School last Tuesday

I knew there was a reason I never posted about school last week.  I wasn't able to volunteer today, so  now I can post about last week.

The small groups were finishing the rotation we began last week.  I again helped with the scrambled sentences.  This group knew exactly what to do.  Their friends had told them all about it.  They knew the sentences without even reading them.  Maybe we should mix up the order of the sentences or something. 

I finished testing the children on the Dolch sight words.  These children had the advantage of the list going home last week.  They had had time to study the words. There were some interesting comments from the children when I asked if they had been working at home on the words. I got the expected answer, I didn't get a list.  Right.  I personally stapled the list to each homework packet.  One child told me his mother ripped it up, she didn't want to work on the words.  Now I take any child's statement with a grain of salt.  But that sounds like something bad happened. 

For math the children were given a number chart from 1 to 100.  Except most of it was blank.  It had 14, 23, 89, 93 filled in.  They were to fill in the blanks.  If they thought it was too hard, they were to get a number chart and copy the numbers in.  I was to mark on each paper if they used the chart.  About half needed the chart after they got over 30.  One little boy (using a chart) insisted on filling in the blanks from 100 backwards.  He flat out refused to start with 1.  I noted that on his paper. Several made errors and lines did not come out right.  But they came to me to help find their mistakes.  That is huge to know something is wrong and ask for help.  Usually they had written a number twice, so we would erase and then they finished just fine.

Kaiser has gardens for each class.  The gardens are a year long science project.  People other than the classroom teacher come in and work with the children. The children help in the gardens (which were started in the summer by volunteers), and class time is spent on how things grow. Finally they pick  the crops, or in the case of potatoes dig the crops up. Then the vegetables are cooked in class.  The children also help prepare the food.  This is a great science project.

The stories we read to them are sometimes about growing food. Everything ties together.  The book I read this week was Apples to Oregon.  After going to the link, look to the left side where the image of the book is.  Then click on either search inside the book or Look inside.  If you have little ones in your life, I highly recommend this book.  It is based on truth, but is a tall tale.  Trust me, children love this book.