FROM UNDER OUR BIG TREE: Week 23

 

Puzzle Fun
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
WHO ARE WE? We are collaborators: Thanks to families for our conferences and supporting siblings and park day while we met.  In between our meetings I was able to show some of our sprouts our new garden plot at the Hermosa Community Garden.  We pulled some weeds and cilantro plants out of our bed to prep for adding more soil and planting.  We explored the area, and met a fellow gardener who let us pull some turnips and lettuce.  Classmates who didn’t see our plot were busy observing a landscaping crew and looking at plants from a different perspective.
We are kneaders: In the classroom we made another batch of play dough and explored collage. We are scientists: We’ve had many conversations about our amygdala, and what is helpful when you or someone else’s amygdala is getting flooded.
We are citizens: We’ve been playful with tone of voice and pointing out our Bill of Rights.  The running walking game was requested and we played it a few times this week.  Haven’t seen it?  Ask your sprout how it works.
We are mathematicians: In math some of us have been exploring time.  What IS time?
“Time goes fast when you are a kid.”
“The shorter hand is the hour hand, the long hand is the minute hand.  How come the hour hand is so short when an hour is seriously long?” -Madison
When using the hulahoop clock, a student reflected: “I don’t like to stand still.” Michelle asked, “Does time stand still?” “No becasue the Earth moves” was her reply. Next week we will look at bigger chunks of time: days, months, years.
We are inventors: Alex and James invented a magnet game out of one of our clocks called Magnet Soccer. Ask about how it is played!
We are musicians:  The wedding continues to be planned and while some were playing piano other instruments, Bennett wanted to play the guitar.  I mentioned that I could bring one from home soon, and Trish said we could make some out of shoe boxes and rubberbands.  (One of the many reasons I love parent teachers!)  We made instruments out of all different materials the rest of the week…
We are problem-solvers: Puzzles and expanding Frog and Turtle World is how we have been settling into our day before morning gathering.  At our meetings we have been checking in with our meeting book and discussing the following topics:
  • Tone of voice:  Bennett thinks tone of voice should be added to the Bill of Rights.  We have been discussing all week what different voices sound and feel like.  We voted and it was not unanimous so we will continue the conversation,
  • Should names should go in the notebook? In the process of the tone of voice conversation we determined that people may feel embarrassed – how does that feel?  Ask your sprout about the status.
  • Snack Table: Madison wrote snack table and we discussed how sometimes the snack table isn’t clean after each use.  Others agreed and said it is “gross”.  We talked about ways to help keep it clean and supporting each other.
We are friends: On Thursday we said goodbye to Rudy, the custodian, and made him presents and a card.  With tears in his eyes he thanked us and said he would always remember us. On Friday we shared our classroom with an applying student and enjoyed showing him around and inviting him in our play.  We even took him to “Old Granny’s House” where we read every Mo Willems book we had.  AND we met Old Granny! The following notes from a parent teacher inspired a paper making plan for next week “I wish paper was made of something different.  Because trees are important and we don’t want to waste them.” “Yeah, maybe if it was made out of metal or plastic we could use more.”

Wondering: How can we engage our students in math more deeply?

Your feedback and questions are encouraged:

CLASSROOM/CURRICULUM/PARK DAY – Michelle Goldbach-Johnson

CLASSROOM – Yvette Fenton/310-383-1624

CURRICULUM – Lena Garcia Kaufman

SCHOOL BUSINESS – Trish Valdez

Check Out Flickr!

Park Day at TKG
TKG Info

Tending the Garden

Park Day – We are going back to HESS PARK!  Trails, Earthquakes, baseball and snakes…don’t forget sunscreen and plenty of water.  And off to camp!

Classroom Supplies Needed: small scrubbers/sponges (for student projects), thermometers, blank sheet music, blue painters tape…

March Monthly Parent Meeting: March 7th, Thursday evening at 7pm.  We are looking for childcare…please send in your request or recommendations!

 

The 5 Guiding Principals at TKG
  • CONSTRUCTIVISM, as teachers and parents, we provide the trellis on which students will expand their existing knowledge
  • WHOLE CHILD, cognitive, physical and social/emotional are inseparable
  • BRAIN FUNCTION & DEVELOPMENT, students are sensory learners, we will honor each student’s unique developmental map
  • CAPACITY BUILDING, supporting the development of creative thinkers who are encouraged to solve problems
  • CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING, small groups, low ratios, mixed ages and generations
Parent Teacher Info

Parent/Teacher Corner

Teaching Focus – Focus on math: You’re in the math station…numbers are flowing.  In fact, a student has just rolled a 7: what are some things you could wonder about 7?

  • What is one more/less than 7?
  • What is five more/less than 7?
  • What number comes before/after 7?

It may sound simple, but relating to numbers is an important practice for 5-7. Not all students think about the problem the same, nor do they solve the problem the same.  You can support Michelle by taking detailed notes about your observations about the student and their relationship to numbers.

Teacher Focus – “How Do I Keep My Nail Polish From Chipping?” (so this is more relevant to the First Friday crew, but helpful nonetheless…) Read the NYMag post, here.

For your Toolbox – What Triggers You?: “Parents and kids have the ability to trigger each other as no one else can. Even as adults we are often irrational in relation to our own parents. (Who has greater power to annoy you? Make you act childish?) Similarly, our kids push our buttons precisely because they are our children. Psychologists call this phenomenon “ghosts in the nursery,” by which they mean that our children stimulate the intense feelings of our own childhoods, and we often respond by unconsciously re-enacting the past that’s etched like forgotten hieroglyphics deep in our psyches.” READ MORE…

 

PT SCHEDULE, WEEK OF Mar 4…
Monday – TV/TS
Tuesday – NL/RD
Wednesday – TV
Thursday – LS
Friday – BM/ME
Please contact Nicole if you have any concerns about this week’s schedule. 

The Seeds (Core Standards)

We are creating intention around these standards:

MATH Number and Operations in Base Ten  K.NBT Work with numbers 11–19 to gain foundations for place value. 1. Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 18= 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine. 1. Describe objects in the environment using names of shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as abovebelowbesidein front ofbehind, and next to.

Work with addition and subtraction equations. 7. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.

READING Grade 1, 2. Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text. Grade 2, 2. Identify the main topic of a multi paragraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text. Kinder, 3. Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words both in isolation and in text. a. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or many of the most frequent sound for each consonant.

WRITING Grade 2 Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure. Grade 1: b. Use end punctuation for sentences.

 

FEATURED WORKSHOP – ArtZone Spring Break Camp
Holiday Art Zone Camps are offered during school holidays 10 am to 2 pm LEARN MORE…

From the TKG Office:

  • Tuition is past due. Families on the e-mail invoice system will receive their statements by the beginning of next week.
  • Fundraiser Contributions are due on May 1st. Shop with Scrip order placed between March 9th and March 15th will enter TKG into a drawing for free shipping for an entire year.  Please contact Lori with any questions.
  • Daylight Savings coming up on March 10th
  • Spring Break is from April 1 through 5
Thank you Families!  Admin Questions, please email t.valdez@knowinggarden.org.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

Resource Of The Week

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud “Schools as we know them are obsolete.” That’s the bold assertion of Sugata Mitra, who has been spending many years exploring how young people teach themselves (and each other) without a “teacher” and whose focus is on “What is going to be the future of learning?” Mitra begins his talk by looking at where the kind of learning we currently do in schools came from. His answer: the British Empire. He outlines how the Victorians very successfully created a global computer out of people: “It’s called the bureaucratic administrative machine. In order to have that machine running, you need to have lots and lots of people. They made another machine to produce those people. It’s called ‘the school.’ The schools would produce the people who would then become parts of bureaucratic administrative machine.” Mitra says that we are “continuously producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists.”  See more at…

Watch his Ted Talk

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