Updates & Week 9.14-9.18

Hello Parents and Families!

Over the past week, we finished our unit on the 5 senses. We focused on and learned about our tasting sense, smelling sense, and our hearing sense this week.

On Monday we began learning about our tasting sense. The students helped create a tongue shaped chart that highlighted the areas of taste on our tongue; sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. We read a story about our tongues, and then added foods to our tongue chart that fit into each area. Then we worked on illustrating and labeling 4 pictures of items we like to taste. Students are using phonemic awareness to 'stretch out' letter sounds and sound them out to assist in writing out words during labeling. Afterwards, we used our touching and smelling senses to create smelly goop for the sensory table. We practiced measuring, counting, and taking turns to create the goop as a team. In the afternoon, we practiced identifying the parts of our tongue by tasting different food items and categorizing them to our tongue areas. Foods we tasted were candy (sweet), pretzels (salty), lime juice (sour), pickles (bitter). Students tasted them, shared their ideas about if the food tasted good or bad, and then recorded which area of their tongue they believed the food to belong to.

On Tuesday, we continued learning about our sense of taste. The students created their own tongue charts modeled after the one we worked on Monday morning. They used images of foods to practice sorting and matching their tongue parts to their food items. We continued to practice AB patterns using tasty food picture cards during math time, and began working more on ABC patterns. 

On Wednesday, the students brainstormed items they believed to be smelly. Then we worked on illustrating and labeling 4 pictures of items we can smell. Students are using phonemic awareness to 'stretch out' letter sounds and sound them out to assist in writing out words during labeling. We are also working on adding more details to our illustrations, and using our knowledge of shapes to help us when we need to draw images without a model. In the afternoon we read about how flowers have different smells, and then created a brainstorm chart of words that can describe how a flower smells. We then created our own smelly craft flowers using perfume sprays. We added details about how our flowers smelled using words from our descriptive word chart.

Kelsie's flowers smell pretty.

Ethan's flowers smell good.

Gemma smells soap, flowers, pizza, and perfume.

Ceanna smells fish, flowers, pizza and soap.

On Thursday, we continued learning about our sense of smell. The students practiced identifying the letters in their first name, and then built their names using letter cards. Then, the students traced their names with squeezable glue, and added a smelling spice to 'paint' their name. The students really enjoyed adding different spices, smelling them, and creating a smelly, scented version of their name! In the afternoon we continued to practice using our sense of smell by playing smelling jars; this was our first introduction to a simplified version of the scientific method. Each jar was filled with a different smelly item (pickle juice, garlic, perfume, pepper, soap, ranch dressing) and then the students would form a hypothesis after smelling the jar to try and figure out what it could be. Then, they recorded how they felt about the smell ( sad face=didn't like, happy face=liked). Then, I revealed what was actually in the smelling jars, and the students recorded the results of what was inside!  Some of the students were very surprised at what was inside the jars, and couldn't wait to practice playing smelling jars on their own during free time again! Many students enjoyed learning how their sense of smell is sometimes tricky, they really have to use their brains to figure out hidden scents.

On Friday, we learned about our hearing sense. The students brainstormed and created a chart of items they thought made noises, loud and soft. We read a story and practiced making the sounds aloud mentioned in "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" The kids were very good noise makers, and laughed and laughed when they heard Ms. Crowl making the silly animal noises too! Then we worked on illustrating and labeling 4 pictures of items we can hear with our ears. Students are using phonemic awareness to 'stretch out' letter sounds and sound them out to assist in writing out words during labeling. We are also working on adding more details to our illustrations, and using our knowledge of shapes to help us when we need to draw images without a model. In the afternoon we made our own listening ears headband, and practiced using our ears to hear by playing the game 'Simon Says.' Afterwards, we did show and tell time with items brought from home.

This week we also had a new friend join our class, Annalia Milligan! Welcome to our class Annalia!

Have a great week, and check back again soon for more updates and photos of our class activities and work!

Best,
Ms. Crowl

Important Notes/Dates:

Friday, September 25th: Weekly Show and Tell

Look for a note coming home in your child's homework folder about this weekly show and tell time!

Field Trip to Children's Museum Tuesday, September 29th:

Signed field trip forms and $7 per child and $7 per chaperone are due by Wed. 9/23 for the upcoming trip. Please turn in to me, or drop in my red bin by the front door. 

Thursday, September 24th: Nursing Student Lesson in Class

The nursing students that have been visiting the last few weeks will be teaching a lesson on 9/24 to the children about sun safety and care; they will be sending home a sheet about the tips for sun safety that will be covered in class, so you can review at home with your child.

Upcoming Parent-Teacher Conferences: Sept. 30th-Oct. 2nd

I have emailed out the google doc for families to sign up for parent teacher conferences during this time. If you have any issues using the google doc, please contact me and I can reserve the day/time desired for you! If you have not signed up by Friday I will be reaching out to you one on one to schedule a time.

Fall Break:

School will be on Fall break for students from Wed. Sept.30th-Mon. Oct 12th. We resume class on Tues. Oct. 13th.

Kindergarten Lottery Forms and Enrollment for 2016-2017 School Year:

Lottery form for students interested in attending Kindergarten at ASU Prep next school year 2016-2017 is now available. See the link below for Kindergarten lottery paperwork:

http://asuprep.asu.edu/about/enrollment

Re-enrollment paperwork for pre-k 2016-2017 has not yet come available, although all students who are continuing will be guaranteed a space again! I will get you this paperwork and info about next year in pre-k as soon as possible.