Self- directed time

Weaving! Legos! Rain! Origami!

Renee, Amelia, and Laura learned and practiced weaving by making colorful potholders using loops and looms. We are looking forward to crafting bean bags and learning to weave different edging. 

It RAINED! and a few buckets were poured onto the schoolhouse. It made for a peaceful day and Jonas had the idea to race leaf boats down the curbside. What a fun idea, Jonas!



We busted out the legos today and practiced using our fine motor skills. Our imaginations and creativity took us to create elaborate pirate ships and make up fun stories about interesting people.  

Origami club met today. Lots of paper art were beautifully crafted.  

Self-directed activites

Check out more pictures of our week!

Visit to Sy's House

Today we headed north to spend time at Sy's house. We all had a great time getting to know Sy, Nicole (Sy's mom), and Sue (Sy's grandma). We spent time exploring the spacious front yard, playing hide and go seek,  perfecting yoga poses in the studio, and building lego masterpieces.  

Amelia and Renee exploring the garden

Treasures are everywhere

Jonas and Sy in the front yard

Nicole made a delicious clove,

 ginger, and black pepper tea

Mia enjoying the tea

Nicole showing us a relaxing pose in the studio. 

Mia in full lotus

Renee and her lego masterpiece!

Caitlin getting us ready to catch the bus. 

More pictures to check out!

Thank you Nicole, Sy, and Sue for having us over! 

More pictures to check out!

Week 5

We had a great time hanging out with everyone at the Potluck/Showcase last Saturday. We finally got a chance to share our work for our first unit and spend some quality time getting to know our small community. Click here for an album of photos:

Showcase/Potluck

Looking forward to seeing everyone at Mueller Park for our next park day - Sunday, October 21st. It'll be a BIKE PARTY!

Wow! We have made so much progress this week for our cardboard creations. We spend most of our self directed time crafting, painting, cutting, and putting the final touches on our designs. Click here for photos!

Cardboard Creations

We will play with at the Corrugated Creations event on Saturday. New additions were a chessboard, a carwash, and a super cat palace with a scratch post. 

For lunch this week we enjoyed breakfast for lunch! Yum. We made loaded pancakes with berries, chocolate chips, and bananas. Everyone loved it! We also got to harvest our first patty squash. We will save it for next weeks lunch. We voted today to spend more time in the garden for self directed time.

Tuesday was a special day! We met at Rio's house where we played with the physics of water and legos/Kapla blocks. Here's an album of photos:

Building and Water play

The weather was perfect and we started inside with an explanation of the new water creek in the backyard. We learned how it was built and why there are limits for the feature. We took a vote on which we wanted to do first. Build or play with water. The verdict was to play inside while it heated up outside, then jump in to cool off. Building with kapla blocks, magna tiles, and legos was a blast! After a quick lunch inside, we put on our swimsuits and got into the beautiful creek. We explored, experimented, and played with pvc pipes and water pressure.

Caitlin's class worked with arrays and factors this week in maths. We recorded definitions in our center journals. We took photos of arrays around the house and grounds, labeled them, and found multiplication expressions for each. We looked for factor patterns and build arrays with cubes.

 

In language arts, we learned how to do a dictionary dig. Sy and Rio finished a vowel sound sort and recorded words with the same vowel sounds in their center journals. Renee worked on her book project: a sequel to Chester's Way by Keven Henkes.
In our animal unit, we perused a huge stack of animal books and began taking notes and drawing in our project binders. Each student will have an individual project focused on an animal of their choice. The whole group will learn about Texas Endangered Species and create a film as our culminating project. There are lot of other interesting facets to our study, including tracking, behavior and adaptations, animal rescue, food webs, biomes, and habitats. We'll have a full unit for sure!
If anyone has books on Texas Endangered Species, Elephants, Frogs, or Domestic Cats, please bring them in!

Laura's class worked on place value and numbers to 100. Mia and Jonas worked on place value and expanded form. We used a chart, number cards, and value blocks to help us with placement and practiced saying and writing the numbers. Amelia worked with the hundreds chart and practiced counting and writing numbers consecutively. We also got to work with groups of ten. The domino game and cover up game also were played due to popular demand. 
In language arts, Jonas and Mia worked with word families and practiced writing them in their journals. They also read together Six Dinner Sid, which is a favorite around here. Amelia worked on letter sounds in the alphabet as well as making words she knows using the movable alphabet. We read a Dr. Seuss book on Alphabet and alliteration. We even had time for Magic Tree House!
We all discussed our upcoming Art unit this week and decided to pick several artists, study them, and find inspiration for our own art. So far, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dali, O'Keeffe Da Vinci, Smithson, Matisse, Mondrian, and Nevelson have been voted on. We also decided to create our own original pieces of art that shows our style. If you have any books on these artists or are an expert in an area, we would love for you to share with us. Thank you to those who have already brought in art books! They will be put to good use.