Ocean Life

We were so lucky to have the "Sea Bus" visit Rowe School last week!  Carol Steingart, a marine biologist, brought many samples of algae and sea creatures from Maine tidal pools.  On Wednesday, our class attended a presentation by Carol in which she taught the children about the organisms she brought.  On Thursday, we had the sea bus in our classroom for part of the afternoon.  The children were able to hold and observe the organisms in the sea bus.  They were so engaged and excited!

Last week in math we:

• learned how to tell time to the nearest hour on an analog clock
  
  
  
  

• learned about the $1 bill
  
  
  
  

•  played $1 Exchange during which children practiced exchanging ten pennies for a dime and ten dimes for one dollar.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • practiced writing and solving addition and subtraction number stories.
  • practiced addition fluency by playing Dice Addition.
   

Last week in reading we:

• added "was" to our word wall.
• continued learning about and reading compound words. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • completed our end-of-the-year reading assessments.
   

Last week in writing we:

•  spent Monday-Wednesday on our final writing prompt.  The growth ALL children made as writers is impressive!  At your child's conference you will be able to compare your child's writing from the first writing prompt to now.  I hope you are as proud of your child as I am!
• wrote what we know about ocean life and questions we have.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

•  wrote about our observations and what we were wondering from the sea bus.

This week is Safety Week at Rowe School.  Please refer to Ms. Honan's newsletter for information about this week's event.

I hope you and your family enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend.
Katie

Arbor Day Celebration

Rowe School kindergartners celebrated Arbor Day on Friday by participating in three different activities/lessons planned for us by Yarmouth's own tree warden, Deb Hopkins.

• During our first station, students watched a picture slideshow to learn how trees in Yarmouth have changed over years.  
• At our second station, children learned about invasive tree pests.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• At our third station, children participated in planting an elm tree.  Each child had a turn to throw soil over the tree roots.  They loved this! 

 In writing last week, we revisited small moment stories.  We reviewed the following:

• A small moment story is about one thing, in one place, at one time.
• Writers tell their small moment stories across many pages in a booklet.
• When writing a small moment story writers remember to tell who, what, where, and when.  We practiced doing this by taking a basic sentence, like "I played," and adding details until the sentence read "I played on the playground with my mom after lunch."
• Writers don't just tell the outside story (what others can see), they include the inside story, too (our thoughts and feelings in the moment).

 In reading this week we:

• Learned about compound words.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Reviewed what read-to-self should look like and sound like.
• Learned that readers can become more fluent by "scooping up" more than one word at once.
• Practiced reading CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and CVCe (consonant-vowel-consonant-e) words.  Have you heard your child talk about "bossy e" or "super e?"  I bet you have!

Last week in math we:

•  Learned to recognize a pattern and assign letters to the pattern (ABAB or ABBABB).  Children then used interlocking cubes to create the same type of pattern.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  •  Used pipe cleaners to create bracelets with ten beads.  Children then grouped the beads in different ways in order to find combinations of ten.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    

    Look at all the combinations of 10 the children came up with!

    
    

    
    

    
    

    • Learned that 10 bundles of 10 sticks equals 100 sticks.  Children played a game in which they rolled a die, collected that many single sticks, exchanged 10 single sticks for a bundle of ten, and exchanged 10 bundles of 10 for a bundle of 100.
      
   

This week, we will kick-off our ocean unit with a special visit from the Sea Bus on Wednesday and Thursday!  I am very excited for this visit, and I bet your children will have a lot to share with you Wednesday and Thursday.  Be sure to ask them what they saw and learned.

Until next week,
~ Katie