Update: Earth

Our last Vista musical was a great success! The children were quite enthusiastic about the content of the show (reduce, reuse, and recycle) and have become vigilant with their materials consumption in the classroom. Thanks to all the families for coming out and supporting the children in their efforts as budding thespians!

Rock the World


Reduce-Reuse-Recycle



Hot Down Here - Nice job Charlotte! Only 1st grader to have a solo in the entire musical.

Bridges

Our school district has adopted the math program, Bridges, that Vista 1st and 2nd graders have been piloting this year! We couldn't be happier as Bridges is the most comprehensive program I have used in 20 years of teaching. Our classroom features a combination of whole-group, small-group, and independent activities. Lessons incorporate increasingly complex visual models - seeing, touching, working with manipulatives, and sketching ideas - to create pictures in the mind's eye that helps the children invent, understand, and remember mathematical ideas. By encouraging students to explore, test, and justify their reasoning, the curriculum facilitates the development of mathematical thinking.
Bridges grew out of a project funded by the National Science Foundation to improve the teaching of mathematics. No wonder there is so much science content within each unit (insects, sea creatures, penguins, farm animals)! Students are being exposed to mathematical concepts in a consistent and developmentally appropriate manner. They know concepts about money, time, place value, and computation that wouldn’t have been introduced yet in our past program thanks to the daily calendar routine called Number Corner.
Grade 1 Scope and Sequence
Grade 2 Scope and Sequence
Stay tuned for an update on our current math unit: My Little Farm - focusing on money, place value, and mapping skills.

We LOVE math!!!

Rotational Symmetry

The children came back from vacation and jumped right back into the school routine, picking up right where we left off . . . rotational symmetry! Using 9 x 9 square patterns and 90 degree mirrors they discovered the properties of rotational symmetry by turning each grid to check for new patterns. Once this was done they chose the pattern they liked best, made four copies, and worked to find out how many possible arrangements could be made. This process gave each child an opportunity to see the effects of turning and combining shapes that have varying degrees of rotational symmetry. The end results combined 3 different lessons, addition equations equaling 9, a group chart showing everyone's initial work with 9 block patterns, and their final designs. We LOVE math!!!

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Goodbye Mrs. Jackson

We had a going away party for our beloved Mrs. Jackson, 17 year veteran of the Williston School District, this morning. Mrs. Jackson is moving to North Carolina with her husband and will be missed by everyone at ABS and especially here in Vista House. It is hard to imagine a time when Mrs. Jackson wasn't here helping children become better readers, writers, and mathematicians.
We all wish her well and will keep in touch.

Sky Watchers

Our study of the solar system will center around the objects in the sky that we can actually see; sun, moon, and stars. We began by learning about the largest star . . . the sun! After reading a great book by Frank Asch called Bear Shadow we decided to experiment with our own shadows. First thing in the morning when the sun was low in the sky we traced around our shadows with chalk and then measured them. After recess we went back to our shadows when the sun was high in the sky and retraced our shadows and measured them. To everyone's amazement we had all shrunk considerably!
Stay tuned for more Sky Watching as we chart the phases of the moon and create our own pieces of the surface of the moon.

How cold is the water around Antarctica?

The children had fun learning how to read a thermometer beginning with warm water simulating that found around the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida Gulf coast at a balmy 65 degrees. They slowly added cooler water as we moved to the Atlantic Ocean off the eastern Florida coast and the Pacific Ocean off the northern California coast. We continued to cool our water as we went to the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon and Washington coast and then a little closer to home in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast. Then we plunged into the ice cold water and brought our temperature down to 30 degrees in the Antarctic Ocean. It was amazing to watch and listen to them grasp the understanding of counting by 2's on the thermometer - counting backwards by 2's at that. One would have thought we actually took a field trip to Antarctica!

Andrew's Teepee

While tracking animal prints during 4 Winds we came upon Andrew the Gardener's teepee just over the hillside outside our backdoor. We were all quite intrigued and really, really wanted to explore it more inside and out, but . . . we would have destroyed all the fresh animal tracks. A snow shower that night covered all the animal tracks so we decided to make tracks of our own straight to the teepee for Aidan's birthday celebration! We read 2 great books that both ended as "cliff hangers". Thanks Andrew for constructing such an awesome teepee!