Dear Families,

Good evening!  I meant to write earlier in the weekend but it got quite busy in a pleasant way.  I spent most of the weekend cooking and visiting with friends and family. The children spent the week enjoying a variety of activities; including extra recess time outside slay riding on a bit of snow and mostly frozen lawn.

We began the week building our animals’ habitats.  The children had fun using a variety of materials including some messy painting and got them done by the middle of the week.  Each child also enjoyed working with clay to make his/her animal to place in its habitat.  On Friday the children painted the clay animals with some support from their buddies.  They are looking forward to show them at the show of work on December 19.

Science/Language Arts
The children made the first observational drawings of our new tadpoles and frogs.  We are very happy with our separate habitats showing each developmental tadpole stage, and a habitat for fully developed young frogs.  We are enjoying immensely a book on frogs, Slippery, Slimy Baby Frogs by Sandra Markle.  The book is full of facts about baby frogs from around the world, and the children’s favorite so far is the one about the Phrynopus (fry-NOP-us) frog.  The Phrynopus female lays her eggs in a place on the ground that is nearly always damp and she stays nearby, regularly peeing on the eggs to keep them wet. I am sure you can see why this would be the most popular fact.

First Grade Math
On Thursday the first grade group performed their math play The Squirrel’s Store.  The children thoroughly enjoyed preparing for the play.  They made paper nuts, grouped them in several groups of twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, placed them in small bags, and practice counting the groups.  They used the book The Squirrel’s Store as a guide while they wrote the play, and did a wonderful job performing it.  For pictures, check out the school’s website www.parkerschool.org and click on the “Director Meg Taylor’s Blog:  Perspective on Parker.”

Kindergarten Math with Lynne

We have continued our pattern work with the children deciding on patterns they could do with their classmates.  As a result, they lined up in patterns using hair color, shoe color, short and long sleeves, and by height (tall, short, tall, short).
They also arranged themselves from smallest to tallest.  Much discussion occurred as friends were moved around to suit the needed patterns.  We also worked on a counting book that related to the animal research they have been doing in science.  Each child had a number page and depicted that number using information they learned about their animal.  As an example, one child who picked the number seven and had studied a box turtle drew seven turtles, seven bodies of water because turtles live near water, seven flowers for turtles to eat.

Peace Assembly
On Friday the children will be making a presentation about peace.  Unless we change our minds, the children will be reciting a poem about what peace means to them.  We had a couple of discussions about it during the week and read two books on peace.

I wish everyone a wonderful week,

Liliana