next, we worked on our math problem solving skills. 

 
After lunch, we had our first Spanish lesson with Senora Gates.  Each student had a chance to choose a Spanish name and worked on the following vocabulary:

1.    Greetings - Hola, Buenas días

2.    Names - Me llamo… ¿Cómo te llamas? Mucho gusto.

3.    Colors - rojo, azul, blanco, negro, amarillo, verde, anaranjado, rosado, morado, gris, café o marrón.  Game-Levántense- Siéntense

5.    Numbers 1-10

  

Next, we met our newest Quirkle, Jazzy Jet.

From Jazzy Jet, we learned about Bernoulli's Principle and how it helps our Frisbee and huge airplanes fly!

In the afternoon, we began a new unit for our Affective Skills curriculum unit.  The unit is called The 7 Habits of Happy SAGE Kids.  Our unit is based on the book, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids, by Sean Covey.  (Sean Covey is the son of Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)   As an introduction to our unit, we discussed what a habit is, then took a pretest to see what we knew about habits we have that make us happy. 

Through this book, we will have ten lessons focusing on self-awareness (perfectionism, giftedness, task commitment, dealing with stress, risk-taking, valuing yourself, goal setting, and underachievement) and social awareness (peer relations, ethics, empathy, conflict resolution, leadership, and self-advocacy).  The students will discover how the choices they make can affect their day, their relationships, and their future.  Each of the stories within the book introduces a positive habit.

It is good to be back from our break!  We had an exciting day!

Bringing the Heat- Hallie Heat!

This week the boys and girls settled into class quickly and were ready to work hard!  We started our day by meeting our newest Quirkle, Hallie Heat.  From Hallie and her friends, we learned that dark colored clothing captures the sun's heat, while light colored clothing reflects the heat.  We also learned that heat rises and cold falls.  Ask your child to share his/her Quirkles science log, to tell you about his/her hypothesis and about our experiment shown below.

This week, we had our first Brown Bag Luncheon.  Our speaker, Sally Cook, is from the Children's Center for the Visually Inpaired, CCVI.  She share information on different types of visual impairments and allowed the students and parents to try on different goggles that simulated many of these impairments.  She also passed around children's books that were in Braille and ones with raised lines and textures.  At the end of our luncheon, Mrs. Cook used a Braille type writer and typed each child's name in Braille.  She was a very interesting speaker!

After lunch, we started our individual Exploratory tasks.  The newer students are on their knowledge level task (reading and watching a video) to learn more about their center topic.  The rest of the students continued working on their projects. Ask your child about his/her current center and task.

In the computer lab, the boys and girls continued to explore Microsoft Power Point.  They learned to insert a shape, resize it and move it around the slide.  The students also learned to format the shapes fill color.

Understanding the basic tools and functions of this program will transfer in the application of other Microsoft products and web based slide show applications.  Power Point is a good slide show program, but it is also great for digital story telling, book reports, posters, and even holiday cards.  Primary students soak up the functions with minimal instruction.  When my own children lost their "computer gaming privileges" for one offense or another, they would always say, "But can we still do Power Point?"

If you have Power Point available on a home computer, consider allowing your child to practice.

Another busy, but fun day!  Have a great week!