Exciting Week

"Shakespeare" has added to the excitement of this first week back from Spring Break.  The K/1's have been rehearsing every morning, and by the end of the week everyone had a part to play in the performance.  The children are learning strategies for performing for an audience, while collaborating, focusing, developing confidence, and having fun.  They are also reviewing skills they have learned in Language Arts, such as using their imagination to create an interesting story containing a beginning, middle, and end.  Very exciting!

In Language Arts everyone has been working on reading and writing at his/her individual level of development.  The children enjoy making fiction or non-fiction books.  Choosing topics for their books has been a great motivator for the children, along with the freedom to write using sound spelling.  The children are also enjoying our classroom library of books on Africa and African animals.  Friday we explored how jewelry is made in Kenya, and we all had a lot fun painting colorful wooden beads.  The children will be using the beads to make bracelets and necklaces.

In Science the children explored reading a thermometer.  The temperature was quite cool.  The children are getting ready to explore the weather in Africa as well.  The children also explored how seeds grow.  Talked about popular vegetables grown in Kenya, and went out to the gardens outside our classroom windows to plant kale, spinach, collards, and radishes.  We were happy to notice that spinach is already growing in one of the beds from last year's planting.

In First Grade Math the children have been exploring measuring using various tools.  They have been sharing their findings, and making discoveries about accuracy.

Enjoy the photos!

Gunn's mom read two wonderful books.  The children loved them! Thank you for visiting!

Annabel is sharing a journal about her trip to Florida.

Busy March!

It has been a busy and snowy March, especially in the last week.  We enjoyed our visitors from Spain.  The K/1's got to do a bit of interacting with the Spanish students during Spanish class.  The Spanish teachers spent time in the K/1 classroom during science and language arts.

There has been so much happening in Science, Language Arts, and Math, and I have so many photos! But I have to limit this post to language arts for now.  Enjoy!

Our visiting teachers jumped right in to help out during language arts and science.

Much of our Language Arts time has been enriched by visitors:

Anastazia's mom shared some wonderful poems from Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewald Ends.  The children loved the poems!

Willow's dad shared photos and a journal from his travels to Namibia, Africa.  The children enjoyed looking at photos of a Safari in the desert.  They had a lot questions and learned about a variety of animals.  The children learned about the Himba Tribe, mud huts, stilt houses, and a special tree called Baobab.  Very interesting and a great beginning to our African study!

Merry's mom baked pretzels with the children.

 Cracking an egg is quite challenging!

 The children remembered all they had learned about yeast in science class and were excited to share their knowledge.

 Most of us had trouble cracking eggs!

 So much fun!

The K/1's enjoy being authors and illustrators.  The first graders decided to practice sharing a few of their books during math time the day before Student-Led Conferences.  They displayed such confidence and joy, as they shared with pride.

Finally the children got to illustrate the story they wrote as a class a few weeks ago.  Next we need to come up with a title.

First day of Spring!

Until next time.

Liliana