Falling into SK Tree Week!

We fell in love with Fall this week in SK!

Ask your SK friend about:

Daily Five
Stamina: proud to have increased our stamina from 11 minutes last week to 12.5 minutes this week!
Read to Someone: strengthening our Coaching/Time skills (count to three, ask "Coach or time" and then give support, but not the answer, or more time), and learning 3 Ways to Read a Book to Someone (Check for Understanding, I Read/You Read, Read Two Different Books)
Good Reader Tools: use the picture clues, point to the words AND look at the first letter (that helps us when the picture shows a dog, but the word is "puppy!")

Language
Journaling - upper case, finger space, ending puncuation... that's our mantra!  Introducing "topic" or "big ideas" and challenging ourselves to use describing words (bumpy, rough, huge, smooth, round, tall), with two good details in each of our journals.
Printing - Here are the letters we're working on, and the Zaner Bloser formation language we use to remind SK friends of the motion: "A" (Start up at the blue sky, slant down left, pick up!  Start up at the blue sky, slant down right, pick up!  Start on the red fence, slide right.)  "a" (Start under the red fence, circle back to make a rainbow, circle around, down and up, pull down from the red fence to the green grass.)

Math
5 Frames, 10 Frames - they help us recognize groups of five/ten in a flash, and the number relationships that work within the frame (2+3=5, 5-4=1), and strengthen our ability to "count on" from five, our "count back" from ten (5+3 more = 8, 10-1 = 9)
Numbers in Our Room/School - friends went on a hunt in small groups, one in our room, one around the school, searching for numbers in all different places!  Clocks, calendars, charts, graphs, labels, and more!  We worked as a large group to figure out why we need numbers, how we use them, and what life would be like without them!
Shape Collages - Naming shapes, making them with our bodies, and hunting for them in magazines (the Restoration Hardware magazine was more like a coffee table book - we put it to great use!), shadow-cutting them and gluing them into our personal collages
Which Way Do I Go - we took turns in two small groups; one group used directional clues on a list (of 25!) to find their way around the school.  The other group, in our classroom, followed verbal cues and mapped their way on a game board!  First time listening sure helped us all on these good math games!

Science
Tree Walk - walking tree to tree and using describing language to say what we notice, as scientists, helped us to make a big decision about which tree to choose for our year in SK
Voting with Our Feet - instad of making a chart like we did with insects, we moved our bodies to the tree we wanted to study, and took a vote!  One tree had twelve pairs of SK feet under its branches.. our SK Tree is the large maple to the left of the middle school entrance!
Observation Sketch - we used our arborist eyes to study the tree's leaves, branches and trunk, taking note of each characteristic and drawing only what we observed, recording good information for our Science Notebook
Expert Tree Talk - Mrs. Z, our resident Science Expert, took us out to our tree and used her iPad to identify the tree's leaves... it's a Sugar Maple!  It's called that because it's filled with a higher sugar content than other trees, and makes great syrup, if you're up for doing the work!  We also learned that our leaves are now orange because the green chemical, chlorophyll, is gone and we're finally seeing the leaves' true colors!
Leaf Rubbing - We collected Sugar Maple leaves from our SK tree, and used them for rubbings!  The beautiful art we made not only helped to bring fall into our classroom, but it highlighted the veins in the leaf that sparked great discussion about water and food for all living things!
Prediction - We illustrated a prediction and added describing words for our SK Tree in Winter - can't wait to see if our theory comes true in January!
Calendar: Thermometer/Temperature - we're finding the temperature and using colors to show how warm or cold it's been.  Many mornings in the fifties mean lots of deep green days in our calendar books - can you predict if November will move in the yellow direction or the blue direction?

Books We Loved
A Tree for Me by Nancy Van Laan
Hello, Tree! by Joanne Ryder
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Jan Brett
Sky Tree by Nicholas Locker
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves by Lucille Colandro
The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don Wood

Extra, Extra: Reminders for Next Week:
Field Trip: It's coming right up on Wednesday October 10th (not the 11th!) - can't wait to meet our volunteers (who have confirmed with Melissa Sheppard!) at 1pm at Barthel Fruit Farm (until our 2pm departure.)
Decodable Books: Help your SKer remember that Book 7 is coming home today, and that each black and white decodable should be stored in their black Book Box (with the star words listed on the inside cover!)  This collection will help each friend build strong reading skills, even if the books themselves are not where your SK reader is right now.
Tote Bags: to school and back, everyday please!
Toys: please remind friends that toys do not belong at school.  One snuggly buddy can stay here in their sleeping bag, but bringing multiple toys back and forth can take away from our good learning here in SK.
Jackets: everyday, please!

Coming Up Next:
Pumpkin Study: loads of math exploration next week as we weigh and measure our pumpkins in all different ways!  No two pumpkins are the same, just like SKer's, so we'll be using our best describing words to give good information about our pumpkin picks.