Fall Session Week 3

Kindergarten Spanish:

This week we talked about the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. Students learned that even though it has a scary name, it is not a scary holiday and it is not Halloween event though it takes place around the same time of year. Day of the Dead is a time when families remember and celebrate loved ones who have died. An ofrenda, or altar, is built in the house with pictures, candles, marigolds, special foods and items that pertained to the deceased. Although there are skeletons everywhere, they are not scary. Instead, the images are of skeletons enjoying the things they did when they are alive such as dancing, playing sports, playing music, etc. Children get calaveras, sugar skulls, that show that death is just a part of life and life is sweet. Special sweet bread is made in circular shapes to show the circle of life. In the classroom we made sugar skulls and talked about our own family traditions. Here are some pictures from Mrs. Waddell's class-hope all the calaveras made it home in one piece!

B1-2 Technology:

We combined a healthy food/food pyramid discussion with Halloween by listening to a Tumblebook story about The Lima Bean Monster. After that, we cut out and assembled out Pumpkin Math minibooks made from last week's powerpoint manipulation and spent any leftover time on Education City, our wonderfully engaging new skill review program which the kids seem to really enjoy!

3-4 Technology:

Our monsters are uploaded and we are excited to receive our partner descriptions and see their redraws. This week we watched a tumblebook called Frank Was A Monster Who Wanted To Dance and then made a skeleton dance on the cool interactive skeleton. We watched a short Brainpop movie to learn more about our skeletal system and then tried to Put Annie Back Together. Finally, the kids had fun uploading a class picture into the free photo editing site Picnik where they turned their fellow students into monsters with stickers and effects.

Pumpkin Math

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Pumpkin Math

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Fall Session Week 2

Kindergarten Spanish:

"Verano-Summer, Otono-Autumn,Invierno-Winter, Primavera-Spring. Each season has a song to sing." We've added a new song snippet from Lyric Language about the seasons onto our traditional class starters. Kindergarten had fun exploring the seasons this week. We learned and acted out weather expressions, dressed Senor Oso (Mr. Bear) for each season, and colored a leaf picture with the appropriate Spanish colors. Although Tennessee has four distinct seasons, we talked about the rainforests of South America which don't have the same seasons and the leaves of the trees don't change colors. The childred enjoyed hearing The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. We ended our class by reviewing the word "calabaza-pumpkin," and playing a game of "hot calabaza!"

B1-2 Technology:

We have a new keyboarding game to start each class this session-Keyboard Climber.

This game is fun, but very challenging for many of the students. We talked about the importance of using the right hand for each letter and that the idea of practice is to do their personal best, not to beat the game the first try(or ever!) Following keyboarding, we jumped right into our pumpkin theme activities for the week. After a few minutes of carving virtual pumpkins and clicking/dragging pumpkin faces, we listened to our "guest speaker" tell us some pumpkin facts.

The video was done with Crazy Talk, a cool program we will explore later in the year. Armed with our pumpkin knowledge, we were now ready to tackle Pumpkin Math, a powerpoint inspired by Kevin Jarrett and others. Students click,drag, and type to manipulate a powerpoint which I will print out as a minibook to bring home later next week.

3-4 Technology:

The Monster Exchange is in full swing! This week students tested their monster descriptions with a class partner and typed them in Microsoft Word. Some students realized that their descriptions lacked important details or clear instructions and a lot of editing needed to be done!Everything should be posted to the website next week for our out-of-state partners to redraw. We should have our partners' pictures to redraw by Thanksgiving.

Fall Session Week 1

Kindergarten Spanish:
With our new Fall session, it was time to talk about otonoFall) along with the other seasons--verano(Summer),invierno(Winter), and primavera(Spring). We watched a Lyric Language song video about the seasons and then reviewed our colors in Spanish by talking about the colors we see in otono. Next, we were ready for our color bingo game! After the game, we learned another spanish word for something we see in otono--calabazas(pumpkins). We read a book about the most grande calabaza ever, and then colored a calabaza picture.

B1-2 Technology:
Since the B1-2 classroom theme this session is "Don't Worry-Be Healthy," we discussed how to be safe and healthy(no viruses!) when using the internet. We went to the great netsmartzkids.org site to learn all about the Webville Outlaws. We took care of those bad guys with the Webville Roundup game and listened to an internet safety song. We'll be coming back to some of the other games and activities at this wonderful site in the future. We finished up class offline coloring in our Webville Outlaw coloring book and taking the internet safety pledge. I hope your child has shared it with you!

3-4 Technology:
October is Monster Month! Halloween, the release of "Where the Wild Things Are," our school author visit next week of Marcia Thornton Jones and her wonderful collection of monster (and other)books--the perfect time to join in the collaborative web activity called Monster Exchange!Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster.(From website) This week we made our monster pictures and tried to describe them--the students realized this is harder than they thought! For practice, we redrew some monsters based on other students' descriptions. Next week, we will type and upload everything to the website. We'll get out partners' drawings after Thanksgiving.

Summer Session Week 9

Kindergarten Spanish:

Hard to believe these little guys have already made it through the first session of school! They've already grown and learned so much. We concluded our session with a whirlwind celebration of Mexico. We made quesadillas, played Mexican restaurant, dressed up in traditional clothes, danced La Raspa, and read Burro's Tortillas-all in 55 minutes. Here are some highlights:

B1-2 and 3-4 Technology:

We had a fun last week by exploring a site called Kerpoof. Although this week we mainly had a great time playing around with the different features and "kerpoofing" our work, it will be used later in the year for more educational purposes. Studenta first had to learn how to login. After going to the website, students click the login tab and then click "login with student class id." They will then see 3 boxes-nickname, password, and class id. Their nickname is the first 3 letters of their firstname first 3 letters of last name (no capitals or spaces). The password is kerpoof and the class id is m861 Try it at home!

See you after break!

Summer Session Week 8

Kindergarten Spanish:

After our usual starters (everyone has now had a turn at "Me llamo Fred"), we reviewed our colors and played color bingo-so much fun we had to keep playing until everyone had bingo. To prepare for our big Mexico day next week, we discussed tortillas vs. bread, looked at different foods made with tortillas, read Runaway Tortilla by Eric Kimmel, and watched parts of Kids Explore Mexico. Get ready for some exciting video next week as we cook, dress-up, and do some dancing!

B1-2 Tech:

The students are excited to be collaborating with children all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico in the Symbolic Monarch Migration project at journeynorth.org. After viewing 2 short video clips about the project, we cut out and decorated our monarchs, using our digital pictures for the head and antennas. They are now ready to "fly" to Mexico where they will spend the winter before returning somewhere in the United States or Canada in the Spring. We will be able to track them online and find out where our monarchs land.

3-4 Tech:

This was sort of a "clean-up" week for us. The students did Dance Mat typing for a break from Type to Learn, and then finished up powerpoints and digital jigsaw puzzles. When everything was complete, it was time for Study Island, our TCAP preparation site.

Summer Session Week 7

Kindergarten:

Too much activity for me to video or take pictures this week as we rotated through 4 different centers working with colores. We read Oso Pardo(Brown Bear) by Eric Carle and then did some gummy bear math, sorting and graphing our yummy gummy colors. Other centers included color lacing cards, playdoh, and color blocks. The students did a great job cooperating and working out their own problems while I concentrated on the graphing group.

B1-2 Technology:

This week we started a great project ,which we will re-visit periodically throughout the year, called the Symbolic Monarch Migration from the site journeynorth.org. I urge you to visit this site, which has a wealth of information. You can help track the monarchs on their Fall trip to Mexico and then back again in the Spring. We learned about the lifecycle of the monarch and watched some amazing video of the monarch caterpillar munching milkweed and the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

As the students played various butterfly and insect games on ikeepbookmarks, we took pictures of them with their "antennas up" to be used next week as we create paper monarchs that will be mailed to Mexico to spend the winter at the Monarch sanctuaries along with the real monarchs.

3-4 Technology:

This week we put all those formatting skills together with the information we discovered about ourselves to make "Who Am I?" powerpoint presentations. Students learned how to do motion clips, slide transitions, and insert a digital picture from a file (remember those pictures we took last week?) I'm hoping to combine their powerpoints into a class Who Am I to share here after everyone finishes next week. Students who finished early made a digital jigsaw puzzle of themselves at this cool site.