Guidence Class with Mrs. Francke

Our school guidance counselor, Mrs. Francke, comes to our classroom once every two weeks to teach a guidence lesson. These social skills lessons focus on topics such as understanding and showing empathy towards others, or using self-control by waiting your turn to speak. This month, she has been discussing caring for others. She has been working on a secret project with the children that will be coming home soon. Stay tuned...

Sit Spots

For our last ECO lesson, the children created their own "sit spot" in the woods.  For this week's blog entry, I elicited help with the post by asking them to answer...

What are sit spots?

Joseph says, "You sit down and build your sit spot.  If you're quiet, some animals will come out."

Parker says, "You can sit down near a tree on the ground.  You can decorate [your sit spot] with things from nature.  You bring your backpack with you to hold some bird seed to give to animals and we bring our ECO journals."

Maeve says, "It's somewhere where it's quiet.  I used sticks, leaves, and pinecones [to make my sit spot].  If you are really still and quiet, an animal might come."

Ask your child to tell you about the sit spot he or she created at Harrison Forest!

Working with Numbers

This month we began a new unit in math that focuses on using addition and subtraction to understand place value.  Prior to this, students have learned how to add numbers together by counting all and then counting on.  For example, 9 + 3 is solved by counting on from 9 (10,11,12 ) to reach the total.  They are now learning to decompose and compose numbers to make 10 or take from 10.  For example, when adding 9 + 3, if they take 1 from the 3 and add it to the 9 they can quickly add 10 + 2 using what they already know about adding numbers to 10.  In class, we celebrate the different ways the children solve problems and share their thinking.  Learning a variety of strategies for solving equations helps the children become more efficient in their problem solving.

We will also continue to practice telling time to the hour and half hour, and have begun to learn the names of several 3-D shapes.  We are focusing on the sphere, cube, cylinder, and rectangular prism.  Ask your child to see if he or she can find any of these 3-D shapes at your house!