This Week in Alpha
First time we shared our P&P this year!
This Week in Alpha…
What a week! Quarter 1 is all about “firsts,” and we had a load of them this week:
- First new Month Calendar
- First time to bring back our P&P
- First time to share our work
- First attempts at Table Rotations in Language Arts
- First Evacuation/Fire Drill
- First Trip to the Library
- First Birthday Celebration
Peter has traveled 6 times around the Sun…
Ms. Ruth(AKA “Elio’s Mama”) read to us and helped us check out our first book selections from the library! Our Library Day is Thursday, so please return your books to class by next Thursday so we can check another out!
In Language Arts, while Alphas know that letters make particular sounds, they learned this week that we can sort those sounds into special groups. We paid close attention to our mouths and our throats to see if our mouths were open or closed, and we felt our throats for vibrations to see if the sounds were voiced or not. Physical awareness provides clues for spelling! We learned that our mouths are open and voiced for 6 of our letters, and we have a name for that group: Vowels! We learned that there is at least 1 of them in every word we speak in the English language. All the other letters, we call Consonants.
Alphas find and label the vowels in their names…
Table rotations keep everyone moving! We built words, practiced handwriting, read to ourselves, and played games…
In Math this week, we built on our knowledge of repeating sequence patterns by experimenting with the letter formula, where we give each color, or sound, or movement its own letter. One of our most prehistoric patterns is one we wake up to and go to bed with: Day and Night. We’d say that it is an A/B pattern. We used snap-cubes to make our own A/B designs. We learned another “time-sequenced” pattern of the seasons – it is an A/B/C/D pattern. When we got to the days of the week, the Alphas were fast on their fingers and figured out that it took 7 letters to make that pattern!
Our class helper demoed Earth’s rotation from Day to Night
WE DID TOO!
Day and Night “crayon resist” art project
Building A/B patterns…
Seasons change thanks to the tilt of Earth’s axis… In the Northern Hemisphere (where our head is), we move from Winter (when our head is farthest from the Sun) to Spring (when our head is a little closer to the Sun), to Summer (when our head is closest to the Sun), to Fall/Autumn (when our head gets a little further from the Sun)…
In Theme this week, we talked about maps. We checked out a map of Austin and learned that we were going to plot out where everyone in our class lived. We learned that ancient people – human beings who lived on Earth before there were stores, phones, cars, etc.- had to hunt and gather their food. That meant they wandered. Everybody seemed to know something about the Ice Age – which was helpful because that was a period when most anthropologists and archaeologists believe that humans arrived on our continent. They believe that humans followed their food from the North to the South. This led to a conversation about the cardinal directions and a tool cartographers use on maps: the compass rose.
Ancient humans slept where they could…
If their food traveled to the West, where the Sun sets…that’s where they went. If their food traveled South, where it was warmer, that’s where they went!
Cartographers @ WORK…
