This blog post will probably be the shortest one I've ever written! This is not for a lack of us staying busy, because we have been some very busy bees this week! However, our week has been completely consumed with building our skyscrapers. We are currently in week 2 of this process. However, we are close to finishing them. When we started this, I did not expect it to take this long but I have been so impressed with the kids. They have really taken charge of their buildings and I love the way they are turning out. This is definitely not the end of our building/blocks study. The kids are very much still interested in it and continue to ask questions. I've even had several of you tell me that the kids are building replicas of different homes and buildings that they see in their neighborhoods. As a teacher, this makes my heart so happy! I love to see their enthusiasm and learning extend beyond our classroom walls.
These past 2 weeks of working on our buildings have been so much fun. This has been a wonderful opportunity for us to teach the kids that not everything we do is done immediately or quickly. Some things are a process that take time, and usually these things are the most rewarding. I think they are beginning to understand this as they have been so proud of their structures. They ask to work on them every day and they are continuing to find ways to improve their work. We started this, as you probably remember from my last post, by studying skyscrapers and then drawing our own. We then used our drawings to guide us as we made our 3D structures. We laid out a large amount of recycled items and let the kids use whatever they wanted to start buildings. We were there to help with some steps of this, such as having to use the hot glue gun, but they really took control. Next, we used our drawings again to add color to our structures. Some chose to paint, others chose to use markers or cover in construction paper. We laid the materials out and let them get to work! After adding color, we went back and added exterior features, such as windows, doors, and even grass and trees around our buildings. Most of them decided to make their structure exactly like their drawing. However, some came up with new ideas throughout this process and changed things up a bit. This has been a wonderful way for us to incorporate math and science into our learning. We've also seen team work as they help one another and each other tips and suggestions. We hope you've been enjoying watching our process in the hallways! We will be putting these final products out on display in the hallway next week.
Another fun thing we've been participating in this week is our school's new mail system. The third graders have been working to put the system together and we volunteered to participate! The third graders gave every class participating an address and have labeled the different halls with street names. We gave the kids a box and let them make a class mailbox and put in out in the hallway outside our door. The kids have loved it! We have put a box out in our classroom full of envelopes, stamps, and some common words they may need to know when writing a letter. Anytime throughout the day they can write a letter or draw a picture to someone in the school. After finishing, they put it in an envelope, stamp it, and address it. They then place their mail in our mailbox and raise the flag. A third grader comes around every day to collect our mail at 1:30 and then distributes it at 2:00. It has been such a fun time checking our mail together in the mornings! This has been a wonderful way for us to get connected to other kids in the school!
We're excited to see where next week takes us as continue to explore blocks and buildings!
Love,
Ms. Rachael
Approaches to Learning:
- Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
- Demonstrate growing initiative in selecting and carrying out activities.
- Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.
- Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps.
- Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
- Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
- Respond respectfully to positive and negative feedback from adults most of the time.
- Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders.
- Use classroom materials responsibility, most of the time.
- Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
- Distinguish between descriptions of story events and spoken words of characters.
- Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
- Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
- Incorporate favorite parts of literary texts into play activities.
- Explore books independently.
- Investigate solutions to simple problems.
- Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
- Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
- Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
- Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
- Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.
Hard at work...making progress!
We love our new mail system!
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