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| Week 3 and library/Carver museum |
We started our week with a walk down to Carver library on a refreshing Tuesday morning. We packed snacks, water, and took our backpacks that held our newly chosen books. We explored different genres, talked to the librarian, and found interesting bits of nature along our path. We decided to visit the Carver Museum next to the library. There we found artifacts of Carver's life, sculptures, and beautiful wood carved relief panels. There was an exhibit on Juneteenth and we learned about the Emancipation Proclamation and the festive tradition. We also explored several founding historical african american families that have lived in the Austin community.
Great things have been happening during self directed time. Some planned and developed a lemonade stand that had several customers. (secret ingredient was honey and handmade origami cups) Origami, bead-making painting, and sword fighting were other popular choices.
We got our new handmade burlap supply pouches! We started making them last week. We cut the burlap, pinned the hem, and started to sew, but Dan took over and volunteered to finish them. Thanks, Dan! They came out beautiful and we will use them everyday.
We planted some fall veggies early in the week. Greens, broccoli, cauliflower, asian greens, and brussel sprouts were added in the rows. We can't wait to watch them grow!
We ended our Free to Be You and Me unit this week. We worked on our Family trees, started a timeline of events that happend in our lives, and finished our silhouettes. All of our projects are looking fabulous!
For Maths this week, Caitlin's class has been working on concepts of large numbers, place value, and orders of magnitude. We started by modeling a one-centimeter square cube for one unit. We worked with the concept of 10 makes 1: ten cubes make one long (a ten-bar); ten longs make one flat (a hundred square); and ten flats make one cube (a thousand). Then I asked the students to figure out What Comes Next? They began to recognize the cube, flat, long pattern as we had to leave the confines of the studio to measure out ten thousand. We grabbed meter sticks and headed for the alley to contemplate the power of ten. Once we got to a million, the cube was so large we estimated it was as tall as the neighbor's two story house (10 meters tall!) We also worked with recording the numerals and reading big numbers. Encourage your child to practice at home!In Language Arts, Rio and Sy worked together to sort word family cards to recognize spelling patterns. They then selected one of the word families and read a story featuring that pattern. Renee selected a book project from our folder of choices and will write a sequel to a story of her choice. This project is due Thursday 9/27.
Laura's class has been working on instant recognition of amounts using dots. (like on a dice) We used dot cards and discussed the patterns and relationship between different numbers. Dominos was a huge hit! Using the patterns on the dominos, we played different games like, one more than, and one less than. This helped with fluency of numbers and relationships that will help with computation in the future.
In Language arts, we all read together the book You Read to Me, I'll Read to You to work with sounding out words and reading with expression. This helped by getting a good idea where they are in reading levels.
Thursday during siesta, we had Sofia, Rio's mom, come and read to all of us. We loved the books she chose, like Chester's Way, Unique Monique, Widget, Jamaica Louis James, and Dream Catcher. What a treat to have her visit! Thanks, Sofia!
