Sunday, June 11, 2017

Weekly Summary: 9/5-6/9

The Rain Garden is being well tended to during morning recess.  With some of the proceeds from the Seed Sale, watering cans were purchased, so the children can have a watering brigade, from the spigot to the flowers.  The garden will need watering all summer.  A sign up will be coming out soon.  






The children took their notebooks to County Farm Park for writing time on Wednesday.   There was a sea shell search in the sand on the Kindergarten playground.  After collecting all the shells, children spent time identifying and trading their finds. 




















Thursday, in math, the children did a survey of the traffic in front of the school.  They used their skills making tally marks to keep track of the trucks, cars, of various makes, vans, and SUVs as they passed. 




Sunday, June 4, 2017

Weekly Summary: May 30-June 2


Plants were put in the rain garden this week. Our class planted the strawberries and blue iris. 




Thank you, Jessica for helping us with the planting.

It was our turn to present at “Friday’s Morning Meeting”. The children told everyone about some of the projects we have been doing related to sustainability. In preparation for Friday’s meeting, the children worked in small groups. Each group was given a topic that they designed a poster around. Then they planned what they would say about the poster.  

Kids in Motion. On Friday afternoon, Katie was the substitute for P.E. class. She sent me these fantastic photographs of the children jumping. 










Saturday, May 27, 2017

Weekly Summary: 5/22-5/26

Over the past couple months, as a class, we have been discussing and doing projects around seeds and gardens. Reading the The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, seemed a fitting novel to read in conjunction with these themes.  We are really enjoying the novel. The story is full of mysteries.  Just recently one mystery was solved.  The main character, Mary, found the key, and the door to the garden, that has been locked up for 10 years. 







Emma, 8th grader, came and told the class about how some tropical fish are poisoned with cyanide and this is killing the coral reefs. 

The children performed the Musical they have been working on over the past couple months. The anticipation for this event was palpable.  On Thursday, the children critiqued their performance. They said that the songs went well but there were points in the play that were confusing to the audience and there were some mistakes. Despite these problems, most thought the performance deserved at least a 4 stars out of 5. 





The week ended with a trip to Fossil Park. The children turned into paleontologists. They dug out fossils from the ancient sea bed.








Thank you to Shan for organizing the trip and Ed and Lindsey for joining us. 



Sunday, May 21, 2017

Weekly Summary: 5/15-5/19

Sustainability was the center of activities this week. After weeks of collecting, processing, and packaging seeds, the 1st and 2nd graders had their seed sale. The sale was very successful, making $150 for the Rain Garden project. 





















On our “Spring Nature Walk” with Kelsey, our class helped rid the woods of the invasive garlic mustard to help the native flowers sustain their rightful place in the woods.
























In Math, the children have been practicing adding and multiplying in a “go round” game. Each child gets a card with a number and a problem on it. A child reads a card that tells their number and asks a question. The child with the answer to the question response and so it goes till we get back to the first child. For example: “I have 25. Who has 6 x 3?”.

Thank you to Jessica and Joan for engaging the children for hour so I could attend the Teacher Appreciation Breakfast. They had the children write me lovely notes and make me a beautiful bunting. Thank you to all the people who brought in delicious food for the breakfast. 



Saturday, May 13, 2017

Weekly Post 5/8-5/12

Happy Mother's Day
We hope you enjoy your day!

This week was full of special events. Another round of EBs started with gusto. Monday and Wednesday; children were busy playing with light and color, cooking delicious treats, and learning about physics in order to build a race car. 

Tuesday morning there was a trip to the Scrap Box to learn about recycling and reusing materials. Each child created a robot out of recycled items, and got to go shopping for more recycled materials to take home for future projects. 


Sue explains how the Scrap Box gets materials from businesses
that would would normally go straight to landfills. The important
message is Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose.














Thursday, author Amy Shrodes about writing her book Lost and Found Cat




At the end of the day, Jessica and Edison explained the blue bird survey they are working on this spring and summer. They gave us a tour of the nesting boxes in County Farm Park.




One ​nest has 5 beautiful blue bird eggs in it.  They were too high for us to look at but Jessica took a photo of them for us to see.


Update:
On Friday Jessica and Edison found 3 eggs hatched.


Friday, we had the Fun Run and cheered for runners in the SK 5K. Edison is in the Running Club after school so he was able to participate in the 5K. The children chanted his name as he began the race and gave him "high 5s"as he ran to the finish.