Deep Learning @ Whitney Young 12-15-23

SCIENCE

Students used recycled newspaper to make paper pulp in Ms Andrea's Art Studio. They turned the pulp into beautiful works of Art.
Today we talked about snowmen and then read the story, Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright. We then talked about reasons a snowman might melt. We came up with lots of great ideas. After our brainstorming session we picked and wrote our reason on paper. Then we created our very own “melted snowman!”

TECHNOLOGY

Mr Musser introduced two different versions of the Three Little Pigs (The first had the pigs jumping out of the book and the second was about Javelinas) and a new poem inspired by the stories. We used our big screen to do a letter hunt and count words in a sentence.
Each week in December our prek students are listening to and reading fairytales. After learning about the stories they practice skills such as retell and sorting.
In music, we got to use our iPads to play a game using the skills Ms. Jackie taught us.

ENGINEERING

Ms Angie and Ms Adi challenged the children to imagine, design and test piggy houses. They used the engineering process to create their own houses for the three little pigs.
Students reenacting The Three Little Pigs in the block area.
Today we did a STEAM challenge on our own to wrap up our Three Little Pigs week. We had three different sets of materials and each student chose a table to build a house for their pig. We first brainstormed ways we could build a house to protect our Little Pig before setting out to design and build on our own. We had two different missions: 1. Make a house that our pig can fit inside of. 2. Make it strong enough to stand up to the Big Bad Wolf! We had many houses that were built to fit the pig, but only four which stood up to the “Huffing and Puffing” of the wolf.
To go along with the units of Balls in PreK and Force & Motion in Kindergarten, students went to the STEAM lab and experimented with ramps and tubes.

ART

We did our first “Reader’s Theater” where we took turns acting out a story. Students chose their parts and helped act with a small group to tell the audience the story. There was a lot of huffing and puffing...and the wolf even jumped down the chimney, with the help of Mr. Musser.
Today the girls created St Lucia, the patron saint of light, crowns. St. Lucia wore this crown to light her way as she delivered food to the needy. The boys created crowns and represented Star Boys (they symbolize the three wise men).
A visit to Sweden for St Lucia Day
For week 2 oÿ our Holiday’s Around the World Unit we flew to the countries oÿ Sweden and Germany to learn about their holidays and traditions. . In Germany they celebrate Christmas and we learned that the tradition oÿ ĀettinĀ a tree and decoratinĀ it started in Germany. We desiĀned and made our own Christmas Trees usinĀ Āreen construction paper and items ÿrom our art area.
In music, we used scarves to help us identify low and high sounds when it comes to music.
In the art studio we explored the art of printmaking with collagraphs. This allows us to make more than one print so they can be shared with more people! It also gives us the opportunity to solve problems with the printing process.

MATH

Today, the kids noticed something was different about our classroom, there was a strange strip of paper with numbers. We explained it was a number line and it could help us do things like count and learn our numbers. I even brought out our ninja numbers chart, where numbers that don’t say their own name (11 doesn’t say on teen, 12, 13, 15 doesn’t say five teen) are called ninja numbers because they’re kind of sneaky like ninjas. Teen numbers are pretty tricky because they don’t follow the rules of other numbers. We have been working on sorting (by size/color/various attributes)
We can sort by color and size!

Careers

Kindergarten classes have been flying around the world to visit different countries and learn about how they celebrate the holidays. The students are in good hands with these pilots!

Ms R's class traveled 17 hours and 16 minutes to Africa and the Middle East. We learned about henna tattoos and Ramadan. Our pilots Quonttrell and Jacob got us there safely despite never flying a plane before. Kae’Ora and Bailey served an inflight snack.

Your flight is now boarding! Snacks anyone?
We are authors!

Great idea!

What to do, what to do when you're waiting your turn for the bathroom? I know, let's review our letters and numbers!
Practicing the letter M and cleaning the tables- two for one!
We are learning how to write “How To” books. First, we read a book about how to make hot chocolate. Then we put the pictures in order and labeled each picture. Today, we followed the instructions to make hot chocolate
Give a child a sticker and the stories practically write themselves.

Documentation of Student Learning

Ms Brittany's class has been learning about labeling.