Dear you all,
Monday we did the Feely Box again. The guesses were: a porcupine,
something spiky, a ball, a sea anemone, and something that fell off of
a tree. It was the spiky fruit that fell off of a sweet gum tree.
We also had leaves from three trees. The children identified which
leaves came from the sweet gum tree by comparing them to a picture in
Have You Seen Trees? We talked about how the leaves were alike and
different. They noticed how many points each leaf had, the different
sizes, shapes, and colors. They also noticed that they all have veins
and stems.
Before eating snacks the children took turns sorting the leaves into
three piles. Identifying and sorting: science and math skills.
We examined the spiky thing that fell from the sweet gum tree in our
neighborhood. We asked the children to look for them on the way to and
from school. Someone brought in a few small pine cones, the same ones
we had on our science table.
The children worked in pairs twisting long pieces of brown paper for
the branches of our sweet gum family tree.
Eight sleepers on Monday. And Wednesday. One person asked to go lay down early.
Family pictures, family pictures, family pictures, please. We are
short three families. As opposed to three short families.
We read Little Blue and Little Yellow, and the children worked in
pairs mixing blue and yellow. Some painted one sheet of paper while
others couldn’t paint enough. The next day while Frank showed everyone
the banana pose, we practiced using scissors to cut the paper into
leaves for our family tree.
Friday morning we glued our leaves to the branches. We painted the
fruit for our tree. We punched holes in plates for the spikes on our
sweet gum fruit. It took about a week. It was like a tree making
factory. The class worked furiously.
We looked at everyone’s family photos and talked about where they were
in the picture and in what season it was taken. Some were inside,
outside, in winter, in summer, on a boat, at Coney Island, near corn
fields, by fences, and at home.
Next week, we complete our tree fruits and prepare food for our feast.
The family feast will happen on Wednesday at 11:15 am. Each family
will place their family fruit on the tree. We will eat, drink, and be
merry.
Have a lovely weekend,
Therese