Students read the book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Each week they were responsible for reading a set of pages and writing 5 sticky notes. Each sticky note had a fact they learned about Chinese culture from the book. Students were also required to participate in a discussion about the book. Each book club Read More >>
Archives for May 2024
Ancient China for Middle Students
At the beginning of our Ancient China unit, the class filled out a KWL (Know, Want to know, and What I Learned). They were only able to fill out the K and W parts, however most of what people knew was about the Great wall of China. So the unit began by learning about the Read More >>
Pixie
Pixie is a language arts and reasoning program that focuses on “sharpening” the thinking skills of children. It does this by giving them scenarios and asking them how they would react in that situation, or what does this truly mean. We read Pixie during snack once a week. We read the episode and then discuss Read More >>
Layers of the Earth
We began our layers of the Earth class by asking ourselves, “How many layers of the Earth are there?”. That is when everyone learned that there are four layers of, and that it is impossible to dig all the way down to the center of the Earth. We did many hands-on experiments with this class. Read More >>
Banned Books
As banning books became much more common throughout the country we began a discussion with older students based on reading aloud a book called The Day the Book Was Arrested by Nat Hentoff. In the book, a parent objected to the reading of Huckleberry Finn due to both the racist language used to call Read More >>
Math Word Problems
Learning to read word problems for young children has many aspects. We began with the four children by having them recognize possible, impossible or incorrect number sentences such as: ? + 5 = 7, 7= 5+?, or 5+3 = 7 or 7+2=5. This was often tricky and took a while for kids to see that Read More >>
Paper Quilts
The K-2s and I read the book, A Quiltmaker’s Gift, outside of the art room during their reading times. This book was about a woman who made quilts for the poor and needy. She taught a greedy king how to care for others and give back. The students had an opportunity to create their own Read More >>
Ancient China for Youngers
We started our Ancient China unit for the youngest students by learning about the Chinese Zodiac and having a New Years celebration at school. Students learned about how the zodiac signs were formed with a folk tale about a race called: Cat and Rat : The legend of the Chinese Zodiac written by Ed Young. Read More >>
Geography
Students in the youngest group participated in classes to learn about the seven continents. Discussions and activities included information about the earth as a sphere and looking at a “flattened” version of the earth to see the seven continents. We learned a song about the continents and played a game where we went to that Read More >>