On Friday as a formal conclusion to our science unit on pushes and pulls students were given a challenge to design a way to move 5 rocks from the floor up to a table.  They worked in teams and had a variety of materials available for their use.  Pulleys were quite intriguing so most chose to incorporate a pulley into their design.  This was a great opportunity to practice team work and persistence and also lots of fun.  While we are officially done with the science unit I have had many requests to keep using the pulleys and other materials during choice time.

For the last several weeks in math we have been exploring geometry, with a focus on two-dimensional shapes.  Children have engaged in many activities to help them learn the defining features of specific shapes (circles, rectangles, squares, triangles, and hexagons) and recognize similarities and differences between shapes.  One game we played is called the barrier game.  Partners each have a 3X3 grid, hidden from view of the other partner.  One partner uses specific directions to tell the other partner where to place shapes on the grid, trying to create two matching grids.  This activity provided practice in naming shapes and also using position words such as above and below.  It's also a great exercise in speaking clearly and listening!

We wrapped up our exploration of 2-D shapes by working with partners to create a poster about one particular shape.  Children used a variety of materials to create several examples of their assigned shape and also included two non-examples.  We have now moved on to three-dimensional shapes, with emphasis on cones, spheres, cylinders, and cubes.  We have been having lots of fun playing a game of recognizing a 3-D shape by feel.

We are continuing our science unit on forces and motion by exploring pushes and pulls.  Our most recent lesson was focused on the different amounts of force needed to push or pull an object and circumstances that change the amount of force necessary.  We explored this concept a bit inside with boxes containing varying amounts of weight, and then we decided to explore outside with sleds.  Is it harder to pull one child or more than one child on a sled?  Our snowstorm lent itself beautifully to this topic with a new question- is it harder to pull someone over a small layer of snow or through the deep snow?  Having spent lots of time with sleds most children were able to make accurate predictions, but is was fun to test the questions.  We also had fun experimenting with pulling ourselves up the hill with a rope.  Some children spent lots of time devising a way to get a person in a sled up the hill.  With a little adult help and a person pushing we found a successful system.

In the last couple of weeks we have been exploring similarities and differences among people around the world, particularly children.  In pairs, children looked at books about children around the world and used sticky notes to mark pages where they saw a connection with themselves.  Sticky notes are lots of fun so many pages were marked!  Some of the connections kids noticed were children riding bikes, a child with a dog, and a child playing in the snow.

We have read several of these books including One World, One Day by Barbara Kenley, which takes the reader through a day on Earth, and Wake Up World!  A Day in the Life of Children Around the World by Beatrice Hollyler, which explores the lives of eight children around the world from the time they wake up until they go to bed at night.   Both of these books explore simple routines that are common to many, such as eating breakfast, going to school, playing with friends, and getting ready for bed.  While these children can have noticeably different lives depending on what part of the world they live in, emphasis is placed on their commonalities.

Another book we read is Shades of People, by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly, which points out that while our skin color comes in many, many different shades, from creamy peach to caramel to mocha, it is just a covering and says little about the person we are on the inside.  After reading this book we observed eggs, noting the different shades and unique features of each egg - some are speckled, some appear to have stripes, and some are smooth.   After making these observations we cracked several eggs and noticed that while each egg is a little different inside, they are all remarkably alike - much like people.

We were extremely fortunate to continue this conversation with a visit from Cait Shea, Barb Morrison's daughter, who is currently living in China.  Ask your child about one thing he or she learned from Cait's presentation!

Now that we have learned all of the letters and their corresponding sounds we are spending lots of time using this knowledge to practice phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound in a word.  We have worked on these skills in a variety of ways including segmenting words and sorting them by their beginning, middle, and final sounds, and blending phonemes into words using magnetic letter tiles or writing on white boards.  A favorite way to practice this is by building words in teams.  Each child is given one letter card.  I call up one sound at a time and we slowly tap each sound as I touch each child's head, blending the sounds into the corresponding word.  We have mostly focused on simple three letter words, but children are eager to be challenged with longer words or words with more complex patterns such as /sh/ or /ch/.  Phonemic awareness is a critical component of reading acquisition and we will continue to build these skills in a variety of ways throughout the year.