Aleph Academy

Winter break has arrived.  The students seem eager for a vacation from school and happy to have some extra time with mom and dad.  I naturally am also ready for some extra family time, but have also been spending lots of time reflecting upon our classroom community and learning progress.  We’ve all grown a lot during the past few months.  We’ve met numerous prekindergarten standards, but more importantly the students are exhibiting higher level critical thinking skills.  Our classroom atmosphere has grown into a fun learning environment where the students feel safe sharing their thoughts and asking questions.  This plays such a crucial role in my ability to develop emergent curriculum that promotes scaffolding and higher level thinking.  Your children truly are amazing and I thank you again for allowing me to be a part of their development.  Happy Holidays and I’ll see you next year!

Carey

Now that the frogs are gone, I reintroduced one of the doll houses.  The students dramatic play still mainly involves “playing house.”  Bringing the doll house back into the classroom proved to be a big hit as it was the center of activity for most of the morning.  The doll house facilitates great creative play, but also lets the students practice their social-emotional skills.  In summary, the classroom is going to get a makeover during winter break and based on the student’s interests I plan to include another “house” area.

Carey

P.S.  Thank you so much for the gift card to Spa Toscana.  I can’t wait to use it over winter break!

Dramatic Play Standards

1.PK.1 Act out a role observed in his/her life experiences, for instance, mother, baby, doctor.

1.PK.2a Make up new roles, for instance, from experience and familiar stories.

1.PK.2b Direct peers and/or follow directions from peers in creating dramatic play schemes.

We are fortunate to have such a good friend in the elementary class.  Griffin is graciously letting us borrow some of his Magna Tiles.  The students loved the ones we got for the light table and can now make better and bigger designs and structures.  The tiles are extremely engaging and allow for lots of math connections.  So far we have been using them for shape, color and position identification.  Now that we have an abundance of them, we will be doing lots of counting.  Thanks Griffin!

Carey

Math Standards

4.PK.1 Identify circles, triangles, and squares.

4. PK.2 Identify positions (e.g., in front, behind, next to, up, down, inside, outside, on top).

1.PK.5 Count to 10.

Today’s educational highlight was during story time.  I’ve been increasingly impressed with the student’s comprehension skills.  They are all very good at making text-to-self connections.  However, Marley shined today when she made a text-to-text connection.  We were reading “Trouble With Trolls” by Jan Brett and Marley commented that the trolls were similar to the wild things in “Where the Wild Things Are.” When students make meaningful text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world connections they are utilizing prior knowledge to help them better understand the reading material.   These connections also contribute to the readers overall enjoyment of the material.  I can’t express how amazing it is to see your children make these connections as they travel down the path to literacy.

Carey

P.S.  I apologize for the lack of photos.  I’m having camera issues and hope to have them resolved soon.

Reading Standard

4.PK.2 Recall information from an event, text, or picture.

The frogs are going to return home with Ms. Karen on Monday so our frog project is coming to a close.  The students have enjoyed having the frogs and were especially delighted yesterday afternoon when the big frog decided to make sounds.  It was really fun to hear and the student’s were amazed by the frog’s inflated vocal sac.  Although the students are sad to see the frogs go, we may get a new classroom pet in the near future.  Matilda’s mother, Tracy, donated an atrium complete with a water fountain and cricket case. I’m sure your little scientists would love the opportunity to observe and investigate another type of animal.

Carey

Life Science Standard

8.PK.1 Investigate animals and their offspring.

The students were super excited to paint today.  They were given a quick lesson on how to properly use water colors and then set free to explore.  We used small brushes as a means of making more detailed paintings and I was very impressed with the results.  The students were also eager to use the paint pallets and Zoe was the first to mix yellow and blue to make green.  Natasha followed suit by making purple.  All of the paintings look wonderful and will be displayed in the classroom in the near future.

Carey

Visual Arts Standard

1.PK.3 Use a variety of media, techniques and processes in art activities that are of the child’s creation without a model.

Dovid and Joshua's Magna Tile creation.

Marley and Zoe play in our new beauty salon.

The Magna Tiles were an immediate hit with the students.  The geometric shapes, two and three dimensional, they created were amazing.  The new provocation not only did a wonderful job of stimulating creativity.  It also forced the students to utilize social skills such as sharing, taking turns and entering into a play group already in progress.

Carey

Social-Emotional Development

5.PK.1b Play in pairs and small groups.

5.PK.1d Initiate play, or enter into play with a group of children already playing.

5.PK.2b Take turns with teacher support.

5.PK.2c Share some of the time.

Joshua carefully places the wick in the candle wax.

Ethan the candle maker.

Dovid and Matilda show off their candles.

Candle making acitivity.

Due to the foggy weather, we skipped our walk to 711 and the post office.  Instead, we made bees wax candles and talked about the letter F as in frog.  It seems all interest in the store alphabet baskets is lost.  In their place, we will continue to discuss different letters as they arise in the classroom.  An example of this is the letter F.  It was chosen as this week’s letter because we’ve been discussing frogs.  My hope is that the students will better connect with letters they’ve already been using in our daily discussions.

Carey

Reading Standard

1.PK.1 Recognize environmental print and symbols.

Today was a mellow and fun Friday.  The students made Challah and graphed their toppings.  We also played in the snow, had lots of great conversations and made coffee filter snow flakes to adorn the windows of our classroom.  Next week we are going to be learning the letters J, Y and Z so please bring items that start with those letters for our baskets.  Hope you all have a wonderful snowy weekend!

Carey

Social and Emotional Development Standard

6.PK.1c Use verbal and non-verbal conversation skills (e.g., listening, letting a person finish speaking before taking a turn, staying on one topic, maintaining eye contact, etc).

Menorah painting on Thursday December 10th.

Ruby folds her "snowflake" coffee filter.

Matilda cutting her snowflake.

We continued to work on brush techniques with paint on canvass.  The first group added white paint to a previously painted canvass.  The other two groups used white paint on brown paper as a means of representing the recent snowfall.  All of the students are improving and enjoyed the exploration process.  Please make sure to take a look at the student’s work.  The canvasses are hanging in the hallway between the other two classrooms.  Your child’s name is written in red next to their section of artwork.

Carey

Visual Art Standard

2.PK.4 Identify color, shape and texture through art experiences.