May 29
As we head into June, our teachers are preparing some end-of-year projects for the students, and we will have many special days, including pajama days and field trip days. Rather than weekly updates, here is a summary of our activities for the remainder of the school year:
Monday, June 11 and Tuesday, June 12: The lunch bunchers will have lunch at House of Pizza & Calzone!
Wednesday, June 13 and Thursday, June 14: All students are welcome to wear their favorite pajamas to school!
Monday, June 18 and Tuesday, June 19: Parents and friends are invited to join us for our annual Spring Sings!
Wednesday, June 20 and Thursday, June 21: All students will be taking walking field trips around the neighborhood.
Our end-of-year projects will include:
In Literacy, we will be wrapping up the year with three big projects: we will write and illustrate stories about our favorite parts of the year at CHP; we will do a study of authors and write about some of our favorite books from the year; and we will continue our letter and name study, including learning how to spell our whole names in sign language. Finally, our graduates will be writing their own sequels to some of our favorite books, including our very own Book 7 of the Mercy Watson series and our very own follow-up to the graduate favorite, This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers.
In Science & Math, it has been a great year and we want to go out with a bang! We will have a fun time at the Science Center experimenting and making estimations and predictions. The children will participate in a variety of experiments, and they will use their math skills to chart the results. Some of our experiments include sink and float, exploring liquids and solids, and making a volcano. I am looking forward to energetic conversations and hearing the children’s hypotheses!
In Drama, for the remainder of the year, we will play a variety of different games - some that focus on team-building and others that are familiar games that everyone knows. We will also study some classic stories from children’s literature.
In Art, during the weeks ahead we will be making decorations for our upcoming Spring Sing, we will create a Father’s Day gift and all will be invited to “drop in” to freely explore a variety of art processes and materials such as clay modeling and open easel painting.
In Music, the children are learning Joy to the World / Jeremiah was a Bullfrog, which is a wonderful mix of music, movement, and ASL signs. We will continue to work on this song as well as others, as we prepare for our annual Spring Sings!
The Twos have had a great week in art as they worked in teams of two to create paintings using a wide variety of tools that roll the paint across the paper. We played in the large classroom and will continue to explore “the big kid room” for the remainder of the year. Some of the books we have read include Red Light Green Light by Margaret Wise Brown, I Don’t Want to be a Frog by Dev Petty, and Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton.
In ASL, based on the success of learning how to say “My name is…” in sign language, we will continue working to construct simple sentences with variable endings.
May 14
In Literacy, we will play name games! We will play the “Say It, Build It, Write It” game with our magnet letters and dry erase markers. We will also find out how many syllables our names have and team up with Math to tally up the total.
In Math, we will continue working on our T-chart that displays data we collect about who students are thanking. This project involves new terminology, charting, and tally marks - our students are becoming stellar mathematicians! We will also talk about what other things we could track and chart.
In Science, the children will identify several birds, learning their names and characteristics by playing a bird finding game. In this game, the children will find hidden birds in the classroom and mark the birds they have found on charts. We will also read several books about birds.
In Drama, we will continue our kindness curriculum with the German folktale The Three Butterfly Brothers. This story reinforces themes of inclusion and acceptance of our differences. The children will play butterflies trying to find shelter from a Spring shower.
In Art, we will adhere painter’s tape onto paper to create our own geometric design. Next, we will paint our paper with watercolors and t the tape will act as a resist. Our finished design will be revealed when the tape is removed.
In Music, we have started a new game called “Rhythm Chief,” where the children take turns being the chief and leading the rest of the group in body movements in synchrony. With the older kids, there is the added challenge that the rhythm chief is a secret, and the rest of the group must discover through observation who the rhythm chief is. This game requires close observation skills, body coordination, and listening skills.
The Twos had a fun week -- dancing. singing, doing art and playing outside. We spent more time in the larger classroom with the 3's and 4's and it was very nice to see them interacting. We read Escargot by Dashka Slater, Quackers by Liz Wong and Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert.
In ASL, the children will take turns saying their names. “My name is…” and they will learn to sign the first letter in their names.
may 7
In Literacy, we will have the classroom mailbox out. We can write thank you cards and kindness letters to our friends at school, our mothers for Mother’s Day, our neighbors, community helpers and others!
In Math, we will partner with Literacy! Children will be writing thank you cards and at the math table, we will use a t-chart and tally marks to record who we are thanking. At the end of the project, we will use the data to create a visual graph of the results.
In Science, we will continue our focus on birds with some new activities and books. The children will play a game in the classroom where they will search the room to find hidden bundles of materials that they will use to make a giant nest at the science table. We will have the opportunity to discuss how animals make different kinds of nests and where different types of birds make their nests. We will talk about how families care for each other. After the children have a chance to participate in making the nest, they will each take home a little bag of nesting materials so that they can leave it out for the birds to find.
In Drama, we will continue to talk about serving our communities and helping our families and neighbors. I will read, A Chair For My Mother, by Vera B. Williams and talk about all the workers and neighbors who supported this family in need. I will bring back our firehouse setting exploration as part of that story.
In Art, we will make our annual return to a popular activity in which the children dip a variety of string-like materials into tempera paint. They will stamp, drag and dance these strings across the paper to explore the marks, shapes and mixing that results.
In Music, we are continuing our work with rhythm games, and the Threes and Fours are starting to learn about the concept of pitch, and notes as a sequence of numbers. I will demonstrate that there are eight consecutive notes that are assigned the numbers 1-8, and a higher number is a higher note, using games and visuals. We will play around with that concept using rhythm games. The Twos are starting to incorporate more American Sign Language to the songs we’ve been working on in the past couple of months.
The Twos have had a great week playing outside, learning new songs in music, dancing with the older children in puppet show (which was so cute!) building with the wooden blocks and playing in the doctor’s office. We read Lines That Wriggle, by Candace Whitman and Pete's a Pizza, by William Steig.
In ASL, we will learn the signs for, Mother Bird, Father Bird, Nest, and Home.