Tie-Dye and Migration!

The school has been bright with tie-dye shirts, aprons, dresses, and so much more! The Whales had such a fun time learning about tie-dye with Mr. Mark, and creating their own tie-dye designs. A huge thank you to Mr. Mark for putting this activity on every year, and to our volunteers for helping the Whales create such wonderful tie-dye designs. They truly are beautiful!

This week the Whales have been finishing up their unit of study on Migration. We made observations of similarities between our migrating animals. One of the noticings the Whales had was that many of our animals travel from the Tundra, down south to either Mexico or South America. Yesterday, we learned about the Canada Goose. Our presenter taught us that Canada Geese fly in a “V-formation” so that they can balance the amount of energy they are using to fly. In order to understand how tricky it might be to fly in a “v-formation” the Whales went outside and practiced. We realized that it is really tricky to stay in that v-formation, and to not pass the leader. Over the course of our unit, we have talked about why animals migrate. We have also been learning about how animals know it is time to migrate, and how they know exactly where to go. From our nonfiction books, we learned, that some birds know where to go because of the sun and the stars. We also talked about how there is still so much to study and discover about migration. The Whales could become future scientists or ornithologists and discover more about migration! Maybe one day, they will discover how the American Eel and the Chinook Salmon know where their exact birth spot is in the Sargasso Sea and in the Rivers. So COOL!

This week in math, the Whales have been practicing subtraction. They played take away monster math. They are mathematicians! They used number bonds and created number sentences to represent their answer. We have also been playing Take Away 20 against Ms. Abby. The Whales are masters at this game! They have figured out the strategy of giving Ms. Abby the low numbers they roll, and giving themselves the higher numbers so they can get to zero faster. You can play this game at home with a dice! On a piece of paper, create to columns. One for your Whale and one for you. In each column, write 20 -. Use a dice and roll a number. The objective of the game is to get to zero first. The trick is, if you go first, you get to choose whether you want to keep the number or give it to the other person. When the next person rolls, the person without a number has to keep that number. The first to zero wins!

In literacy, the Whales have been working on reading and spelling words with consonant blends. For example, the word “stick”. We learned the heart words “what” and “have”. The Whales are so excited to continue to challenge themselves in reading and writing. There stories in writers workshop are becoming more and more complex! We have been working on goal setting with our writing. The Whales are setting daily goals for themselves on what they want to achieve during our writing time. There have been recent publishings about Rainbow Friends, family trips, summer berries, and much more! Ask your Whale what their latest writers workshop story is about! We started a new chapter book called, “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”. Ask your Whale what has happened so far in the chapter book!

We are so incredibly proud of the hard work we have been seeing from the Whales. They are stretching themselves, and working really really hard. It is amazing to see how much they are growing in academics and just as human beings!