The Lower Grades worked specifically with multiplication and division this past week through our stories with Mul de Pleir and Prince Divide. The students gained a sense of how multiplication and division work together and how number sentences are written. Using colored gems, the children multiplied and divided, wrote various number sentences using the appropriate sign and also copied the two and tens times tables. The skip counting activities we do during our morning circle, help this process make sense for them. During Spanish the students have been coloring pictures of fruits and vegetables and traded them at a “store” with Don Andres, while in Mandarin the children began learning to count and picked it up so fast!
For the first week of advent, which is the week of stone (minerals, crystals and seashells), we enjoyed lighting the first candle on our advent table. The children each chose a tiny seashell to keep, learned a poem and copied and illustrated the first verse of the poem. Next week, we will begin the week of plants, making a craft to complement the week and continue learning the verses. This week we will be continuing with our math block and spending the week exploring the relationship between addition and subtraction, again through story and looking more at number families.
For wet-on-wet painting, we blended the three primary colors in various forms, for a fun craft, we made window stars as a class and then on our own to bring home. Window star paper would be a fun holiday gift though I am sorry to say the kits that include instruction book are now only available for a ridiculous price on Amazon and I didn’t find them elsewhere. There are directions online and other books available separately. Our prolific finger knitters are now starting knitting on needles while our class knitters are completing first and second projects. The children are all pleased with their developing skills as they well should be!
Please make sure your child has all their wet/cold weather gear in order. Some items are being stored in our backpack shed and others at home or in backpacks. The children will need their boots, and full rain gear based on the weather reports. It will be muddy even if it isn’t raining. Let’s keep being prepared!! 😊
Warmly,
Ki Melissa
