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Forest Walk

We went to our first forest walk at the Pokrovsky Forest.  We collected lots of big sticks. We made a “Nature Collage” in the hallway.  We saw different kinds of flowers and trees.  We saw a pond with ducks swimming in there.  We found the beaver’s house with something fluffy and white on it. There were many leaves covering it too.   We walked up and down the stairs when we went to the beaver’s house.  The stairs were near the beaver’s house.  We saw holes near the beaver’s house.  We wondered if that’s how the beaver gets into his house or how the beaver gets into the water.  We also saw lots and lots of green grass and brown leaves on the ground.  The leaves must be falling down from the trees.  We saw mushrooms as well.  We wondered if they are poisonous or not.  We enjoyed our forest walk because we like Autumn.

KZE writers: Kyle, Fatima, Michael, Emerson, Liam, Charlie, Max, Lizzy, Trace, Lisa, Hannes, Freddie, Daisy, Scarlett, Safiya, and Mrs. Zurfluh

 

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Strategies…

KZE students created this post during share writing time in the classroom this morning.  Here is what we did:

  • We sorted people
  • For example, we all sat on the carpet.  We picked people to go to the middle.  And the other people tried to guess what strategy we were using
  • We sorted by hair colors
  • We sorted by shoe colors
  • We sorted by red clothes
  • I learned that we need to raise our hands when we have something to say
  • I learned how to sort people and stuff by saying what they look like, and put them together
  • Most important thing we learned was that we can sort by using different strategies.

We revised our writing, and added more details.  We decided to add our names.  We hope you enjoyed our post.

KZE writers: Kyle, Michael, Emerson, Liam, Max, Daisy, Scarlett, Fatima, Charlie, Lizzy, Lisa, Trace, Hannes, Safiya, and Freddie

 

 

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Sorting and Inquiry – How the World Works!

The KZE explorers had a busy week.

In Math, students had a chance to explore/play with many different kinds of buttons.  They needed to describe the buttons with words such as “red,” “little,” “2 holes,” “smooth,” etc.  They were asked to sort buttons into groups according to these terms. sorting This is a  foundational math skill that helps students to identify common attributes and begin to see different ways to match and sort objects.  In essence, it is a methodology for making sense of key mathematical understanding.

Similarly, during the introduction to our year long unit of  “How the World Works”, students were given a picture of people riding bicycles and another picture of a single bicycle wheel.  They used a visible thinking strategy titled “I See, I think, I wonder…” to describe what they observed.

Here are the highlight of our conversation:

  • “I see a wheel, it is a bicycle wheel”
  • “it is round, it is a circle”
  • “what did you notice about the circle?”cycle discussion
  • “it goes around and around and around”
  • “it is a cycle”
  • “what is a cycle?”
  • “a cycle can be a circle”
  • “a cycle can be a rectangle, or a triangle.  as long as it doesn’t end”
  • “it is repeating”
  • “can you think of anything that can be called a cycle?”
  • “the weather”
  • “recess”
  • “writing”
  • “the earth rotating”
  • “the class schedule”, “the day of the week”, “and the month of the year”

Through the conversation, students made a leap from our picture to a basic understanding of the concept of a cycle.  We were able to make connections to their daily experiences and, like in math, formed a core concept that will serve our ongoing theme of how things work.

 

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Math – graphing

graphing

 The concept of basic graphing was introduced.  Students used data on eye color, hair color, and the number of letters in their names to create bar graphs.  They now have a basic knowledge of how to describe information on the graph.

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We are Writers…

We are writersDuring Writer’s Workshop, we learned that writers sometimes close their eyes to picture an idea that they want to write about, and this helps them to include more details in their pictures and through their words. We also practiced saying words slowly and writing down the sounds that we hear. Students tried very hard to apply these skills when they wrote their “I Like” book.

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Share reading…

After reading the story of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Eric Carle, we made our own classroom book “Children, Children, Who Do You See?” They had fun chanting the sentences with their friend’s names inserted into the chant.

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Belfair Trip

This last week has been a blast! From playing LOTS of football to camping with family and friends. First of all, if all of you didn’t know, my family and I have just arrived in University Place, Washington. We plan to spend our summer break here, and stay until early August. My summer here will be eventful and fun-filled. So far, I have gone to the campground in the small town of Belfair and stayed with my Cousins and friends there for about 5 days. It had to be one of my favorite camping trips of all. I had countless fun moments there, from playing lacrosse to eating sweets in the tent that we shared. I’m sure we all had a blast. One of my favorite things to do there was to play a game called Navias with everyone. This is a Football game, which involves scoring of crosses, volleys and headers with a fun twist. It was a unique game which had many fun surprises! With all this, I’m still keeping athletic and fit, so I’ll keep everyone updated! 🙂 Talk to you soon.

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Belfair is Awesome!

For the past few days me and my brother Jaisen went to a camp ground named Belfair. We went with my uncles family, my cousin’s godparent’s family, and my friend. We go there every year to celebrate my aunts b-day which is on the 4th of July. Since we spent the past year in Moscow we were very anxious to go while we were back. When me and my brother found out we were going we were so ecstatic. So on that day we hurried home packed our bags and hurried over to Belfair. Even though it took 40 minutes to get there it was worth it. When we first got there we were a little bit shy since we just got back from Russia. But after a few minutes we opened up and had a blast. My favorite part was when we had a seaweed fight. Basically what you do is you separate into teams and you find seaweed and throw at the other team. The teams were The Zurfluhs VS. The Non-Zurfluhs.  It was soooooo much fun! But one bad thing was that both teams had to walk back to the camp ground all slimy and fishy. Good thing I got to shower. Another one of my favorite parts was when all of the kids went to the store. Near Belfair there is this mini market that has an antique store next to it. So what we like to do is we go there and stock up on all sorts of stuff to eat in the tent. I still have a lot of candy but kids are kids right? Basically what I’m trying to tell you is I had a lot of FUN!

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Belfair Camping 2012

The kids spent some time staying with my brother out at Belfair State Park again this summer.  As usual, they had a great time and the weather was generally cooperative despite some typical Washington rain.  Most of it was blue skies and lots of fun!

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