Hearing the Holidays

Today the South Middle band, orchestra and choir came to deliver a holiday concert at Barretts. The children loved hearing familiar songs and seeing how many of the groups members were former Bobcats.  They did a beautiful job listening and being respectful too...they really are looking like such big boys and girls these days!  We even got to see a few classmates act as guest conductors.  How fun!

 

Wants/'Needs & Scarcity/Opportunity Cost

As we continue with our wants and needs unit we are starting to explore how choice is a part of wants and needs.  We are looking at how resources (whats available to us) have an opportunity to choose what is most important to us be it will cost us another choice.  We began talking today about how scarcity affects our ability to choose because of the higher cost often associated with scare items.  The children will be experimenting with these concepts all week and will required to make choices to identify their personal opportunity cost.

Shoe Goals

We have officially kicked off our service learning project with the assembly with George and the making of signs to get others around the building excited to help contribute to our service learning project.  To help make the process of collecting shoes more personal we also took time to set individual goals about how many shoes we would like to collect from family members and friends in our communities.  The children will be keeping track of how many shoes our class brings in and we will be using the opportunity to learn to count by 2's and group by 10's---this is the perfect lead into our upcoming sorting and collecting math unit in January.  If you could help me by talking to your child about his/her goal number and rubber banding any shoes you choose to send to school with your child I would be most grateful!  The children are very excited about reaching their goals and helping others.  I couldn't be more proud of their enthusiasm!

3D shapes sort

Today we had the opportunity to sort and graph 3D shapes.  We talked about the attributes of each shape including the number and shape of each face.  The children loved the opportunity to sort food items and then enjoy them...yum!  The are becoming so good at recognizing 2D and 3D shapes in their environment.  If you have not already had the chance to do so, please be sure to help your child complete his/her 3D shape hunt at home.  It is fun to see the many shapes hidden in the world around us!

George the Shoe Man

Today we had the privileged of meeting George the shoe man from Ballwin who "turns shoes into water".  George shared with us how we can be proactive by collecting outgrown or worn out shoes and donating them to his warehouse in Fenton.  George takes the shoes and allows them to be sold in South America for pennies on the dollar.  He uses the money he earns to drill for fresh water which is used in towns and schools in many parts of Africa.  To help George's cause we will be asking our families, friends, neighbors and schoolmates to donate their shoes to us.  We need to tie the shoe laces together or rubberband the shoes and bring them to school. 
We will be using this opportunity to talk about the seven habits (be proactive, synergize) and also as part of our social studies unit on service learning.  This unit was purposefully planned to coincide with the wants and needs unit so please feel free to discuss how this efforts fits into the idea of wants in our lives and needs in the lives of others.  We will be collected shoes through the new year and will be setting class and personal goals to go along with our efforts.
Thank you for your support!

Shape shifts

This week in math we are looking at how 2D shapes can be composed of various other shapes.  The children have done a great job using tangrams to create pictures using keys to help them understand which shapes are necessary to build certain pictures.  To add an additional challenge the children have also been working on unstructured shapes to see how many ways they can create the same shape.  We are becoming 2D experts!

Mystery Reader and Munchies

A big thank you to Finnegan's dad for visiting yesterday and sharing two fun stories with us and a delicious snack.  The children loved his animated story telling and his awesome clues...did you know he cooked for the president!  We were definitely impressed!