Learning Activities for Monday, April 20th

Dearborn Public Schools Remote Learning Plan

This will be a long post so please bear with me! 😁 Dearborn Public Schools has finalized their remote learning plan and it has been approved by the state. I was in several long video meetings last week learning about how to implement the plan. The important thing to remember is that school is still in session, we just can’t use the building right now.

• The format of our assignments will basically stay the same, each activity should take you about 5-10 minutes to complete. If your child wants to work on them longer that is great, but please do not feel like they should be sitting and working for hours at a time. I am doing my best to design activities that you can easily do with materials you already have in your house. Our department is in the process of making a list of supplies children need so we can hand out materials when we are allowed back into Cotter. I will keep you posted on that. Thank you to everyone who filled out the materials survey, it was extremely helpful for me to know what you need.

• Part of the state requirement is that I must be in communication with students and families. I will continue to send home lessons, and I NEED parents to send me some sort of proof of learning through the week. Basically, keep sending me those adorable pictures of your children!❤ I need at least one picture of your child doing the daily activity so I can mark that assignment complete in my grade book.

• Beginning this week we will have a weekly class video chat every Tuesday afternoon. We will use google meets for these virtual meetings.

I am so proud of all the work you and your families are doing at home during this difficult time. Keep it up, and please do not hesitate to message or email me if you need any help. There are no sily questions, we are all figuring this out together!

Class Video Chat

Our first class video chat will be tomorrow (Tuesday, April 21st) at 2pm. I am so excited to see everyone’s faces and hear your voices! This will be our practice so we can all figure out how to use the website. We will have weekly virtual class meetings on Tuesday afternoon for the remainder of the school year.

Due to security concerns the district does not want us using Zoom, we will be using google meets for our virtual class meetings. Google meets can be used on a phone, ipad, or computer. I tested it out on all of my devices first to make sure. On your phone or ipad you can access it from the internet browser or download the app. I downloaded the app because I felt it was easier.

To access Google Meet

1. In a web browser, enter https://meet.google.com.
2. Click Join or start a meeting.
3. Enter a nickname – I will send the nickname code out on Remind before the start of the meetings.

If you need help with Google Meet message me today so I can help you.

Homeschool Heroes

Practicing the letter Qq, completing a book scavenger hunt, and designing their own National Park!

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Work Time

This is a new section! During the school day children have time to make a plan for what they would like to do, and then work with those materials for an hour. We then clean up and talk about what we used, who we played with, if our plans changed, etc. We are all spending a lot of time on the computer or other screens right now and it is important for young children to turn them off for a bit and have free play time.

Planning Time (5 minutes): Build your child’s ability to organize their time by having them make a “plan” with you about what they would like to play with.  Children do this everyday with us at school. It helps children learn to organize their thoughts. Adults make plans all the time to organize their thoughts (shopping lists are made before going to the grocery store, to do lists are made to help plan your day etc..).  

Kids will tell you what they are planning to do/want to play with/how they will use toys at home. 

Work Time (45-60 minutes): Worktime/Kids play WITHOUT ELECTRONICS  Kids can use toys to pretend play, build, and create.

Clean Up (about 15 minutes):  Kids clean up the mess they have made while playing.

Recall Time (5 minutes): Build your child’s memory of events by having your child tell you what they did while they played (ask “tell me how you did that” or “what did you do next?”)

Letter of the Week

Our new letter of the week is Cc! C says “kuh” like cat, cake, and cone. To make a letter C you start at the top and make a biiiiiiiiig curve around.

Assignment

This week we’re going to be doing several activities with the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We read this story in school and you may have it in your Daily 5 bag! Here is the link to the story so you can listen to it together.

What was your favorite part of the story? Draw a picture of your favorite part and try to write what you liked about it. (It is important that the children are drawing and writing on their own, I need to see what they can do independently so I know how to help!)

Now let’s do some math, we’re going to make some patterns today! A pattern is something that repeats like; red, blue, red, blue or 1,2,3,1,2,3 or circle, square, circle, square.

Using scissors and paper, cut out 10 paper circles. (If you do not have scissors your child could rip the paper with their fingers or draw circles in a line on paper.)

Choose two colors (ex. Red and blue), have your child color 5 circles one color and 5 circles the other color. Then use the circles to make caterpillars with different pattern bodies!

Send me a picture of your favorite part of the story and your pattern caterpillar so I can see what you did!

As always, read together for at least 20 minutes.

The sun is shining, get outside and play in the backyard or go for a walk!

Have a great day!

Mrs. Stortini