Mar 12 2012
Just a reminder…We will have our Parent Meeting for March on Thursday at 6:30pm. It will follow our Spring Open House for perspective families. If you are able to come early for the Open House at 5:00 Mr. Smith is looking for volunteers! Please email him at rwsmith@bsugmail.net or call the school at 226-4260. Thank you!!
Mar 12 2012
I am so excited to be back in the swing of things with the kids today! I had a lot to share with them about the professional development trip to Portland, and I will be sharing some on the blog over the next few weeks!
Today we started a new unit in our Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop. We began talking about retelling. Over the next few weeks we are going to use fairy tales help us retell stories. Today, during Writer’s Workshop, we used the book, The Little Red Hen. The kids helped me point out the characters and the setting. At the end of our book I encouraged them to possibly retell one of their own favorite stories. I was so impressed to see how many kids took that suggestion and started writing about Goldilocks, The Little Red Hen, and more!
Dorothy is retelling the story of The Little Red Hen in Writer's Workshop.
Mar 12 2012
Ruth describes the life cycle of a worm.
Greetings! I am back from my professional development trip to Portland and I am so happy to be back! It was great to see all of the kids this morning and I got lots of hugs- definitely filled up my bucket. 🙂 The kids had lots of questions about the school I visited and what life in Portland, OR is like. We had many questions about what the children from Portland were like.
When I came in this morning, Da’Sean and Messi had news about the worms- they had eaten almost ALL of our leaves and newspaper in the compost bin. WOW! It took those worms only about a week to turn all of that material into rich, black, nutrient filled soil. The kids also remarked on the increase of egg cases on the worms- signs they have mated and are carrying baby worms! We pulled out a few worms to observe other changes. Miss Schmidt and I asked the kids to represent the changes in the worms using clay or various ribbons and string.
The more he eats, the fatter he gets! Ruth
And the longer he gets! Carriea
What if we twist those around? Its an egg case! They got an egg case! And when the eggs are inside, and when the case comes off it turns into… Messi
Its a cocoon and baby worms come out! Aidan
We knew that! Da’Sean
We all knew that! Tajanaye
My worms are gonna have eyes, but they don’t really have em. This one is long, this one is shorter. The long one ate more. Here’s an egg case! Tajanaye
I made five baby worms! How many hearts are there? Aidan
I made a little worm with five hearts. Regan
He doesn’t have hands or legs. He just has hearts! Aidan
It all starts with an egg case. Ruth
How many hearts are in one worm?
Mar 09 2012
Today was a really fun day! We continued to learn about schema and how because all of our experiences are different, our schema is different. The children are understanding this more and more which is helping them with the understanding of the texts around them.
We had some astronaut ice cream and helmets donated by Jett’s mom today and boy did we have an exciting time trying on the helmets and eating the ice cream. Mr. Nored held a lively conversation with the class about why astronaut ice cream was different than the ice cream we eat here on earth. There were many thoughtful responses like”There are no freezers in space!” and “It would melt!”
We finished our class book All About Clementines today which finished our conversation on the five senses and juicy words for now. We have been encouraging the children to seek out those juicy words in books that they are reading as well as use them in their own writing!
We ended the day today with a dance party with the whole Lab School! It was such a fun way to end the great week we all had!
Mar 08 2012
Today we figured out that it might take a while to get out into space because we are still working on our space suits and helmets…they keep wanting to work on them and are so engaged that we do not want to rush this experience. We will continue to work on these things next week so that we are better prepared for space travel.
The children have been learning about schema and continuing to learn about how using our five senses can help give us “juicy” words to help us with our reading and writing. Yesterday Mr. Nored began writing a class book all about clementines. They looked at some real clementines and used some great descriptions to talk about what the clementines looked like. Then, today we focused on the smell and the sound? Oh my gosh! I thought the sound part would be difficult, but they were so creative with figuring out that it sounds like it is cracking when it is being peeled! They were really enjoying the smell of them as we passed around the clementines so we might have had to eat some of them…haha!
We hope the moon journals have been fun to do with your child!! Mr. Nored and I each mornign have been talking about how the moon looked the night before so we have to do moon journals too now!
It is hard to see but this is a rocket (left) and some constellation artwork (right) of space that some friends put together today! We left it up because they worked so hard on it!
Mekhi looking through our awesome new telescope!
