**The month of May is really flying by! The students are busy acting like the first graders they will soon become. They are doing more independent assignments and making more choices on the types of assignments they want to do. Our indoor classroom garden in growing nicely. We have watermelon, corn, pumpkin and tomato seeds germinating. The students are observing the stem types and leaf structures.
**Please check your child's homework folder for our last 3.....yes! 3 permission slips for up coming field trips. Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic-Wednesday, May 28th, Gurgas /Chien Residence to visit the chickens-Tuesday, June 3rd and bus trip to Chef Ahsley's studio at Constructive Chaos on Monday, June 9th. There is a $2.00 charge for Pizza and Play. If you could send in all the slips ASAP....that would be great! I will be chatting with our room parents about the end of the picnic at Rehm Park. Be on the look out for info from them. Lot's of parent help needed. The other trips are open to volunteers. There is no limit.
**Our ABC Countdown continues!! We had cool and groovy hats, ice ream and space ice cream (cold vs. crunchy) and a spectacular day to honor our buddy Jalen! Next week promises to be quite regal with Monday being "King Day." (boys rule!)
**We dodged the rain and our field trip to the Oak Park Conservatory was awesome! Our docents, Ms. Evette and Ms. Jean were super knowledgeable! Each room the students visited contained plants, animals and even fish with colorful histories and interesting facts. Back a school, the students listed their favorites of the trip--Venus Fly Trap, Ponderosa Lemon, Cacao Tree, Cactus, George the parrot and the Banana plant. We have a Ponderosa Lemon in our possession. L for Lemonade!!!!!
**Art Fest/Poetry Slam was the bomb!! A big shout out to our "lil slammers" Ben, Emily, Reid and Gina for their participation. The art work was beautiful, the poetry breaks and recitations were cool and the chorus, games and plays were great.
**The students had lots of fun on Tuesday traveling to say their poems to a variety of grade levels. We, in turn, loved listening to the students who came into our classroom to provide a "poetry break."
The Traveling Poets Project will continue next Tuesday. Keep practicing your poem!! Kudos to Ms. Noonan for her organization!
**The students took part in a school wide Tornado/Severe Weather Drill. The students discussed not being by windows and in the lowest part of a building. We also talked about having a plan for where you would go when you are in your house.
**I am continuing to work on final assessments. I will be completing them this week.
**Family Math Night is Thursday, May 22nd from 6:30-8:00 pm. The theme is "Monopoly Math." A permission slip is in your child's homework folder.
**All School Olympic Day is Friday, May 23rd. We will be performing Olympic feats from 8:30 -10:30 am. Come on out and see Team Gullo participate in events such as Basketball Hotshot, Egg and Spoon Relay, Long Jump, Partner Skiing and more! Please send your child in comfortable clothing. GYM SHOES and SOCKS ARE A MUST!
**No School on Monday, May 26th--Memorial Day.
** Last Day of School events--Please join us for our Family Hour on Tuesday, June 10th from 2:00-2:55 pm. We will sign autographs in our autograph books, have some refreshments, get our report cards and summer packets and read a closing story. All are welcome!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey went over the results of what to do for the last Friendship Club. A special video feature won out. Ms. Bell Bey led a wonderful discussion/sharing of the what students were thinking about going to first grade. There is some general nervousness, some uncertainty about not having all of Ms. Gullo's class in the same first grade room, some worries about homework and expectations--all very natural, but also great excitement about moving forward, and pride in what they have learned, meeting new first graders and all the new things they will learn in first grade. We will be visiting first grade the last week of May and meeting the teachers and seeing the classrooms. Students may bring any questions they have about first grade to the classes and a first grader will answer them. Stay tuned for the exact day.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer began a unit on 2D and 3D shapes using Geo Shapes. Question: What do you know about 2D shapes? (flat, have sides, closed) The students experimented with creating a design with 2D shapes and seeing if they could put them together to form a 3D shape. Very cool! Stay tuned for more!
This week:
Change is in the air! The students are sensing the end of kindergarten, the school year, the thought of new teachers, new classroom, new friendships. Turning into a First Grader is Big!! They have come so far!!! We are having more choice time activities so the students can interact, share and chat.
The students continue to observe their "wormy" compost bin. This week, "Yellow Bear Table" is in charge of bringing in some "food" for our wormy friends.
Station Day activities this week included Pattern Block flowers, ways to make 10 animal equations, number flowers--naming, tally, number bond, illustrating a number from 5-10 and continuing our Lego Challenge. Lots of very unique structures built by partners and small groups! We were excited to have Ben's Nana in the house to assist with our Station Day activities!!
Reading/Social Studies: Students continue to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10. Sight words for this week were this and me. We reviewed target sounds Jj, Yy and Zz. Students worked in pairs creating sentences using their sight words and pictures. Each pair of students shared the sentences they made. The students continue to work on using nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. Each day, the students worked on substitution exercises from the Haggerty Blue Book to strengthen sound recognition and automatic recording of phonemes to form words. They are getting much quicker at creating words during our Word Play exercises done every Friday morning! Robust Vocabulary for this week included AMAZING, OCEAN, REASON, DEEP, INVITE. Workstations for this week included choosing 5 of their sight words and writing sentences using them, diagramming a fish and writing 4 facts about fish, writing a fishy caption, sorting fish pictures and writing about how you sorted them, leveled reader fluency check and discussion of story elements and looking for and finding evidence in their particular story of the main topic and key details that support it.
Math: Students continued to work on reviewing the writing of number forms, writing 2 and 3 digit numbers and telling how many ten frames are needed to make a number. They also review what makes a "teen" number. The students worked on math vocabulary--more than, less than and equal to and used games and other activities to help reinforce those concepts. Student worked with a partner to analyze and compare 2D and 3D shapes in different sizes and orientations and described their similarities and differences. They are having lots of fun using Mr. Packer's Geo Shapes. Students also continue to work on addition and subtraction facts and story problems--reading the the story, figuring out the operation, illustrating it and writing their number sentence.
Writing: Students began their writing reflections on the wonderful volunteers in our classroom. They also began working on their draft about worms for their final writing project.
Science: The students continue to observe the growth of plants in our indoor class garden. Our potato plants are also ready to be transplanted into our outside garden plot. We hope to do that soon. In Experiment 4, we removed a baby plant sunflower, nasturtium, morning glory and marigold from our garden to take a closer look at their root systems. The students noted the similarities and differences in the stems, leaves and roots. Thicker shoots, skinny shoots, straight shoots, curvy shoots, lots of roots, stringy roots, tons of tiny roots were their observations. The students also looked at the leaf structure of each plant and sketched the leaves in their science journal. They noted leaves that looked like wagon wheels (nasturtiums, ) ovals (sunflowers,) dragonfly wings (marigolds,) and butterfly wings (morning glory.) In Experiment 5 the question was asked--What if the seed has no soil? Could it still sprout/germinate? The students sprinkled various seeds onto a sponge and watered it. Each table has a seed sponge, They will water and observe it daily for the next few weeks. What will happen? The students made some predictions. Stay tuned! We also put some seeds into a plastic bag with a wet paper towel and taped them to the window. Stay tuned!!!
Technology: Students are beginning to work on our end of the year movie. There was lots of discussion of what should be included. The students decided on the format and what to include. Stay tuned!!!
Literature: "The Tiny Seed," "Eating the Alphabet," "Spring Changes," "Hi Fly Guy," "Noisy Poems for a Busy Day," "Kids Poems," "Bug Patrol," "I'm a Seed," "A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds."
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