We read the story Petra by Marianna Coppo about a rock and how it exists in the world. At the end it is found by a child who paints it to look like an elephant. The children reviewed the expectations for how to use acrylic paints then donned their T-shirt smocks and got to work smothering their rocks with color.
Rose warmed us up with Hurry, Hurry, Drive the Fire Truck then the children took turns signing names. Rose reviewed amphibian and other related signs. She read and signed the Piggy Gerald story Elephants Can’t Dance. We always love stories with Rose! To end we sang and signed Tingalayo with two new verses suggested by the students, where Tingalayo read a book and Tingalayo danced and sang.
We read the stories Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall and Emmanuel’s Dream, by Laurie Ann Thompson, a true story about Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, who was born in Ghana with only one working leg. It was a heartbreaking but inspiring story. We tried hopping all around the classroom on one leg to see how long we could do it before we got too tired, and found that it was very challenging and we could only do it for about a minute or two, unlike Emmanuel, who would hop 2 miles to school and then back again each day, played soccer on crutches, hopped while carrying water on his head, and eventually learned to ride a bike with one leg. We talked about how challenging that would be and how he never gave up and worked hard, even moving to the city at 13 and getting a job to send money home, then later biking all around Ghana to raise awareness about how able those with disabilities can be.
We read and talked about being a super friend, and what that looks like; including others, taking turns, being flexible, calming down and thinking before acting, and using gentle hands. We shared some of the ways that students have been super friends and how they have demonstrated the classroom expectations of BE RESPECTFUL, BE RESPONSIBLE, BE SAFE, and BE KIND, both at school and at home. We invited children to share when they observe others being a super friend and/or following the classroom expectations. We will make a paper chain of these actions.
The Bee Patrol has been planning and plotting about how to keep bees safe. They met to set a Mission Statement: To Keep Bees Safe, and to determine how to best do this: through educating others, based on their decision to form the bee patrol after learning how important bees are to our survival. They have invited everyone who is interested to participate, and some members have begun working on gathering information and creating ways to educate others about bees and why they are important.
Kindergarteners were introduced to subtraction, and really enjoyed challenging their brains to solve subtraction problems. We went outside Thursday afternoon to fill our pirate treasure boxes, hide them, then plunder others, using our math skills to subtract to solve how many coins were plundered, then addition when adding in the new treasure we had plundered. It was a bit confusing but fun, so we will keep working on smoothing out the kinks.
During science on Friday the children extended their experiments from last week where they used a balance to determine how many animals were needed to balance one heavier animal, to using a scale and adding weights to determine the weight of a particular animal. The children documented their findings with words, numbers, and/or pictures.
