Monday Gym offers a little sumpin’ for EVERYONE…
Parents Please Note-
No School on Monday!
Our BRAIN is “What’s Inside Me” this week…
This week, we explored some of the evolutionarily ancient parts of our brains: the parts that keep us alive, and parts that protect us and keep us safe, and the parts that help us learn.
The medulla oblongata lives in the brainstem. Alphas knew that to stay alive, their bodies needed food, water, and most of all AIR. The medulla oblongata takes care of that, so our thinking-brain doesn’t have to remember to do those things! It makes sure that our body gets what it needs.
Checking out where the caretaker part of our brain lives…
While our brain was taking care of our bodily needs, WE could turn our attention to thinking about taking care of OUR needs with our new table teams through a social/emotional activity called “What’s in your Backpack?”. We imagined we were going on an adventure that would take us away from home for many months. We could take 5 things with us in our backpacks. We made backpacks and stowed can’t-live-without-items in them. Our tablemates were challenged to try to remember what each member brought with them. We had to use our brains to take in and remember a lot of information!
Alphas learned that our senses help us take in information. We had a great discussion about how each sense can help protect us from danger and help us remember things that bring health and satisfaction. Some things we want to stay away from and some things we want to get MORE of…
Alphas experience how our reflexes protect our eyes…so they can discern some very subtle differences between these brain sizes…
We used our sense of touch to guess what mysteries were in these bags…we matched containers based on the sounds and smells we took in…
We did a blind taste-test see how well our taste buds can tell the difference between flavors of fruit…
What we take in through our senses gives us information that we want to remember – and our brains use our limbic system to sort out valuable information.
We learned that we have a tiny almond shaped part of our brain that will send emergency messages when it detects danger. It’s our amygdala and while it looks tiny, it can take over our brains and make us freeze, flee, or fight. This comes in handy when we are out in nature and need to watch out for preditors, but in our classroom, it can even kick in when one of our friends wants a toy we have, or accidentally bumps into us. That amygdala sends adrenaline – throughout our brain and body to be alert and take action … it can cut off our ability to calmly reason and think!
Can you spot the small, but mighty amygdala? How about the hippocampus?
Meet Annie Bobo and Ichabod Friendly, two friends that had a conflict and learned how to calm their amygdala-chemicals (take a break, take some deeeeeeep breaths), and take care of some damage done to their friendship when under the influence of ANGER…
Taking responsibility for our anger is one way we take care of our feelings…
Alphas use warm colors to decorate their portraits to illustrate hot, feisty feelings and they use cool colors to illustrate chill, happy feelings…
Alphas learned that our brains hold on to events that stir up big feelings – but other things that we try to learn take practice. Our brains can only hold onto a little new information at a time – we tried to follow a list of 5 instructions. IT WAS SOOOOO CONFUSING. Confusion is one of those feelings that can make our amygdala fire up – if we don’t calm down, we might just give up or stomp off! So we tried taking a deep breath and practicing the list of instructions a few times… Voila! Alphas learned all 5 movements!
Another Agreement we want to practice is taking care of our environment. We learned how to take responsibility for our table team materials and how to keep it tidy. Every week we will have a table team job. This week our friends learned where our cleaning stations live and we got down to business taking care of our areas…
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
We talked about how our brains love organizing. When we sort things we pay attention to differences and similarities. We use our senses to uncover specific attributes we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. We played with our shoes. We knew that all shoes protect our feet from coming in contact with things that could hurt them. So for sure, all shoes have bottoms, or soles. They have something that holds them onto our feet too.
We took our shoes off and hid them. Then we each described the attributes that made our shoes unique. When Ms. Kim pulled a shoe out and the students had to guess whose shoe it was based on the description they’d heard (all owners promised not to spill the beans).
Shoe Stew!
We ordered our shoes from biggest to smallest!
We practiced some subitizing and accounting for how many times we rolled each face of the die…
We did some counting and sorting with some buddies…
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
For our first full week of math we focused on subitizing, which is the ability to instantly see and know the number of objects in a small group without counting them. By using dominos, playing dice games, and an I SPY activity, these math wizards became pros at quickly recognizing patterns in number arrangements. The students also used dominos to create number bonds which help visualize decomposing (breaking apart) numbers.
Building and counting with dominos…
Playing “Roll and Circle”
In ELA…
Ms. Kim’s group…
this week we met the vowel “a” and consonants “c” and “m’. We are learning that some sounds are voiced (we can feel vibrations in our throats) and some are aspirated (we can feel the air come out of our mouths).
We learned that “a” is also a word! Whelan made “a” gorgeous spiral!
We practiced making these letters. Most letters we write will always start at the top. We are practicing handwriting strokes in order to train our muscles to move in the most efficient way – this will help us become quick writers.
We talked about the anatomy of a book…
We read Harold’s Purple Crayon and talked about how the whole book was about illustrations by Harold, the main character. We wrote titles for our books and illustrated them with our magical color!
We read David Weisner’s book called Tuesday ; the entire story is told with artwork. We were inspired to imagine what creature might be flying unexpectedly NEXT Tuesday…
Ms. Emma’s group…
The reading and writing group had their first full week of ELA! We began our routine of one new book every week with The Name Jar. Before diving in, the students made predictions about the story based on the title and illustration. After reading – we looked at the parts of a story and discussed how stories work to evoke emotion. The students also reviewed their consonants/vowels and began to build words that followed a CvC pattern. Finally, these spelling experts used their ELA journals to keep track of all the high frequency words we learn.
One book just wasn’t enough…
In Other News…
After much discussion, the Alphas landed on 4 key classroom agreements and signed with a painted hand.
We ended the week with our first birthday celebration! Atlas showed the Alphas how to gracefully accept a circle full of appreciations, right before he revolved around the “sun” 6 times.
After singing and sending Atlas the best birthday wishes, the students enjoyed popsicles (thank you Atlas’ family)!
