Winter Break

Fall Session Week 9

Kindergarten Spanish:
A fast and furious day of centers! Since we've been talking about gatos and perros, we read Skippyjon Jones, a cute book about a cat that thinks it is a dog. Our four centers worked with weather, seasons, families, and pets-all the things we've discussed this session. Children did a Dora match game, dressed the weather bear for the appropriate season, did an animal coloring sheet, and built lego "casas" for my toy familia members and their mascotas (pets). Everyone got to do everything-fast and furious!

B1-2 Technology:
This week was the epitome of effort and perseverance as the children used Microsoft Word to type the writing assesment stories they have edited in their classroom. This proved very challenging to some, who will need to finish next week. For the classes that were not quite ready to type their stories yet, they got to explore the great world of Shidonni, a free site where they created animals, fed them healthy food, and kept them healthy. Try this at home-no registration is needed, although with the free registration you can do more activities. A great way to end the Don't Worry, Be Healthy session. They'll be doing their typing next week and the other classes will hopefully have time to try out Shidonni.

3-4 Technology:
We wrapped up our internet safety lessons by discussing email rules and etiquette, then practicing by sending a Smilebox holiday ecard home to parents. I hope everyone got to see them, they were very cute with customized text and uploaded digital photos. When finished, students could get the idea of a chatroom by chatting with an elf at northpole.com.

Fall Session Week 8

Kindergarten Spanish:
We've expanded our familia once again to include our mascotas, our pets. Our familias have lots of gatos and perros, and even some pez and serpientes! We read My Pig Amarillo by Satomi Ichikawa and made a mascota minibook. We also watched a PBSkids episode of Maya and Miguel where they figure out what to do with their mascota, their parrot Paco, while at school all day.

B1-2 technology:
Instead of keyboard climber, this week we had a new keyboarding game-alph munchies! Since we've been talking alot about healthy food and food groups, we did some microsoft word formatting fun on a paragraph called "Eating a Rainbow." Students moved the title to the center, changed font sizes and styles, and turned color words such as green peas and red apples to the right font color. Lots of fun! We finished class by making a holiday picture in paint with a text box. These pictures will be combined into a class holiday project to be emailed home next week as our present to our families.

3-4 technology:
A little break from Type to Learn-two keyboarding games, Keyman and Spider Typer. Then, finally, after much anticipation, it was time to redraw our partner monsters and see how they did with redrawing ours. I think our Fort Craig students wrote very good descriptions and had good results. After reading a few of our partner descriptions, they realized the need for clear directions! Everything can be seen at our monster gallery on the internet. Extra time was spent on Study Island.

Fall Session Week 6 and 7

Since we started this session on a Tuesday, and had Tuesday computer lab glitches last week, this short week worked perfectly to get everyone onto the same schedule for after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Kindergarten Spanish:

Our Fort Craig Thanksgiving feast was timed perfectly for our discussions on familia and dia de gracias! We talked alot about what we say gracias for and about our familias and our holiday traditions. After coloring a holiday picture, we read Gracias, The Thanksgiving Turkey by Joy Cowley and played Donde esta el bebe, a fun guessing game.

B1-2 Technology:

First, just a quick note to say how proud I am of these little guys! They now come into the lab, go quietly to their computer, log in, and go straight to keyboard climber (navigating internet, favorites, ikeepbookmarks) all on their own! Way to go! This week, we watched a Brainpop thanksgiving movie and then used our knowledge of the first thanksgiving to make a picture with dialogue in kerpoof. The final results looked something like this:

Remember, to play kerpoof at home, login with student class id. The nickname is the first three letters of the first name and the first three letters of the last name, password is kerpoof, and class id is m861 Happy kerpoofing!

3-4 Technology:

After Type to Learn and our body keyboarding, students assembled their "Little Book of Thanks" that they made last week. They came out great! Once the books were put together, students watched a Thanksgiving slideshow and did some fun activities on ikeepbookmarks, including a kerpoof Thanksgiving picture.

Fall Session Week 5

Kindergarten Spanish:

We are still talking about familia-this week we added our abuelo (grandfather) and abuela (grandmother) to the group and had fun practicing the vocabulary with our "What's Missing" game. We read Abuela by Arthur Dorros, and talked about special things we like to do with our abuelos. Since familias help each other, we colored a "Trabajando juntos-working together" coloring sheet and watched Families in Mexico, a video about a 5yr. old girl and her family.

B1-2 Technology:

After Keyboard Climber, students used the program Kidspiration to sort food pictures into the proper spots on the food pyramid. This was a challenging activity for many, involving not just clicking and dragging but also resizing of pictures without accidentally moving the food pyramid boxes! The final product looked something like this:

Once the picture was saved in their folders (a challenge in itself!), the children did more food group sorting fun with The Bodies Game.

3-4 Technology:

We started getting ready for Thanksgiving by talking about some things we are thankful for, including some of the little things we take for granted. Students made a 6 slide powerpoint to be printed out as a "Little Book of Thanks" to take home for the holiday. We discussed the merits of clip art versus google images and learned how to copy and paste pictures from the internet into our powerpoints. This was a big project to finish in one class and they really did a great job!

Fall Session Week 4

Kindergarten Spanish:
We're talking all about our familias this week! We learned the spanish words for people in our immediate familia-padre, madre, hermano, hermana, bebe-and practiced them with our dice game, the pass the familia game, and Donde esta el bebe? game. Lots of games for lots of different practice opportunities to use our new vocabulary. Students also colored a familia sheet while they told me about who is in their familia. We finished up by reading Bebe Goes Shopping by Susan Middleton Elya.

B1-2 Technology:
After our Keyboard Climber practice, we measured our first graders and put the data into an excel graph so we can participate in the collaborative project "How Tall is a First Grader?". We know that to grow tall we need to eat healthy food from all the food groups and we watched the Tumblebook Little Pea to illustrate this. After a Curious George measuring game, students finished up with education city.

3-4 Technology:
With all our monster activities this month, it was time to talk again about internet safety and some "monsters" you can meet on the internet. Students used their "netsmartz" at various activities at netsmartzkids.org such as Meet the Wizzywigs and Whose Your Friend on the Internet. This is an important subject that will be revisited in various ways throughout the year.

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.