Salt Through The Sieve

What a fantastic 4th week of school the Whales had! We explored apples at the nature table, worked on our letter sounds, played Whale Guess Who, had our very first Mystery Reader, and much much more!

This week the Whales started their first full lesson of UFLI. UFLI is our phonics curriculum that teaches the Whales foundational reading skills. We work on phoneme blending, grapheme-phoneme correspondence, decoding, encoding, and more! This week we worked with the short vowel a sound. We practiced blending letter sounds to make a word such as cat, and map. We practiced our letter formation of both uppercase and lowercase A. The Whales did a great job taking care of their learning tools, and materials. They showed so much kindness!

At the numeracy must-do table, the Whales balanced apples (bean bags) on their heads and tested how many steps or jumps they could do without the apples falling over. Some friends got up to 22 steps with 3 apples on top of their head! WOW! The Whales had to write the numbers of how many apples they balanced, and how many steps + jumps they took. In numeracy, the Whales are also working on counting on. Starting with a big ten stick, and adding on little ones. They are doing a great job supporting each other and challenging themselves!

The Whales started their apple unit of study. They spent the week exploring and investigating apples and apple branches at the nature table. They noticed that the apples were different colors and different sizes. We learned that apple trees blossom in the spring. When the blossom starts to die, the apple starts to grow. We looked at our apples and noticed that we can still see part of the blossom at the bottom of the apples. When you’re at the store notice the apples with your Whale! See if they can find the blossom on the bottom of the apple! We also learned that apples have seed chambers located inside the apples. This holds the seeds and keeps them safe! Next week we will be opening up apples and investigating the insides!

We have started to play Whale Guess Who! Whale Guess Who is a game where the Whales listen to clues about a friend in their classroom. They have to guess who they think it might be based on the clues. The Whales really know each other because they have been able to guess it every time! After they guess who it is, we count the syllables in that friends name. We make rhymes with that name. And the Guess Who contestant has to put their name back together after being split apart!

This week the Whales learned about a saying we use in our classroom, “salt through the sieve”. Ms. Abby showed the Whales a sieve and we talked about what it is. We imaged that the Sieve is us or our brain. Ms. Abby named something that happened in her day that was good and made her happy. That was a chocolate chip and Ms. Abby added it to the sieve. The Whales noticed that the chocolate chip couldn’t fall through and we talked about how Ms. Abby wants to hold on to the sweet chocolate chips that happen in her day. Then Ms. Abby talked about something in her day that was a little salty and made Ms. Abby not very happy. That is the salt. Ms. Abby added salt to the sieve. The Whales noticed that the salt goes through the sieve and doesn’t even ruin the chocolate chips! The salt are things that Ms. Abby doesn’t want to hold on to and she just lets it go. She doesn’t let the salt ruin her day. The Whales went around the room and said something good that happened in their day and added a chocolate chip to the sieve. We talked about how holding on to the good things can help us feel happier and helps us learn more. The Whales thought that the salty things that happen to us we don’t want to hold on to because they don’t help us be happy and we can just let those things go. We can say “salt through the sieve”. When you are around your Whale and something salty happens like they spill something or their wood tower falls, we can say “salt through the sieve”. That means we can just let it go and think about the chocolate chips in our day!

The Whales had their first Mystery Reader on Friday! Ms. Courtney read “Violet the Pilot” and the Whales absolutely loved it! A huge shout out to Ms. Courtney for coming in to the Whales classroom and sharing a story with us!