Junior Kindergarteners had a busy week of writing, storytelling, story-listening, and math! With Valentine\u2019s Day, students set a routine to create a card for each classmate. Support in school helped them think about what to include, how to consider each receiver\u2019s likes, and letter-formation practice. We have been learning about letters of the alphabet at small group stations, based on students\u2019 authentic needs to communicate\u2014signs, menus, Valentine\u2019s, stories, drawings, and even \u201csorry cards\u201d are all a great chance to get teacher help with pencil grip and the Fundations motor plans for each letter (e.g. starting at the top and pulling down versus writing bottom up). Valentine\u2019s card stations in Explorations this week also gave us practice tracing and cutting shapes. Half-heart stencils made by teachers gave students lots of opportunities to fold paper, trace a half shape, then cut and unfold to produce a whole heart. \u201cOops\u201d moments caused smiles as we noticed that sometimes we made butterfly wings or rain drops instead of hearts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cOops\u201d moments caused smiles as we noticed that sometimes we made butterfly wings or rain drops instead of hearts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Students noticed and named ways in which the fold, trace, and locations of the cut caused the different shape outcomes. We closed the week by pulling \u201cFair Sticks\u201d to see whose turn it was to take Bear-Bear home for the weekend! Several students patiently await their chance to bring our class stuffy home to show Bear-Bear around and share adventures. As part of their turn, students dictate to family members a first-person narrative in the shared class journal where Bear-Bear logs adventures. This builds skills for story-telling and also gives students and their families a peek into community members\u2019 homes and family routines. Students have the most fun hearing about what Bear-Bear did in peers\u2019 homes, including when sometimes things don\u2019t go so well (e.g. cats that don\u2019t share well, cold or rainy days)! We can\u2019t wait to see what Bear-Bear gets up to next!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Junior Kindergarteners had a busy week of writing, storytelling, story-listening, and math! With Valentine\u2019s Day, students set a routine to create a card for each …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[242,134,20,201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curriculum-connections","category-english","category-lower-school","category-the-hillbrook-center-for-teaching-excellence"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/february-14-23.png?fit=1086%2C814","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2407,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}