November 7- 10



Adam with the children

The kids "check" his helmet

This week in class we wrapped up the ocean unit by reviewing the themes and  concepts that have been our focus for the past several weeks.  We covered underwater life, the ocean, and boats/submarines/etc.  We also worked on the colors blue and purple, the numbers 3 & 4, many letters, and the shape of the triangle.  This week the letter i was the super star.  We will focus on i again next week as vowels get two weeks to shine!  The older children learned about -ip words (lip, hip, dip, sip, rip, tip, & zip).  They know the letter sounds and are learning to blend the sounds to sound out words (phonics).  Feel free to reinforce at home, they are quite impressive with their reading!

We talked a lot this week about Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving.  They learned about why we celebrate both holidays and we had an extra special treat on Thursday as Rowan's dad Adam paid Elm Park a visit in his uniform.  Adam is a marine and he come in a showed the children his gear and explained what everything does.  The children really loved seeing him and his stuff!  We taught the children to salute, and they saluted Adam and gave him a hand made flower.  It was about the cutest thing I've ever seen, I was too wrapped in the moment to take a picture, but you can just imagine!

October 31- November 4



Abby

Grady

Last week in class we continued to talk about the ocean.  In language arts the children continued to learn about the letter h.  The older children worked on sounding out -ad words.  In science the kids talked about floating and sinking.  We did an experiment testing which boats would float.  The kids added marbles until the boats sank and we guessed how many it would take.  The biggest boats carried almost 100 marbles!!  We also discussed the topography of the ocean floor and the kids made an ocean ridge out of blocks and took turns following the ridge with their eyes closed.  On a rainy day we guessed how much rain would fall then put out a rain gauge.  Over the course of the day we collected almost 1 cm of rain.  In math the children worked on sequencing patterns and counted during a fish game.  The children made a diving mask and fins and pretended to be looking for fish while diving.

Rowan, Sydney & Grady

Ryder in his mask & fins



Keitaro & Lia

October 24-28

Kids trick-or-treat at Father Gary's

Elm Park kids in their costumes

Halloween party

Last week we continued our exploration of sea life in class.  The students' studies revolved around the following sea creatures- sea sponge, seahorse, sea star, plankton, jellyfish, and sea turtles.  We read books about the creatures, created them out of art materials, and played with little models of the sea creatures.  The letter for the week was the letter g.  We practiced making the letter g and came up with a list of g words.  The kids found the letter g in a sentence.  We also worked on the number 4.  The kids groups items by 4s and practiced writing the number in their journals.  We discussed the concept of loving and gave examples.  Students then put a "loving feather" on the caring tree.

We studied the food chain in the ocean and made a book about it.  We put cards showing the food chain in the proper sequence.  The children finished making their shark and octopus crafts.  The students water colored a seahorse and played a math game where they counted the number of seahorse babies and then put them in the daddy seahorse's pouch.  The children played with dozens of sea creatures in water and rice sensory tables and created sea creatures from play doh.  We completed a reading comprehension activity around the story "Turtle Looks for Stars", the kids did a great job!

Of course we made Halloween crafts and talked about trick-or-treating and safety.  The students had a great time trick-or-treating on Friday on the school grounds.  They looked awesome in their costumes and enjoyed the party that followed.  Thanks to all that helped make our celebration a success!!