Spiders. This week we learned that Spiders have two main parts: the top part, which we call the head, is actually called the Thorax (a combination of their head and chest), and the lower part is called the Abdomen. When looking at the spiders’ pictures, we noticed that the legs connect to their head (Thorax), not the Abdomen. We then discussed how the legs are longer on some spiders and shorter on others. We also looked at pictures of spiders from the front, where we usually don’t see, and noticed the eyes. They have compound eyes, which give the spiders (and other insects with compound eyes) a very large angle and the ability to detect fast movement. (ask your child how many legs and eyes spiders have.)

During our investigation, students came up with more questions: 

How do spiders weave their webs? 

Do spiders have brains?

Do spiders have tongues?

Do spiders have a stomach?

Do spiders have mouths?

Do spiders have knees?

We can’t wait to find out the answers to these questions. In the meantime, we turned to art. We made spider webs using white paint and marbles on black paper. Some students were familiarized with marble painting and were excited to do it. Since they had already done it, I gave them a new challenge: to move the marbles in different directions without dropping the marble off the tray. Students found out that it is easier said than done and had to figure out how to move the tray and at what angle when moving it left to right, up and down, and diagonally. Some students tried the same activity using other colors and loved the combinations of colors the marbles made on the paper. We also started our very own spider web by weaving yarn. I used an embroidery hoop and yarn to help them with this weaving activity. Students practiced their fine-motor skills and had fun pretending to be spiders. 

Can you build that? We continued learning about landmarks and this week’s challenge was to recreate the Eiffel Tower. I was surprised when most of the students recognized it from the picture. Some even knew that it was located in Paris, France. One student used playdough, and another one used wedgits. The rest of the class is still trying to figure out how to do it, so I decided to give them more time before we work in teams. We’ll see what else my little engineers can come up with next week.

About Mo. We read many Mo Willems’ stories this week. Our favorite one this week was “Pigeon finds a hot dog!” In this funny story, Little Duckling tries to persuade Pigeon to share the hot dog with him. We already know what persuading means, so we stopped in the middle of the story to take a guess and see if Pigeon would share with Duckling at the end. Another favorite was “My friend is sad.” In this story, Gerald is sad, and Piggie tries to cheer up her friend in many ways. We also tried to figure out why Elephant was so sad and shared our thoughts. Good readers make predictions as they read. It helps us deepen our thinking and better comprehend what we are reading. Predicting is when readers use text clues and personal experiences to anticipate what will happen next in the story. At the end of the story, we verified if our predictions came true or not. (Ask your child if their prediction was correct on this story.)

Dice. For the second week, students enjoyed playing a couple of fun games using only dice. Dice games help us focus on the attribute of quantity and gain (or strengthen) a strong number sense. We also learned to use multiple representations of the numbers one through twelve and more. Using dice also helps us subitize the numbers one through six to make counting easier every time we count two dice together. We’ll keep on playing with dice and adding difficulty to the games. 

Van Gogh. We kept reading “Vincent Van Gogh and the colors of the Wind” Nature and found out that Van Gogh loved to draw and paint Nature. Which brought us to the question: What is part of Nature? And What is not part of Nature? Nature can be living or nonliving, and it’s everywhere. It is basically everything that is not made by people. We made a list of some of those things, and students mentioned: grass, flowers, birds, trees, fruit on the trees, bees, butterflies, clouds, and elephants. 

We also read that Van Gogh drew with charcoal, which intrigued us. Some students knew what charcoal was, but others didn’t. The ones that knew explained that their dads use charcoal for bbq grilling. Others suggested that we should draw with charcoal too. I wonder how this will end. Stay tuned. 

“A line is a DOT that went for a walk” Paul Klee

Special days.  We celebrated two special days this week: Playdough day (although for us in Room 121, every day is Playdough day!) and Dot day. September 15 is International Dot Day. We read the story about a little girl named Vashti, the main character of Peter H. Reynolds’ tale, “The Dot.” In this story, Vashti (the main character) felt she couldn’t draw, but her art teacher wouldn’t accept that. “Just make a mark and see where it takes you,” her teacher said. So, she marked her paper with a small dot. The next day, Vashti was so proud of her work that she started creating drawings with different kinds of dots. Eventually, Vashti passed the lesson about the confidence she had learned to her friends.

I gave students a blank paper with a dot in the middle and told them to take that dot for a walk. Soon, those dots became butterflies, ladybugs, flowers, birds, spider webs, and abstract shapes. We shared our creations with the class and were surprised how a simple dot became so many different things. 

A dot might be small, but it’s a powerful way to show our unique individuality and creativity. 

About Mo.  We can’t have enough of Mo Willems’ books. One is funnier than the last; they are just so much fun. The favorite ones of the week were: 

“Don’t let the Pigeon drive the bus!” In this story, we (the audience) were in charge of not letting Pigeon drive a bus no matter how much he begged. We discussed how sometimes we are not allowed to do some things at home or school because it is dangerous or not age-appropriate, like drinking coffee or using power tools. I asked them: What is something you like but are not allowed to do?” Students answers: 

• I would like to go on a big roller coaster
• I would like to go to the forest alone
• I would like to drive a car
• I would like to climb the fence
• I would like to have a phone 
• I would like to cook, but I’m not allowed to because of the fire 
• I would like to ride the elephant, but it’s too high
• I would like to go to the dollar store by myself
• I would like to have money 
• I would like to go to the forest alone
•  I would like to run fast

(Guess what your child’s answer was.)

Another favorite was “That is not a good idea!”.  In this story, we met different characters that we had never met before: Hungry Fox, Plump Goose, and baby Geese. The story tells us about a Goose. She is persuaded to follow the Fox to its house in the woods. In the end, Mo Willems surprised us with a twist on the story we didn’t expect. Ask your child what happened at the end. Did the Fox eat the Goose?  

We talked about the meaning of the word “persuade” and how we would Persuade a friend to share something with us. The most common answers were: “Trading, sharing back, saying please, asking nicely, just asking.” We thought and shared what could be one good and one bad idea. We finally drew it and dictated it in our journals. 

They loved this story so much that at the end of the day, students tried to persuade their teacher to share her snack with them, and they were so convincing that she gladly accepted (lol Silly kids!.)

When we read books, we learn the essential elements of the story: the characters, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution of the conflict. We are also learning what authors and illustrators do. Mo Willems’ books are also perfect for learning about question and exclamation marks, thought bubbles, speech bubbles, and other special marks on books that let us know a bit more about the story and its characters. I wonder where Mo will take us next week.

Art to Remember.  We continued reading the life of Van Gogh. His art inspired us to begin our special project for Art to Remember. Students drew self-portraits and painted the background with acrylic paints and their choice of brushes and three types of sponges. We were happy with the results and can’t wait for you to see their masterpieces. 

Spiders.  We are so excited about spiders; we keep finding spider webs and spiders all over. This week we learned about three spiders: Crab Spider, Orb Weaver Spider, and Jumping Spider. We watched a video and learned that they all get their names because of the way they catch their prey. (Ask your child what prey means and how each spider catches their prey.) 

Crab Spiders- They camouflage in the environment and freeze so the other insects don’t see them. When the insects get close, they attack.

Orb Weaver Spiders-They catch insects with their web and then use their long legs to wrap the insect up so it cannot get away.

Jumping Spiders- They freeze completely and jump suddenly, surprising their prey, even if they’re far, because they can jump very far. 

Each student chose a spider to color and, with some assistance, added a string to it to help the spider walk by holding the end of each string with one hand. Students learned to tug each end of the string at a time. We all found out that we didn’t have to pull hard; in fact, gentle pulls worked even better. Ultimately, we all got the handle and helped the spider catch the fly on the other side. We made our spiders go slowly, run or pounce suddenly towards the fly. It was so much fun! I can’t wait to learn more about spiders. Stay tuned!

Soraya Castro

“IF YOU HEAR A VOICE WITHIN YOU SAY ‘YOU CANNOT PAINT, ‘ THEN BY ALL MEANS PAINT, AND THAT VOICE WILL BE SILENCED” – VINCENT VAN GOGH

Art.  Each one of us has an artist inside, especially children. We started our first artist exploration by reading the book “Vincent Van Gogh and the colors of the Wind” by Lossani and Monaco. It is a lengthy book that narrates Van Gogh’s life since childhood. Lucky for us, we have time to read and discuss page by page with no rush. We learned that Van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853. And that he had a brother named Theo. They both had redheads and loved and protected each other. We talked about how we should love and protect our siblings, as Theo and Van Gogh did. We read how both brothers loved to draw too, and they drew everything they saw. In one of the pictures in the book, the author mentioned that Spring looked like a blanket of flowers. I asked them to close their eyes and think how that would be. What is a blanket of flowers? Each student had the opportunity to give their idea: “It’s a blanket with flowers painted on it. It’s grass with lots of tiny flowers very close to each other. It’s many flowers and kids lying on the floor, covered by the flowers. It’s a tree that dropped all the flowers and fell on them. It’s a blanket with flowers on them, real flowers”.

I gave them a blank canvas and primary colors paint and asked them to paint their blanket of flowers. Most painted green on all the pages, and some left it white. All students painted flowers of all sizes, lots and lots of flowers of all colors. They mixed their paint to get the needed colors since we did not have secondary colors. They needed to figure out how to make green, orange, or pink. Students who knew how to make secondary colors helped others, and we shared our beautiful paintings. 

I showed them a picture of Van Gogh’s “Field of Poppies,” and each student painted theirs. Each painting looked unique, as each student had their technique for mixing the paint. It is just the beginning of this exploration, and I can tell they love the experience.

Can you build that?  This week’s challenge was to build a famous Mayan pyramid from South Mexico, Chichen Itza. We first discussed the shape and found the pyramid shapes we have in the classroom. We noticed that while it is indeed a pyramid, it didn’t quite look the same. The top is flat and not pointy. Students from last year remembered that a pyramid is a 3D shape, so we discussed the difference between a 3D and a 2D shape. One student noticed the steps on the side of the pyramid and asked if those were stairs. They were all surprised to find out that they were indeed stairs. Who goes all the way up? They wondered. Maybe next week, they will be interested in counting all the steps if that is possible from the picture. Finally, students used our block area materials to build the pyramid; they claimed it was very easy, even easier than Big Ben. 

Think outside the box.  We began a new activity called “think outside of the box .”I introduced a shape, then gave students a couple of minutes to reflect on the shape. For our first time, I gave them a half-drawn umbrella and told them: “It’s not an umbrella, it’s a_____, “and I let them fill in the blank. This activity helps strengthen their flexible thinking skills and helps them understand different perspectives. 

We have a great imagination! We used our imagination and then shared our drawings. We were surprised at what others saw, and we didn’t at first: a fish, an elephant, a police badge, a jellyfish, a zebra, a bat, etc. 

About Mo.  We continued with our Author exploration. Mo Willems has made us laugh every day with his funny characters and stories. This week we drew Gerald Elephant by direct drawing and described Gerald with two words. We are getting better at describing characters and are now focusing on personality rather than physical appearance. We introduced a new character: Pigeon, and we can’t decide who is funnier. Ask your child to describe Pigeon. 

Spiders.  We keep on finding spiders everywhere; in our room, playground equipment, flowers, and grass, they’re everywhere!

Our curiosity spiked up this week with all of our findings. We find big ones, small ones, or tiny ones. Some are black; some seem gray and even red. We discussed how spiders make us feel: “Scared. I want to run away, I want a spider pet, I want to cuddle one!” We talked about the biggest spiders and learned that some students had seen tarantulas in a show. We wanted to know more, so we went to Mystery Science to learn more about them. We listened to Doug about the biggest spiders in the world. We learned that two: one is big and heavy (Goliath Birdeater,) and the other one is big and long (Giant Huntsman.) They both look scary, but after locating the places they have been found on the map, we were relieved that it is nearly impossible to ever see them in our home or backyard. (Ask your child which ones are the biggest spiders.) We are learning the spiders’ body parts and can’t wait to learn more next week. 

Soraya Castro

Morning challenge. This week, we started our mornings with a challenge. I show them a picture, and we discuss the building or structure from the image. After asking them what they see, each student has a turn to tell us any details. This week it was the turn of Big Ben, a popular landmark in London. Big Ben is a clock tower built 163 years ago and is 11 floors tall (316 feet.) I asked students to look for materials they could find to make a Big Ben during the week. At the end of the week, I asked them to find a partner and build Big Ben together. They chose pattern blocks, magnatiles, wood blocks, and unifix to build them. Some students even added details like the tiny cross on top of the tower. Working with a partner helps students communicate with each other, work towards a common goal, and helps them develop confidence in their abilities. (“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”— James Humes)

Subitizing. Subitizing is the ability to quickly identify a small set of numbers without actually counting. This skill is necessary for early math skills and continues to be an important skill throughout life. I introduced the game “Say it fast” I flashed a card with a set of dots, and students would tell how many dots they saw without counting one by one. Students from last year are familiarized with this concept and understood the game quickly. We will continue playing a variation of this game using pictures of objects and other manipulatives. 

Play dough. We made playdough for the first time as a class. We listed and wrote down the ingredients. We got the material we needed and measured the ingredients. We finally mixed and mixed some more. Our playdough looked more like slime, and some students agreed it was good enough for them to play with but then discovered that it was too sticky to the touch. After reflecting for a minute, I suggested we might need to add more of one of the ingredients to fix the texture of the playdough. I asked them if it was too dry or too watery and the ideal texture we needed. We all agreed we needed a dry ingredient since it was too wet. After trying a little bit of each dry ingredient, we realized we needed more flour. We added little by little until we got the ideal texture. Our playdough was ready! Stamping or imprinting playdough with tools is a playful way for children to explore 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional shapes; it encourages creativity, develops fine motor skills, enhances hand-eye coordination, improves social skills, and so much more! 

Pumpkin. Have you heard your child talk about our pet Pumpkin? She is part of our community, and we love to greet her each morning. Students have the opportunity to become pet feeders, and it becomes their responsibility for the day. Just like us, Pumpkin likes to have breakfast, lunch, and snacks. On Thursday, we discovered how Pumpkin sounded when she had not been fed. At lunchtime, she screamed to let us know she was hungry. As a class, we are learning to care for the needs of another living being, which gives us a sense of pride and accomplishment. We are also learning that if we want to be trusted by Pumpkin, we must treat her carefully and kindly, just like we like to be treated. We are so lucky to have Pumpkin as a learning experience.

About Mo. We started our very first Author study of the year. This week we met one of the most popular contemporary authors, Mo Willems. We learned some facts about this famous author:

• Mo Willems was born in Illinois.
• He has loved to draw cartoons since he was young.
• He enjoyed writing funny stories about the characters that he drew.
• He began his career as an animator and writer for Sesame Street.
• He has won many awards and recognitions for his writing. He even won six Emmy awards!

We read stories like Can I play too? And talked and dictated in our journals about the time we made a new friend. We talked about the main characters of the stories we had read so far and drew Piggie by direct drawing. We made a new friend for Elephant and Piggie, drew it, and gave it a name. Then described the new friend with three words. Last, we molded the new friend with air dry clay and presented our creations to the class. 

Spiders. On Thursday, we rescued a huge spider from Ms. Anna’s Classroom. This led to new conversations and many questions about spiders. We wrote down what we knew about spiders: They have eight legs. They are hairy. They have eyes. There are small and big spiders. Tarantulas are some of the biggest spiders in the world. 

What we want to know: Can we find tarantulas where we live? How do they knit their webs? How do they make the silk? What part of their bodies does the silk come from? 

I am sure we’ll add many questions to our list, and I can’t wait to learn more about spiders next week. Stay tuned.

Soraya Castro