Saturday, September 7, 2013

A glimpse at the first week of school

We start each day with a few minutes of silent meditation and a poem.  The children take turns reading the poem aloud by themselves or pointing to the words while everyone helps them read it.  There is a new poem every week or two.  Reading poems is an enjoyable activities with academic, intellectual, emotional, and empathetic benefits .  The poem we started the year with is one by James Berry.


Isn’t My Name Magical?

Nobody can see my name on me.
My name is inside
and all over me, unseen
like other people also keep it.
       Isn’t my name magic?

My name is mine only.
It tells I am individual,
the one special person it shakes
when I’m wanted.

If I’m with hundreds of people
and my name gets called,
my sound switches me on to answer
like it was my human electricity.
            Isn’t that magical?

My name echoes across playground,
It comes, it demands my attention.
I have to find out who calls,
who wants me for what.
My name gets blurted out in class,
it is terror, at a bad time,
because somebody is cross.

My name gets called in a whisper
I am happy, because
My name may have touched me
with a loving voice.
Isn’t it all magic?






The children went to all their "special classes", P.E, Music, Art, Latin, and French.  


Here they are enjoying time with Madame, practicing the names of fruits in French.




Each child decorated their new pencil boxes. 

 






The way the schedule worked out this week, we only had one math session at school.  During math, the children  worked in groups using blocks to show even and odd numbers.  If a number was even, each block had a "partner", if it was an odd number, one block was left alone.  Each group found their own strategy for solving the problem.  Deciding which strategy to use was a problem in itself for some of the groups.





Friday morning was full of adventures.  The day started with a trip to JoAnn Fabrics.  The children picked out fabrics for making their pillows, stood in line, asked for 1/2 a yard, and then stood in line to pay.  They found a lot of ways math skills are needed at a fabric store.  Field trips such as these let the children see "Math in Action", showing them the importance of math in everyday life.

Big thanks to the staff at JoAnn Fabrics for their patience while helping 27 children.  



Back at school, we had our first trip to the newly organized library.  Dan Crane, library guru, showed us how to use the library.

There are red carts to put books that need to be re-shelved on after reading them in the library.  


If you want to borrow a book, look to see if it has a bar code or a red label on it's spine.  Books with bar codes need to be checked out before they come home.  If they have a red label, you can borrow them without checking it out.  When you return checked out books they should be returned to the brown box.  

More information about these procedures will be coming to parents from the Library Committee.  


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Lilith loves the pillows. She is all about pillows for dolls, stuffed animals, she still has her pillow from last year and sleeps with it.