Our Personal Space

The Hoola Hoop Lesson

We are learning the importance of keeping our hands to ourselves and to mind our own business.  This is the lesson that I taught the children to help them with this.  I use the visual of a hoola hoop.

1.  We all have a hoola hoop around us. (I let them think of what theirs might look like...maybe purple with sparkles or maybe decorated with soccer balls:)
2.  Inside our hoop is our own business.  What we think, what we say, what we do.  Our only job is to take care of our own business and hoola hoop.
3.  We do not get into someone else's hoola hoop unless invited in.   

Now all I have to say to the children when problems arise is this:  "Are you in your own hoola hoop?"  Works like a charm.
You might want to use this at home too! 

Jack and Eddie

Eddie and Jack

I want you to meet part of my family! These two boys are my constant companions when I'm home.  The little one, Eddie, is a Yorkie.  I adopted him when he was 1 years old and now he is 7, just like most first graders will be at the end of this school year.  One of Eddie's legs does not have a knee, so he has to swing it rather than bend it.  You would never know it by how fast he can chase the squirrels in the yard!

Jack, the bigger dog, is a Wheaten terrier.  I got him when he was a puppy and now he is 10 years old.  I'm sad about that!  He is a very loyal friend to me, always by my side.  He loves to go on walks and he takes care of Eddie when I am at school.  

You can see my plan book at the bottom of the picture.  I'm writing this blog from my back porch today.  I love summer but it's time to think about school now. Ms. Jill and I have done the school supply shopping. I will have the room ready for you when you come on the first day.  I hope you have been reading!

I am SO EXCITED to meet you!  See you soon, Ms. Mary Beth

Summer Reading

Summer reading will benefit your child so much.  Make it fun and mix it up.  Solo read, share read, and talk, talk, talk about what you read!  

Here are some of the crews favorite chapter books.

I recently introduced the kids to graphic novels.  They are similar to the comic books I read as a child.  You can ask the librarians at the public library to help you find these.

And..math books!  Your child might love to dig into more of these!  They can also give you ideas for summer math.

Learning to Serve

Our Second Trip to the Early Childhood Center

We are learning and using many 21st Century Skills when we collaborate with our preschool buddies.

On this second meeting, we decided as a crew to write a story with our buddies.  

We needed to think about what we could learn and what our buddies could learn...so we wrote Learning Targets that we thought we could achieve.

 When we got back, we shared our experiences and realized our Learning Targets for the story writing with our preschoolers were a bit too lofty!  

Now that we are beginning to trust each other, deeper relationships are developing.  So sweet!

And it is ok to play...using our imagination helps us predict and compose while reading and writing.

Climbing in Castlewood Canyon Spring 2014

What JOY it was to watch each of my children challenge themselves on this Voyage.  They put Mr. Doug's great climbing instruction into practice for the first time in the great outdoors.  Everyone climbed and used the mantra, 
"I can do it!"  And they did.  They have grown so much!

Hopeful Green Thumbs

In our current Expedition study we have been looking at the reciprocity between worms and soil.  We also plan to take a close look at soil samples in our area.  Somehow, this has all led to planting a few things in the REMS garden!  Of course we will be adding our worms to enrich the soil and we know why! (if you don't, ask your first grader)

We plan to have some expert gardeners come to speak to us about preparing the soil and other important gardening tips.  Below you can see that we planted our seeds in a seed starter kit.  The mini greenhouse is going to be lots of fun to watch.  Wish us luck!

Math Across our Day

When a teachable moment comes up in our day, I run with it.  While reading about worms, we came to a page showing a 100 ft. ribbon snake that sits on the ocean floor.

My mind jumped to math!  I wanted to give the a visual of how long this would be.  We figured out that the average child in our crew was about 4 ft. long.  I laid the kids out on the floor, end to end.  You can see the video of this here!

Then we figured out the math.  I wrote down the 4's and said nothing more than "doubles?"  This got them thinking and we then turned the 4's into 8's.

Then we added the 8's to get 16's. Then the 16's to get 32's.  Finally we added the final two numbers with the help of the 100 grid.

We were excited to see that our "crew snake" was about as long as a ribbon snake.  We were amazed!