Dear Families and Friends of Room 104,
During this exciting week we enjoyed sharing valentines, and looking at the biomes and land/water forms of Africa. We also looked at books and works about birds and began asking questions about birds that fly through our play area.
Mo Willems has been a featured artist and author this month. Children shared his Elephant and Piggie series and his Pigeon series with us that were either bought from the book fair or checked out from the library. These books have been read, and re-read on a daily basis. Never before has our library area been so full of laughter.
With all of our studies of Africa, I asked our large group on Friday what does it mean to be African-American? Ms. Jane is African-American because she is from Africa and is also an American citizen. However, most people in our school community that are African-American have never been to Africa. This question proved to be much harder to answer than I expected, but it allowed us to talk about ancestry and the source of our unique African-American culture.
In celebration of African-American culture, we learned about and listened to the Blues. We also made up blues songs about situations in our classroom. Somehow, singing about hard or sad things made us smile. This Friday we invite all of our classroom families to join us for a celebration of African-American culture with our Black History luncheon. We will eat promptly at 12 following a brief presentation by the children. Please sign up to bring a dish to share.
Next week children are invited to bring in one old piece of clothing which will be cut into scraps for a classroom quilt. After reading, "The Patchwork Quilt", we talked about using our own clothes to put together a fine piece of artwork.
Our school gardens are in full bloom and slowly producing larger quantities of cherry tomatoes and lettuce. After reading, "A Weed Is A Flower" by Aliki, we saw how the ingenuity of George Washington Carver helped to save the soil of our country. In honor of his dedication to plants, most children wore a flower as a boutonniere from our classroom's garden box before leaving for the long weekend.
We hope that everyone has a restful and joyful President's Day this Monday!
Enjoy your three-day weekend!
Ms. Joanna Boone
During this exciting week we enjoyed sharing valentines, and looking at the biomes and land/water forms of Africa. We also looked at books and works about birds and began asking questions about birds that fly through our play area.
Mo Willems has been a featured artist and author this month. Children shared his Elephant and Piggie series and his Pigeon series with us that were either bought from the book fair or checked out from the library. These books have been read, and re-read on a daily basis. Never before has our library area been so full of laughter.
With all of our studies of Africa, I asked our large group on Friday what does it mean to be African-American? Ms. Jane is African-American because she is from Africa and is also an American citizen. However, most people in our school community that are African-American have never been to Africa. This question proved to be much harder to answer than I expected, but it allowed us to talk about ancestry and the source of our unique African-American culture.
In celebration of African-American culture, we learned about and listened to the Blues. We also made up blues songs about situations in our classroom. Somehow, singing about hard or sad things made us smile. This Friday we invite all of our classroom families to join us for a celebration of African-American culture with our Black History luncheon. We will eat promptly at 12 following a brief presentation by the children. Please sign up to bring a dish to share.
Next week children are invited to bring in one old piece of clothing which will be cut into scraps for a classroom quilt. After reading, "The Patchwork Quilt", we talked about using our own clothes to put together a fine piece of artwork.
Our school gardens are in full bloom and slowly producing larger quantities of cherry tomatoes and lettuce. After reading, "A Weed Is A Flower" by Aliki, we saw how the ingenuity of George Washington Carver helped to save the soil of our country. In honor of his dedication to plants, most children wore a flower as a boutonniere from our classroom's garden box before leaving for the long weekend.
We hope that everyone has a restful and joyful President's Day this Monday!
Enjoy your three-day weekend!
Ms. Joanna Boone