Happy Holidays!

 Please watch the latest video documenting all of our holiday fun!
Love,
Ms. Clark

Thank You Parent Visitors

6-B was lucky to enjoy a parent visitor read us a version of the Nutcracker.  This was a nice connection to our recent field trip to the BSO.

We also enjoyed a fascinating presentation about Mars!

Thank you, parents, for visiting 6-B

9-1 Buddies

We spent time with our 9-1 character class buddies yesterday. We read stories that taught us about snowflakes, and how each flake is unique, just like us! The friends then worked in pairs to make snowflakes to celebrate the winter season. Perhaps making virtual snowflakes would have be less messy, but we certainly had a great time with our buddies!

A special thank you to the 9-1 boys for helping us with this fun project.

Also, to Ms. Gentry for creating the above video.

Our current discovery unit is on mittens. We recently read "The Mitten Tree", by Candice Christiansen. Before reading the story I told 6-B that there was a mystery in the book! Someone was placing mittens on the spruce tree for the children but they did not know who? Above you can see our pre-reading predictions about who may have been leaving the mystery mittens?

Then we read the book and realized that the story is about kindness and generosity. An elderly woman, Sarah, watches children as they play and wait for their school bus to arrive. Sarah notices that one small boy is not playing with the cold snow because he did not have any mittens. She kindly knits a pair for him, and anonymously places them on the blue spruce tree next to the bus stop. Soon this becomes a game and the children eagerly check the mysterious mitten tree each morning to see if there are any new pairs of mittens?  

After we discussed mittens in general 6-B took their very own mittens (brought in from home) and did a copy cat drawing to add to our class mitten tree.

As an extension to the lesson 6-B gathered on the rug and received one mitten each. We faced away from one another and closed our eyes as each friend took a turn to describe how the mitten felt (eyes closed) and looked (eyes open). A great experience for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile learning styles. As we listened to the descriptions, the person who owned that mitten had to raise their hand the moment they knew that it was theirs. We each did a wonderful job, and properly identified our own mittens brought in from home! 

Our next lesson will be to complete a portfolio page where we choose two describing words about or mittens. We want to share how they feel and look. Below are a few words we have started to brainstorm.

Of course we didn't forget to have some good old fashion fun while wearing our mittens indoors- so silly!

Trip to the BSO

We were so lucky to spend the morning at the BSO listening to beautiful music accompanied by dancers from a local performing art school. 6-B used beautiful manners and were a wonderful audience! We recognized many of the songs from the Nutcracker!

Tally Marks!

As part of our graphing unit we learned to record data using tally marks. One great way to work with tally marks is by using Popsicle sticks! This hands on activity helps us learn how to create marks, and to work from left to write. We made sure our Popsicle sticks were straight up and down and converted numerals into tally mark representations. You can try this at home too! Use the Popsicle sticks as a warm up activity before you move to paper and pencil work. Then have you child help you with real life application. Perhaps they could poll what everyone in the family would like for dinner? 

Have fun with it! Ten Popsicle sticks were sent home with your child today in their backpack. Perhaps they can teach you how to show the number 4 with tally marks? Then ask them other numbers too! It becomes pretty tricky after five! Make sure your child continues their tally marks on the right (just like reading)