Tzemach Class 2016: Workshops and Woods Play

Hello family and friends!

We have had a great second week of school! The kids are learning our routine and schedule quickly. We also added music to our schedule this week. Ms. Natalie will come to our classroom every other Friday and work on new music skills. It's a fun part of our week!

One of the main things I want to tell you about this week is our workshops. We have three main workshops that we rotate throughout the week: math, reading, and writing. The beauty of workshops is that its a time for Michelle and I to walk around the room and meet with each child individually. As we do this, we are assessing their skills in each of these areas. We take notes, talk with the children, and help them work through anything they may need help with. This time gives us a clear picture of what we need to provide for each child and the best way to challenge them to help them improve in these skill sets.

Math workshop consists mainly of math games that cover a range of different skills. As we begin to learn the skills each child already knows, we are very strategic about which games they choose. Each child starts at a station and moves their way around the room, either when they've completed their game or when they feel that they are ready to move on to something new. Writing workshop works on our writing and fine motor skills. We talk about our word wall, letters, words, and encourage inventive spelling (the child spelling words in their own way). Many children do not want to start writing workshop with letters and words. That is perfectly fine. They may choose to draw or color during this time instead. After they are done with their work, Michelle and I meet with each one and talk about their work. We write on a post-it what they have created. We feel that the post-it does not take away from their work by us marking on their papers. During reading workshop, we spend time exploring books. At the beginning of the year, we talk about the proper care of our books and how to handle them. We explore the different parts of a books and their importance. We also get to know each child's favorite books and their reading interests. As with all the workshops, this is also a time for us to assess each child and we take the time to meet their needs in an individualized way while challenging them as the year progresses.

Another thing we did this week was visit the woods for the first time...it was awesome! The kids seemed to really love it. We walked across bridges, swung from vines, stomped through the mud, climbed trees, and played in the woods fort. We were all sweaty and dirty, but we were loving it! As we walked through the woods, we talked about nature. We discovered different types of plants and talked about the water. We thought about what we could see, hear, and smell. While this is a great alternative to our playground time, it is so much more. The kids are exploring while they play. They are asking questions and learning to work together. They're learning to help one another and develop social skills. We also learning to take risks and learning our personal limits. As we played, we gathered nature to bring into our classroom. Once we got back to the room, many of the kids chose to paint their nature. We painted with different pieces of nature, such as sticks and leaves. As we painted, we talked about our experience. We asked questions about our pieces of nature and did some research. We also talked about what we liked and didn't like about the woods. All of these conversations and artwork are hanging up in the hallway. Make sure you check it out!

Many of you may have noticed our new chandelier hanging above our art table. This is our birthday wreath that will be a part of our birthday celebrations each month. Each child chose a piece of ribbon and we glued a picture of them with their birthday date on the bottom of the ribbon. When we celebrate birthdays each month, the children with a birthday that month will take their ribbon off the wreath and decorate it then add it back. This birthday ritual will be a time for us to celebrate each child individually while demonstrating that together we all make up our classroom family.

Throughout the rest of the school year, we will be doing what I like to call "explorations". I like to avoid the word "theme" because, in my mind, I view a theme as something you do for a week and never touch it again. The beauty of an exploration is that it has no time frame. Some explorations may last 3 days, some may last a month or longer. The time we spend on each exploration will depend on the kids and how interested they are in what we are learning about. Another fun thing about explorations is that several ideas may overlap and we sometimes go back and make references to previous explorations. These explorations are chosen by the kids. Next week we will ask each child something they would like to learn about, something they were interested in. Throughout the year we will make sure we cover every idea or question that they have. As we're doing these explorations, we are including subject matters such as math, science, social studies, reading, writing, and geography. It's amazing to watch how many standards we cover while having fun and learning something interesting all at the same time! I'll go more in depth in later posts, but wanted to let you know how the rest of our days will play out.

Thanks for helping us make it a great week! I'm already looking forward to week 3!

Love,

Ms. Rachael

Approaches to Learning

Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities.
Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learners by questions and adding ideas.
Try to solve problems encountered in play.

Social and Emotional

Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
Stand up for rights much of the time.
Respond respectfully to positive and negative feedback from adults most of the time.
Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders.

Language and Literacy

Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
Respond to elements of colorful language in stories and poetry.
Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
Represent familiar people and experiences through art and language.

Mathematics

Investigate solutions to simple problems.
Locate patterns in the environment.
Begin to show awareness of numbers in the environment.
Compare sets of no more than then objects using the terms "more than" or "same as"
Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4

Our first class photo!...