Room 103 has been buzzing! The students continue to explore and learn about their new surroundings. We are becoming a community that works and plays together! This week brought a few new experiences. We had fun with Coach Danny in our new Soccer class. We met Ms. Morgan, our Theater class teacher, and our Dance and Stretch and Strength teacher Ms. Amanda. 

Identity. We started our week by making a self-portrait. I ask students to think about what their face looks like. Is it round like a ball? Or oval like an egg, etc. I ask them to draw their heads. Then I ask them to look at the color of their skin. Is it like mine? Is it like the ones sitting next to them? I had a variety of skin color (multicultural) crayons to choose the closest to their skin. Some tried it on their skin and others on paper next to their hand. I then asked them to think about what they have on their head, what color eyes and hair, ears, nose, mouth, etc. After we finished, we shared them with the class. How different we all look from each other! We compared our different color skin, eyes, and hair color, texture, and length. We are all different, yet we are the same. We started reading the family album we are creating. Looking at the family pictures, we see our similarities and differences. We are all unique in our way! 

Laws of motion. We found out that our race track had broken. The part that was supposed to launch the cars around the loops we had worked so hard to build did not work. We were disappointed, and we started thinking of ways to make it work. What can we do to fix it? Or even better, How do we make a car move without touching it? “We have to push it!” Basic physics! Students realize that objects, even inanimate ones, require energy to move. Like our ball, we need to kick them to move, and if we stop kicking it, the ball stops moving. They quickly figured out that they could use the ramps we have and let gravity do the work. After a couple of days, they realized that the ramps would only work if the car went downhill, but uphill is another story. They pushed the toy cars uphill, and cars kept flying all over the place, everywhere except on the loops where they wanted them to go. Like in the race track, we needed some device that pushed the cars the way they wanted. I thought it was time for a cool Stem experiment. I brought a car, a balloon, and tape. I asked if they could think of ways to move the car using the material on the table. After hearing many ideas, we filled the balloon with air, taped it to the car, and launched it. It didn’t work. Back to square one. A student thought that the balloon needed water, so we filled it with water. After trying many different ways, we concluded that the water was not going to work, and we ended up getting wet. We went back to the air-filled balloon idea. This time, a student asked if we could fill it up with more air than before. We watched the car move in circles, and the room was filled with cheers. Excited, we filled the balloon with more air this time. The car moved forward a few inches. We were jumping up and down with joy. We kept trying over and over until we filled up the balloon so much it burst. We are committed to making our car move and try again next week. 

Bugs. Students have been obsessed with bugs. We find bugs everywhere we go, in our room, the hallways, or even the bathroom! How do they get there?” Every time we go outside, we cannot help ourselves and check out their amazing tiny world of critters. Inspired by students who came to our Summer Camp, children have been intrigued with cicadas. They keep collecting the exoskeletons wherever they find them, and when they see them on high branches, they have to think of ideas to get them:

• Throwing rocks or balls.
• Using our outdoor toys or furniture to climb the trees.
• Using long sticks.

We took our clipboard and paper to document all the insects we could find. Some found one; some found a dozen. We even found a huge spider web that wasn’t there the day before. We could only assume that the spider had to be working overnight since that day had rained all day. The web was attached to the ground in a high traffic spot, and we tried to think of a way to warn others to watch out for the web. We thought of making a sign, but then we realized that not everyone could read, so they had the idea to build a “fence” around with the only material we had available at the moment: rocks. Our idea didn’t work for long, and we were sad to find the spider web destroyed the next day. We are only hoping to see that busy and hard-working spider soon. That brought us to the question, Are spiders insects (bugs)? What is an insect? “Animals that drink water and eat,” someone said. Elephants drink water and eat, are elephants insects? “No! Insects have tiny bodies!” Are all tiny animals insects? Worms and snails have tiny bodies. Are they insects? Mmmm… We are still pondering over that thought, and we’ll keep investigating the subject next week. 

Soraya Castro

What a wonderful and fun first two days for all of us! We finally got to meet each other face to face, even under our masks. We are slowly forming new relationships and getting a sense that we are part of a new community. This is the first time in a school environment for some of us, and nervousness was expected. Some students dive immediately into play, and others wait a bit to join a game or get the courage to ask someone to play with them. It is all part of our learning experience! Little by little, students explored every inch of the classroom and then explored some more. The water/sensory table has probably been the most visited feature of the classroom. A sensory table is basically a table full of materials (or water) that get children to use all five senses. The table is set up to let children learn and engage their senses by interacting with everything that is being presented to them. Sensory play builds language, social, and dramatic play skills as the students negotiate with one another to share the space (only four children at a time) and tools. They create stories and build dialogues together. Both small and large motor skills get a boost as well, as the students manipulate the medium and tools of the day. This time our table was full of beans of different colors and sizes and tools like sieves, funnels, scoops, and cups. Cognitive skills are fostered as well as the children learn about specific concepts pertinent to the bin’s contents. They also questioned themselves, “Why some beans could fall through a funnel, and some get stuck in it.” The tapping sounds of bins hitting the bin or different material containers helped create a great sensory experience as well. Every week or two, students will find new and other things on the sensory table. 

We started our first day with an ice breaker game called Stand Up, Sit Down. Students would stand up if the statement applied to them, i.e., I am 4 years old, I have a sister, I have a pet, etc. If they didn’t, they’d stay sitting down. This activity helped us open up for new conversations and for getting to know each other. We are such a chatty class that in two days we still haven’t gone through all the questions I had prepared! 

We finally met our classroom pet, Pumpkin! Have you heard about Pumpkin? She is our very chubby Guinea Pig. Students listened to what she likes to eat and drink, what she wants to do, and play. How she communicates with us and how she likes to be handled. A classroom pet helps us learn important values like compassion, empathy, respect, and responsibility for other living things and give them much-needed leadership skills and stress relief. We are so blessed to have not only one but two classroom pets. Three if we count our brand new baby snails. Our aquarium has also been a site point of curiosity and a challenging game of finding the three baby snails. We are surprised to see them in a different spot every time we look for them. They move surprisingly fast! 

We are learning about places and procedures since it is new for most of them. We introduced our classroom mission: To be safe, be kind, and take care of our classroom. Students will be reminded about our mission throughout our school year. 

Special classes went well; we met Kirio Zafeiris (Greek class) and Maestra Zaid (Spanish class). We danced along with Kirio Ioannis (Greek Dance) and enjoyed an exciting and new Special class and new discipline for most of our students: Tae Kwon Do! This class has been a hit in our room. Grand Master Rodriguez and Ma’am Master Rodriguez are teaching us to count from one to twenty in Korean! I can’t wait for them to meet their other Special classes teachers. 

Soraya Castro