Friday's Flight

BLUE ANGEL CIRCLE TIME
After yesterday's excitement and today's anticipation, the Blue Angels were a common conversation topic. Belle conducted her own Q&A about two inflatable airplanes that we discussed. One was a passenger jet and the other was a Blue Angel. Students took turns identifying the parts of the plane, comparing their shapes (rounder/pointier), windows (alot/only one), engines (4/2), wings and tailfins(single/double) and very importantly-where the noise comes from. We also looked at a stack of photos taken from last Fleet Week.
Andy: "Does any one know where this is?"
Aidan: "That's the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Andy: "And this is the San Francisco Bay, and there's Angel Island."
Christopher: "You mean BLUE Angel Island. Blast off!"

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES
Today was all about reviewing and practicing the skills we had leaqrned earlier this week. We started off with multi-colored whirlygigs for the students to make on their own by cutting, folding and stapling. Some had so many staples they looked like flying zippers. Our visit to the grassy playground went as planned. The ground was not mushy, but it was a bit muddy, so anyone testing soaps or detergents will have a great test market. Highlight was finding a bevy of worms near the sandbox.

TODAY'S STORY
By popular demand, we revisited What Are Friends For?, a story that chronicles a tried and true friendship between a fox and a bear. We love to revisit stories from previous weeks to assess memory, sequencing, and logical reasoning of schema. Our class is in the schema stage of reading development. Forming coherent and plausible ideas relating to the illustrations and experience is a hallmark of this stage. One behavior that you have probably witnessed is the memorization of stories from repeated readings. As we learn more and more letters and a few simple sight words, we will move further along, ironically reading simpler books that they will learn to read independently.