Fabric All Around

We’ve just launched a new science unit from Foss called “Fabric” to the class. These are the science concepts presented in the unit.

- Fabrics have observable properties.

-Fabrics can be compared and sorted by their properties.

- Fabrics are made from different materials.

-Fabric is used for many things in our everyday lives.

-Many fabrics are made by weaving threads together.

-Sewing is a process that weaves thread through more than one piece of fabric to join them.

This Week

This week for language skills, the children had fun making books; Letters in My Name book and My Favorite Numbers book. The letter of the week has been Y for yellow, yogurt, yarn and yolk. 

For social studies, we concluded our Community Helpers unit. The children have learned that everyone in a community is important and that it is necessary that everyone does their job in order to keep the community a safe and happy place to live and learn.

In the area of science, we talked about rain forests. I read a book called “The Great Kapok Tree” and discussed with the children about animals that lived in trees. I told the children that paper is made from trees and that we should try to recycle paper so that we don’t have to cut too many trees, which are homes to many animals. We took our paper recycling bin over to the recycle station in front of the school and threw the paper we didn’t need into the bin that was labeled “paper”. We also saw other different kinds of recycling bins; aluminum cans, plastic, and shoes. 

Next week we will begin our last science unit from Foss called “Fabric”. 

Khun Chuan

Khun Chuan is a custodian working in the office. He told us that he had to sort mail into the teachers’ and staff’s  mailboxes. The children found my mailbox with my name labeled on a yellow sticker and Khun Jeab’s mailbox labeled on a green sticker. Khun Chuan said that the yellow stickers are for teachers and the green stickers are for the classified staff. He also explained to the children that he had to clean the staff room and to refill coffee and tea for the teachers. One of the things he has to do every morning is to count the glasses and milk cartons in the cupboard. In conclusion, Khun Chuan needs to use sorting and counting to help with his work.

Happy Songkran

I hope you are enjoying the break. Koh Samui is beautiful and the people here are very nice. We are renting a house on the hill overlooking the Gulf of Siam. I’m all rested and ready to go back to work. (I know you are ready to send your kid back to school too :-p)

Let me tell you about our last week. We were still inquiring into how our school community helpers used math skills to solve problems in their work. We visited the carpenter, Khun Sup, who told us that he had to sort his jobs as well as his tools by kind . He also said that he had to measure everything with the measuring tape. We went over to the gym to see Khun Sup’s co-workers fix and paint the ceiling.

We also interviewed Khun Supan, the janitor, whom the children called the bathroom helper. Khun Supan showed the children her tools including the cleaning detergent, buckets, mops, etc. She said that she had to sort her tools and the cleaning detergent according to what she was going to clean. She showed us how to clean the bathroom floor and the mirror.

The letter of the week was V for violet, velvet, velcro, vet, etc. The children really enjoyed the Vegetable stamping activity. 

Khun Tom

Yesterday we interviewed Khun Tom, the Powerschool Assistant, who told us that her job was to sort ES students into classrooms and to provide information of students for the teachers. We’ve also learned that she helps with the after school activities. She said that she needed to count the amount of students in each activity and to make sure that they all go to the right classroom. She also mentioned that she had to sort the ASA students out according to many rules including how the students go home, the gender of the students, the grade level of the students, etc. 

Khun Pisit

We’ve been interviewing school helpers to learn about how they help us at school. We’ve asked many questions including our two key questions; “What math skills do you use to help solve problems in your work?” and “How do you use them?” We interviewed Khun Pisit, the guard, again today. He told us that he had to sort the school visitors into three groups: parents, staff, and suppliers. He handed out the three kinds of visitor passes to the kids and asked them to sort themselves out according to the kind of pass they had. Then Khun Pisit said that he also had to use patterning in his work. He told us that he had to walk in a pattern everyday around the school to check if everything was normal and safe for us. We took a walk with him to see the two check points near the track. He said that there were 10 check points and that he had to go from 1 to 10 every hour and after the 10th check point, he had to start over at the first one like a pattern. 

Community Helpers + Math

We’ve spent already a few weeks introducing a new unit called “Community Helpers”, getting the kids excited about the unit, and assessing their prior knowledge. We talked about the two terms; “community” and “helpers”. We discussed the importance of each classroom helper and said that each one was a member of our class community and that our class was a part of a school community. Then we talked about helpers around the school.

Last term we met with a few school community helpers to learn how they were using tools to solve problems in their work. For this current unit, I have selected math to be the subject focus. Our guiding question has been “How do community helpers use math skills to solve problems?” For the math skills, I will focus on specific skills  for each community helper. For example, we went to the main library last Friday to meet with Mr. Rubis, the librarian. We asked him if he had to use sorting to help him with his work. He told the children that everything in the library was sorted and that he had to sort them by kind. He said that he had to put books about animals together, books about countries together, magazines together and so on. We had a small tour to look at sorted books on shelves. Next week we will be meeting with the carpenter again to ask him if he has to use measuring skills to help him with his work. 

At home you may ask your child to help sort the laundry or eating utensils to support our unit. You may ask your child to watch a community helper do his job and talk to your child about specific math skills that the person might need to help with his work. Some of the skills that you might want to talk about are sorting, measuring, counting, and patterning. In the class, we will also cover graphing as we’ve always graphed out many things in the class.

What math skills does this community helper need to help with her work? Sorting! She needs to sort out her cleaning tools by type according to where she cleans. She also needs to sort out the laundry by color and she might need to use patterning in setting up routines.

Thank You

I’d like to thank you for attending the Parent-Teacher conference. I enjoyed chatting with you and working with you to support your child’s progress. As we’ve discussed, please continue to read to your child daily and talk about the story afterward. I strongly suggest that you read stories of your own native language and retell them using your native language as well. Once again, thank you for your support and cooperation!

3+1=4

At age 4, some children begin to use strategies that involve counting their fingers to solve addition and subtraction problems with hidden objects. Children of this age also use one-to-one correspondence to compare two sets and to reason about the effect of adding to or subtracting from one of the sets. Knowledge of numerical decomposition (separating a numerical whole into parts) and composition (combining numerical parts to form a whole) develops during the preschool year.

This week we played “The Frogs Sit on the Rocks” game, which helped the children use concrete sets and numerals in representing and decomposing small numbers. The children practiced decomposing sets of 4 and 5 objects. For example, I said, “Put your frogs on their rocks and use a number to show how many frogs are in the family. Now, separate the frog family. One frog wants to go for a swim in the pond. Put one frog in the pond. The other three frogs want to sit in the cool grass. Put three frogs in the grass. Now use a number to show how many frogs are in the pond.” This example was the decomposition of 4 into 1 and 3. Play this kind of game at home using toys and help your child learn decomposition and composition!

Watch Me Make a Set

This week the children have learned to construct a set of objects. They had to make a set of objects when they were given a cardinal number name for a set such as seven. Then they learned to group themselves into sets according to the given number. For example when I said 4, the children had to include themselves into a group of 4. Another activity we did was to draw a ticket that had a number written on and make four sets of objects according to the number. Omer got number 7, so he had to make four sets of 7 objects. These activities help the children learn to use a cardinal number name to partition objects from a larger set and to count one at a time in order to construct a set.