Our chapel buddies are on their 8th grade trip, so we decided to have buddies for our class.  I was so proud of the friends in chapel.  They did their best to sing the songs and follow along during chapel! 

Mr. Kyle Borcherding led chapel today.  He shared with us what a shepherd does.  We know that Jesus is our shepherd, and we are His sheep.

Outside time 

We heard some sounds coming from the grill by the playground.  Some of the friends remembered last year when a mommy bird made a nest there and we saw the baby birds. 

"Maybe there is another nest in there!"

"Yeah!  I can hear the baby birds!" 

We went to check and see

Sure enough there were two baby birds and a nest in the grill just like last year! 

We played chutes and ladders again to increase one to one correspondence, counting, and subitizing.  Over the summer, I encourage you to play board games at home with your child.  There are so many valuable skills learned while playing board games.  Not to mention, they are super fun! 

Some of the friends collaborated in the blocks.

Some friends chose to retell familiar Jesus stories with the storyboards.  

Retelling stories is a pre-reading skill!  

We added new money to the dramatic play.  The friends practiced recognizing the numbers on the money and worked to count out the same amount of coins.  

Did you know that skills learned in play take less repetitions to move to long term memory than skills taught didactically?  This is why we scaffold student learning through the materials in the environment and support our friends' play. 

Our friends love to read!  At home, have your child read a familiar story to you.  Although they might not be able to conventionally read the words, the ability to use the pictures (context clues) to retell a story is a valuable pre-reading skill.

Creative art and collaboration

"I like to mix the colors to make new colors." 

During clean up time, the friends showed their mastery of sorting as they sorted the magnetic tiles by shape and color independently. 

During morning meeting we once again explored the concept that numbers can be composed and decomposed to make new numbers.  Ask your child at home to show you a number, but ask them to use two hands.  We've played with the numbers two, three, four, five, and six at school. 

We then played a wiggle worm game to review shapes, letters, letter sounds, numbers, and let some of our wiggles out.  :) 

Finally, I was so sad!  I forgot how to write my letters today.  :( 

The friends helped me remember important rules of writing including starting letters at the top, and the shapes used to make letters (big line, little line, big curve, little curve, etc.)

With their help, I was able to write some letters again! 

(The friends wanted to take a picture to show how helpful they were.  :) )