Did your child come home and say you are a "bi-mom" or a "tri-mom"? Don't panic. :) Your child is cleverly applying what as learned. Today we were painting dinosaur bones for a dinosaur exhibit in our room when I casually said, "I wish I could be an octopus!". Two hands were not enough. :) Two smart friends repeated it which was followed by, "OH- octo- pus , octa-gon . . . How many do you think "octo" means?" A huge group immediately said "8". Suddenly, the class began bouncing off the ideas of each other including "octomom" (clever connection with a good memory for the news :) ). That led to experimentation with the other prefixes as they spontaneously reviewed. It was pretty funny.
The dinosaur bones painting was actually a math connection to the BAM Wall as a few friends immediately pointed out. The children painted a certain number of bones, created a line of symmetry, then replicated it on the flip side. When they are dry, they will stand up as 3-d dinosaur bone models in our "museum". Another addition will be the giant bones of a stegosaurus that some friends constructed using modeling clay. When it is dry, the bones will be separated for them to reconstruct just like in the video and virtual dinosaur activity seen to the left of this post.
Since the language of the discipline (paleontology) is so rich, why not give them a chance to apply it in the most meaningful way? Each reading group has a new book (all different and matched to that group) related to dinosaurs that allow them to focus on their specific areas of learning while applying that new vocabulary in reading. They were very excited.
Your child also made a "____ asaurus" of themselves as a dinosaur after writing the last page in their nonfiction dinosaur books.
What was the new William Joyce book about? Apparently most children in the class have seen a movie I did not even know about. :) Two pages into the book, one smart friend named the movie. After many others joined in agreement and explained it to me, it was obvious that another William Joyce book was turned into a movie - lucky me! By now, you know that led to a fun discussion. The book is called "A Day with Wilbur Robinson" and is the movie "Meet the Robinsons". :) Another discussion addressed this new type of genre - science fiction - as we discussed: the time machine, past/present/future - change over time iconic language, a "brain augmenter" (fun connection to "Og" the frog - good listener!), a matter detector (connected to their prior science learning of "matter"), and robots. This will lead to our next time travel with William Joyce into the future.
Many photos were taken this week of the dinosaur dig, bone painting, stegosaurus construction, and reading their writing via "Mix-Pair-Share". A photo of our most recent additions to the dinosaur iconic language chart will be taken tomorrow. These photos will be added to the photos/slideshow section some time this weekend, so be sure to watch for them. :)
Reminders for tomorrow:
- homework is due in the folder
- spelling test
