Monday, April 26, 2010

Outdoor Classroom :)

We visited the outdoor classroom with Mrs. Spurlin's class today :) After we observed all of the plants growing outside, we decided to plant our own grass seeds! We also had fun looking at the fish. The kids just loved being outside in the fresh air. We had a wonderful time!

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Pizza Party!

The class earns stickers for good behavior. The goal is to earn 20 stickers in order to get a class party! The kids voted for a pizza party this time around. We earned our 20 stickers last week and so the kids were rewarded with pizza on Friday :) Yummy!







Monday, April 19, 2010

All About Plants!

Our new science unit is Plants! We discussed plants and seeds and what plants need to survive. We discussed how plants are living things because they grow, eat, drink, and have babies! After we learned that seeds and plants need water, air, soil, and sunlight to grow, we thought we were ready to grow our own plants. Today we took soaked lima beans (our seeds) and placed them in zip loc baggies with a damp paper towel. We left the zip loc bags slightly open to allow air to get in. We talked about how the paper towel is acting as our soil :) Then, we taped the baggies in the window to give the seeds sunlight. Here is a video of Reggie talking about his seed project! I will post updates on our lima beans :) Soon, we will be visiting the outdoor classroom to plant more seeds! Check back to see pictures!

Animals should definitely not...

Today we read, "Animals should definitely not wear clothing" by Judi Barrett. The book shows silly pictures of animals trying to wear clothes with real reasons for why it would be difficult for animals to wear clothing. For example, one page says "because it might make life hard for a hen". Then there is a picture of a hen laying an egg inside a pair of pants. The kids just laughed and laughed at this book! :) After we read the book, we finished the sentence, "Animals should definitely not..." in writing. Some of the things that students wrote include: "Animals should definitely not ride in a car because they would crash it.", "Animals should definitely not go to a nail shop.", "Animals should definitely not go to the movie theater.", etc. I have posted some videos of students talking about what they wrote :) Enjoy!


2+2=4

We started our new math unit on addition! We are certianly whizzing through it! We have been using counting bears, unfix cubes, the Smart Board, and other manipulatives to practice solving addition problems. We have learned to make combinations to 10 and then write the corresponding addition sentence. We have also learned to start with an addition sentence and model the problem with manipulatives to solve the problem. Everyone is doing such a wonderful job with addition. I am so very proud of our students :)

Happy Birthday to our April babies!!

We are celebrating 3 birthdays this month! Happy Birthday to.....

Dalyncia Amrhein- 13th
McKynzie Dixon- 21st
Devin Swain- 23rd



McKynzie, Devin, Dalyncia

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Happy Easter :)

With Easter on its way, this week has been fun and crazy! I have so many exciting Easter activities to share! We have used plastic Easter eggs, with letters and word parts written on each half, to connect and sound-out words! We used plastic Easter eggs and regular egg cartons to match sight words:) After we read "Hopper's Surprise", the kids *loved* using the Smart Board to design their very own Easter egg. We read "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and discussed characters. The students used foam pieces to dress their own bunny and wrote a story with their bunny as the main character! :) We even read "Happy Easter" and wrote in our journals about where we would hide Easter eggs if we were an Easter bunny. Their writings were very creative!

And of course we connected our Easter theme to our math graphing unit! Each student went on an Easter egg hunt within the classroom. Their mission was to find the egg with their name on it. When they did, they were to go to their seats and explore what was inside their egg. They soon found that each egg had different colored jelly beans :) They used an "Eggcelent Egg- Hunting" graph and graphed the jelly beans by color. They loved this because they got to eat their jelly beans when they were finished :) Thats not all! We dyed hard-boiled eggs and then ate them, went on an Easter egg hunt outside, created our own bunny milk jug Easter baskets, and enjoyed our treats from the Easter bunny on Friday! What a wonderful week! You can click on "View All Images" on the slide show to see the pictures better. Some other books we read and loved were: "The Runaway Bunny", "The Night Before Easter", "Corduroy's Easter Party", and "Easter Ribbit"!

Ewww!! We ate worms! yuk!

The worms were actually very delicious :) We read "Wonderful Worms" by Linda Glaser and talked about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. We came to the conclusion that "Wonderful Worms" is a non-fictional book because it gives us information about worms. Then, we participated in an interactive writing activity and recorded the things we learned about worms on chart paper! After our hard work, we enjoyed a wonderful dirt cake snack (with worms and all)!


Happy Birthday to our March babies!

We have celebrated many March birthdays and I am excited to share them with you on our blog! :) All of the kids made my birthday extra special! Mrs. Spurlin, Mrs. Barrett, & Mrs. Householder put mine and Mrs. Spurlin's class up to surprising me with birthday cards and birthday cake! They really made my day. Thank you to all of our wonderful kids and thank you to Mrs. Spurlin, Mrs. Barrett, and Mrs. Householder for helping to make my day a special one :)
Reggie- 19th
Draven- 20th
ElaNique- 25th
Mrs. Chavis- 27th!