**If you haven't already--don't forget to check out our Space Station Creation Movie at the bottom of this blog page! It is all about them!
**PIZZA and PLAY End of the Year Family is Wednesday, May 27th from 9:30 -noon. I am missing some permission slips and money. Please send them in ASAP! Thanks! Our room parents will send out a final message about the where to drop off items and when to come to walk with class. We are looking forward to a great day!
**In class presentation by Ms. Henry on Worms and Worm Composting is Tuesday, May 26th at 8:30 am. We will have a little "worm village" in our classroom to nurture and observe until the end of school.
**Walking Field Trip slip to the Gurgas/Chien Chicken Coup is in your child's homework folder. We will be walking there on Friday, June 5th leaving at12:40 and returning to school at 1:15 pm.
**ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE DUE on MAY 29th per Ms. Noonan.
**ALL BUSY READERS ARE DUE BACK TO MS. GULLO on MAY 29th.
**Last day of school is Friday, June 5th. We will have a regular morning session. In the afternoon--walking field trip to Gurgas Chien Chicken Coup 1:40-1:15 and beginning at 1:30 until dismissal is our Family Hour. Please join us for autograph signing, light refreshments, report cards and summer packets and maybe even something special on the blacktop!!!!
**The ABC Countdown continued this week with a chilly outside day, notes to nice people, cozy pajamas and Queens ruling for an afternoon. Their decree--extra recess, another choice time, extra page in our math journal, extra snack and more game time. We were so busy on Friday with Olympic Day and Queen Day that we actually forgot to think of countdown activities for next week. We will skip R and decide on Tuesday, when we get back!
**Representatives from the Oak Park Library spoke to the students about the Summer Reading Challenge that begins on June 4th. Sign up will continue throughout the summer. This summer's theme is "UNMASKED." Super heroes abound!!! Read and earn prizes. I have encouraged all of my students to sign up at Maze Library to participate.
**We had a pleasant walk to the Oak Park Conservatory. Our docents, Ms. Mary and Ms. Jeanette were super knowledgeable! Each room the students visited contained plants, animals and even fish with colorful histories and interesting facts. The students spent some time after sketching in the Desert Room. Awesome! Back at school, the students reflected in their journals on their experience. Their favorites--the Ponderosa Lemmon Tree, Venus Fly Trap, George, the parrot, and all the cactus plants! It was a great trip! Thanks to our volunteers, Ms. Frank, Ms. Pacelli and Ms. Tapia!! Oh yes--a special thanks to our class mascots--Asa and Samara!
**The students showed off their talents and sportsmanship on Olympic Day. Each student tried out their skills at all of the events. Obstacle Course, 50 Yard Dash (could you beat Mr. Degman?) Soccer Relay run by Senorita Zaragosa and her soccer playing nephew, Nerf Ball Battle, Stall Bar Relay, Team Skiing--super great working together and Parachute were just some of the events. Team Gullo was so amazing!
This week:
It was all about sprouting seed sponges, seed bags and monitoring our class garden. Our potato plants are nearly ready for planting in our outside bed. We will plant potatoes, edamame and the students will choose one more plant. We also have nasturtiums started for bug control. We will begin amending that soil. We are preparing our room for our "worm village." The students began their inquiry into worms and how beneficial they are to the earth. We will be doing our final paragraph on the topic of worms. This week we also have the "Traveling Seeds Kit" from the Oak Park Conservatory. More about that in the science section. The Queen's ruled for Friday afternoon so station day took a different turn---choice time, math journals, recess, games!
Reading/Language Arts: Students continue to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10. Sight words for this week are with and my. Target sounds are Jj and Qu. The students continued to review all skills on the Phonemic Awareness Continuum as per our Route to Reading format. They used their dry erase boards to practice blending and segmenting 3-4-5 and even 6 phoneme words. The students also worked on substitution and sound addition activities. Most students are working on the first half of the First Grade sight word list. Robust Vocabulary for this week included CONFUSED, DESCRIBE, INSIST, TEXTURE, UNDERSTAND. The students built background knowledge about things that they learned this year. We made a group list of things we already knew and things we now know from being in kindergarten. The students amazed themselves!! They have learned so much! Once again, student small groups chose their own literature and activities to go with them. They read, discussed together and elbow chatted about story elements, main events and sequencing of events. I checked in with the groups, heard individual readers, check comprehension and worked on students reading for meaning. Students spent the remainder of their workstation time reading independently from their literacy bags or playing a reading game. Their top favs this week were, "Very Silly Sentences," "Spot a Word," "Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives Cookie Jar," and the app "Tic, Tac, Toe."
Math: The students have started their new math journals. They continue to work on reading the problem, illustrating the process and writing their equation or number sentence. We have been also working with vertical as well as horizontal addition. The students are enjoying the graphing, counting and teen number activities. Next week, we will work on subtraction story problems. The students continue to practice number bonds 1-10, writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, counting on from a random number 1-150 and counting by 2's, 5's and 10's beyond 100.
Writing: The students continue to reflect on various topics in their journals and writing "meaty" sentences. The students began the process of finding information thru books and internet on worms. Stay tuned!
Science: The students continue to observe plants growing in our class garden, Our potato plants are ready to be planted in our outdoor garden bed. We will do that the first week in June. 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, straight roots and tons of tiny roots were their observations. The students also looked at the leaf structure of each plant and made a sketch of the leaves. They noted wagon wheels (nasturtium) ovals (sunflower) dragonfly wings (morning glory) and butterfly wings (marigold.) How do these shoots, stems and root systems help each plant? They reflected in their science journals. In Experiment 5, the students are observing seeds growing without soil. Water, sunlight and air are the ticket! Pretty cool! This week, we had the "Traveling Seeds" Kits from the Oak Park Conservatory.
The students got to experiment with the way seeds travel. They floated a coconut seed, blew milkweed seeds, "popped" a baptisia seed pod, had a stuffed dog run with tickseed on him and helped to dig out acorns that "squirrels" might have buried for the winter. Next week--a plant in a closed box with only a small window---what will happen to the plant? Stay tuned!
Technology: No new apps this week. The students are beginning work on their final project of the year.
Literature: "The Seed Song," "How and Why Seeds Travel," "A Seed is a Promise," "In the Garden,""The Atlas of Plants," "Growing a Garden," "Roots," "Leaves," "A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds," "The Tiny Seed." "Not All Princesses Dress in Pink."
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