Pre-K 411 @ William H. Ray School; Teacher: Jeffrey Gillespie

This is Lana’s mother, Jelena’s, website that she has set-up for children to use internet based games and activities from their home computer.  If you are interested here is the link:

http://zivko.cuipblogs.org

For our children try the Kindergarten link!

The final tally, including teachers votes, was Barack Obama 16 votes and John McCain 7 votes.  Check out the pictures of 411 election day here.  The children were very thoughtful about who they were going to vote for, especially when they were in that voting booth.  If you notice in a few of those pictures you get a good look at the children studying the candidate favorites posters and making a decision based on the ‘issues’ that meant the most to them.  The children seem to be coming to an understanding about the thought processes behind making a choice and developing their Theory of Mind.  A lot of people were very suprised that McCain received 8 votes, especially considering where are school is located so close to the Obama’s, but the John McCain in our classroom is much different than the John McCain in the world.  His favorite song “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond is now the favorite song in the classroom.  You have not seen nothing yet until you see a classroom full of 3-4-5 year olds rocking out to Neil Diamond  : )  So, it was a very interesting experience for me and I am very excited about the position this process has left us with and where we can take it from here. 

Coming up we are going to continue to use choice/voting to help us make decisions in the classroom including ways to regulate our emotions.  More to come : )

Also,  I am waiting on pics from the field trip to the Emerald City Theater, I forgot to bring our camera.  The play went pretty well and the children seemed to have a good time, I will post the pictures as soon as I get them.  We are also considering going to another play there later in the year, ‘Hansel & Gretel’, Whaddya think?

If you have any questions/comments/funny conversations to share about the election process or the field trip, please shoot me an email or leave a comment here. Thanks.

Check out the pics of us getting ready for Halloween here and celebrating at our Halloween Party here.

Check out pics taken by the kids here.

We have also begun to really gear up for the election tomorrow.  We had a discussion about the ‘issues’ that both John McCain and Barack Obama stand for.  Now these are tax and education issues but rather favorites of the two candidates to help the children make the most ‘informed’ choice possible for president  : )  Here are our issues we are considering:

Barack Obama Favorites:

Favorite Song:  Marvin Gaye - ‘What’s going on?’

Favorite Movie:  Shrek the Third

Favorite Superhero:  Spiderman

Favorite Cookies:  Shortbread

Favortire Food:  Mexican - Nachos with the cheese sauce on the side

John McCain Favorites

Favorite Song:  Neil Diamond - ‘Sweet Caroline’

Favorite Movie:  Indiana Jones and the Kinddom of the Crystal Skull

Favorite Superhero:  Batman

Favorite Cookies:  Oatmeal Raisen

Favortire Food:  Mexican - Nachos - cheese sauce on the chips

We sampled the favorites of each candidate and tomorrow we will continue discussing these ‘issues’ and what happens when you like something from a candidate you are not voting for.  Check out the pictures here.  I am also hoping that the polling lines here at Ray will not be too long as I would like to take the kids into to see the voting process.  In the midst of all that we will also be continuing to create our own polling booth and will vote after lunch time to be counted on Wednesday.  Should be fun!

So Nyah’s(child next door) father Terrence, who is a professional violin player, came in and did a presentation on his career.  He introduced the children to the violin, viola, and the cello.  Terrence said that he was not able to bring in the bass, which would have completed the string family, because it was much too large.  He had the children compare what each instrument looked like and sounded like.  Then he played the violin while the children sang songs like, Twinkle Twinkle and Old MacDonald.  Check out the pictures here!  A big thanks to Miles who was our photographer for the event!

I have to say, this was one of the best field trips we have ever been on.  As you can see from this sample of pictures here, the children have been preparing and very excited for this trip for some time.  We have been talking about firefighters and what they wear and the parts of the fire engine.  We have been searching out the school for fire alarms, fire pulls, and fire extinguishers, using tally marks to count them and observational drawing to document them.  The morning of the field trip there was just an excitement in the air.  We walked there and saw a haunted house on the way and when we finally arrived at the firehouse we had to wait a few minutes for another group to finish.  While we were waiting it was like trying to hold back hungry lions from their meal.  When we finally met Firefighter Dave,  the children were engaged with everything he said, followed him wherever he took us, tv room, kitchen, workout room, gym, bed room, equipment closet, fire hose rack, SCBA tank rack, a walk through the hazmat truck and finally the fire engine.  The children drew the fire engine, noticing the different shapes that it is made up of and recieved a coloring book, an alarm print out marking our visit, and their very own firehat.  Even though we were only there for about 45 minutes or so the children were so excited that they were exhausted on the way home and for the rest of the day.  To see pictures of our trip click here.   I would also like to thank all the chaperones for coming on the trip and Joshua and his Mother for taking such great pictures!

This week we began learning about and using Tally Marks.  We talked about how Tally marks are used to represent a piece of information that you are working on.  They could be used to represent how many of a certain item you have or as an indicator or vote when making a choice.  We practiced making tally marks in small groups and using one to one correspondence to figure out how many tally marks we needed.  The children also noticed about the size of a tally mark, too long and they got in the way of others marks and tallys too short were hard to count.  Along with tally marks the children, spear-headed by Ethan, began talking about and noticing all the fire alarms and fire pulls around the classroom and in the hallways.  So, over the past few days we have broken up into small groups before naptime and taken Tally Walks around the corridors searching out first fire alarms then fire pulls.  The children had clipboards and markers and whenever they found what they were looking for they made a tally.  They were so excited about our Tally walk that we will continue next week looking for fire extinguishers and see what else they would like to search out.  This interest in fire alarms comes at a good time as will be making our way to the Fire House on the 21st of October.  We also had another fire drill, that went off right as naptime began (of course : ), but the children were able to get together and get out of the building.  They kept their eyes moving though as they noticed the fire alarm is white when it flashes and as we were waiting on the bench outside they were looking for and found the other fire alams flashing through the windows of the school.  The trip to the fire house should prove to be interesting and exciting. 

Today was applesauce day!  My family and I went apple picking a few weekends ago so it seemed like a good time to bring in some apples and do some cooking.  The children used an apple peeler/slicer/corer to prepare the apples.  And after tasting some of the peel (yummy!) brought the apple on over to the chopping table to cut them into bits to help the apples cook.  Then we used the 3 secret ingredients (water, sugar, heat) and boiled those apples down until they turned into applesauce.  As the apples were cooking and started to smell good, Grant commented, ‘It smells like applesauce, but I don’t think it is going to turn into applesauce.’  A few minutes later when Grant, Joshua, and Jeffon were using the potato masher to smush the apples, they all noticed, ‘It IS changing into applesauce!’  Check out the pictures here!

To see pics from the rest of the week click here!

Next week we will be continuing work with Tally marks, making choices, the fire house talk, and begin also talking about the presidential election.  Our children this year seem very interested in talking about who is going to be president and how and why we vote for one.  Have a great weekend and don’t forget NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY!!!

Check out the pictures our new camera takes. click here!

As we continue building our 411 community we have been focusing a lot about our own names.  We have been using them to greet each other in the morning, to vote on different topics, and in mathematical ways by comparing them and seeing which ones are long and short.  To help us with comparing we have been reading Catalina Magdalena Hoopenstiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan was her name by Tedd Arnold and Tikki Tikki Tembo no sa Rembo Chari Bari Ruchi Pip Peri Pembo by Arlene Mosel.  Yesterday we practiced constructing our own names out of unifix cubes, using our name cards and one to one correspondence to make sure there was a cube for each letter in our name.  Today we constructed Catalina’s and Tikki’s name out of Unifix cubes and took a vote on which name we think will be longer.  On Monday, we will reconstruct our own names out of unifix cubes and compare them to Catalina’s and Tikki’s.  Next week we will also be delving into more of the children’s likes (favorite color, food, animal, etc . . . )  and Ms. Diane will finally start next Thursday for our art class.

The open house went really well this year.  I thank everyone who came and listened to Mrs. Butler presentation and my presentation in the classroom.  I have attached the agenda and posted more about the capri sun boxes.  If you find you have questions about either or if you need a Capri Sun box, please let me know. 

Open House 411 Agenda

I.                    Introductions

a.       Mr. Jeff

b.      Parents

II.                 Information

a.       Contact Sheet

b.      Website

c.       Emails?

d.      PTA

e.       Lunch Forms

f.        Directory

g.       Field Trips (WIP)

              i.      Emerald City Theater to see a play

              ii.      Field Museum

            iii.      Children’s Farm with 4^th Grade Buddies

           iv.      Museum of Science and Industry – Idea Factory

           v.      Sears Tower

          vi.      Lincoln Park Zoo with Parker Buddies

          vii.      Little Red School House

    viii.    Room 2 Play

III.               411 Curriculum

a.       Play based

                                                               i.      Socio-emotional

                                                             ii.      Integration of areas of learning

                                                            iii.      Children’s Work

                                                           iv.      Blueprint

                                                             v.      Everyday Math

IV.               Discipline/Behavior

a.       Teacher and Family as partners

b.      In the classroom children may explore

                                                               i.      boundaries

                                                             ii.      own or others bodies

                                                            iii.      language

                                                           iv.      physical responses

V.                 Questions

VI.               Capri-Sun Community Boxes

a.       See attached