Dinosaurs and the end of the year...

We have had a lot of fun with dinosaurs this week. We learned about paleontologists who excavate and uncover bones and fossils. We tried a little pretend excavation of our own with cookies and toothpicks.

We also made some dinosaur foot print fossils of our own.

We had a lot of fun with this egg ...maybe your child can tell you all about it! At first we were worried, but then we did a little research and determined that this was a stegosaurus... and they were plant eaters!

We finished up reading "Charlotte's Web" - we loved all of the characters and everyone had a favorite part. On Friday we began to watch the movie - the children were so surprised and amazed to recognize so many familiar events, characters and words from the book! They absolutely were able to handle listening to a chapter book!

It is very hard to believe that we have come to the end of the year! This was such a wonderful group of children, and they were a joy to teach! This class was excited about learning, and they made such wonderful progress in so many areas. I truly looked forward to seeing them each day, and I will miss them all this summer.  Some of our classmates will move on to Miss Ross' classroom in the fall, some will remain here and one will move to a new home...but we will always be friends! I am always available by email, and hope that you will keep in touch over the summer, and in the future. 

We will be sending home artwork over the next few days, and on Wednesday I will place your child's report card in their home folder. Please be sure to check for it.

Happy Summer Vacation!! Thank you for your support and help this year!

Best Field Day Ever!!

We found five butterflies when we returned to school after the long weekend. We observed them flying in their habitat and watched one butterfly use his proboscis (straw-like tongue) to get juice from a sliced orange.

Finally, we all agreed that it was time to set our butterflies free. We took them outside and watched as each one fluttered out of the net cage. We'll miss them! 

This week we began a little mini unit about Michigan. We painted apple blossoms and made robins to help us remember some of our state symbols. We looked at maps of Michigan and noticed that we have many lakes, and water all around us. We discussed the word "peninsula" and talked about our mitten shape. 

The highlight of the week was Field Day - we had so much fun and the children were wonderful!!! I saw so many examples of turn taking, team work, sharing, helping and patience today! Your kids did a great job!!!

See you all next Tuesday at 2:00 in the Media Center for our Spring Celebration program! 

Our chrysalids...

We watched patiently to see if our butterflies would emerge from their chrysalises. We wanted to be sure that their habitat (the net cage) had food for them, so we put flowers and a sliced orange inside. On Wednesday we noticed that two of them were shaking a lot.

We finished up our insect life cycle unit this week by learning about insect mouths. We learned that a butterfly has a straw-like tongue that it uncoils to sip nectar from a flower and that bees collect pollen on their legs. We tried being like butterflies while we sipped juice, and we were like bees when we munched on some Cheetos. Our fingers were orange with the "pollen" on the Cheetos...when we flew to another flower in the room, we left some of our "pollen" on it. When insects do this in the garden it is called pollination and it helps our gardens grow.

We have held several practices for our Celebration of the Zones performance on June 2 at 2:00. Please remember to send in a blue, yellow, green or red T shirt - we will keep the shirts here to wear on the day of our performance. Your children have all done a great job during our practices - you will feel proud of them!

Next week we will do a mini unit all about Michigan, followed by a study of dinosaurs! Enjoy the long four day weekend!!

Friday, May 29 is our Field Day (rain date is June 1). This is always a fun day for our students. We go in and out throughout the day to participate in a variety of field day events. We take many breaks to help the day go smoothly. Your child should dress for the playground and you may wish to put sunscreen on at home that morning.

Our caterpillars...

Our caterpillars did a lot of eating, molting and growing this week. We saw evidence of their food disappearing and noticed little black balls of molted skin. Our measurements showed that they were longer, and we could see they were thicker too. On Wednesday, we noticed that several of them were hanging from the top in a "J" shape.

By Thursday, we no longer had caterpillars - we had 5 chrysalises! We carefully moved them into a large net cage so that there will be room for butterflies when they emerge. We hope this happens before the long Memorial Day weekend! (or after!)

We read about bees and learned why they are such an important and helpful insect. We also began to learn about ladybugs.

We continued to talk about friendship skills in our social skill lessons. We learned how to think and discuss possible solutions when we can't agree on what to play with a friend. 

Insects, moms and ourselves...

This week we began a new  science unit - the insect life cycle. We learned that all insects have 6 legs and 3 body parts. We included some of our new learning about insects in our new May journals. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and drew the setting, the main character and the beginning, middle and ending of the story. We had fun balloon painting some big caterpillars of our own!

This week we began listening to a chapter book! We are listening to Charlotte's Web and learning to create pictures and images in our head as we listen to the author describe places and characters. So far, we love it! I especially like that students are recognizing the different feelings and zones that Wilber, the pig, experiences.
On Friday we were super excited when our caterpillars arrived! They are 3/4 inch long and we see evidence of molting (shedding skin) and eating. We think they were eating on their journey here and grew so that their skin was too tight, so they had to molt. We made predictions about what they will look like/do by Monday.

We worked as a group to find adjectives to describe one another and then we described ourselves...this was a very positive activity and the children loved hearing the words their classmates used to describe them. Stop by to look at our board when you come for our Parent Support Group Meeting next Tuesday at 6:15. This is our last meeting and will be held in our classroom.

We are working hard on our poem and songs for the Coping Skill Celebration. We hope that many of you will join us - Tuesday, June 2 at 2:00 in the media center. 

Finally, we created a special Mother's Day gift for all of our moms. It was made with love and we hope you will all enjoy it. I would like to send a special wish to all of our moms to have a wonderful Mother's Day - thank you all for sharing your children with me! 

Thank you for all of the flowers, gifts and cards this week for staff appreciation week. It was lovely and greatly appreciated by all of us! We love working with your children!

Would you want to dive into the ocean?

We began our week with this question: "Would you want to dive into the ocean?" We graphed our answers to it. Most students thought it would be fun to scuba dive. We made ourselves as scuba divers - we think we look awesome!

We rounded out our week by learning about whales, octopuses, starfish and sharks - each day we read, wrote and created! Our Ocean books will come home this week, but we will leave some of our artwork up a little bit longer. Sometimes we write from a model, and sometimes we write down our own thoughts about our learning. Many children are labeling their diagrams and adding important detail!

Next week we will begin a new science unit about insect life cycles. This class loves science! They especially love some of the science books I bring in from the library. Your children might really enjoy some trips to your local library this summer! We keep our special library books in big baskets with handles, and many children are able to sustain quiet reading with a basket for 20 minutes! It would be wonderful to build this same quiet reading time into your child's schedule each day this summer. Not only does it help support literacy skills, it is a wonderful way to develop attention and focus!
Our younger students have been working on adding and subtracting numbers using different methods. We can draw a picture or make dots, use our fingers, use a number line or count with cubes. We will be doing a lot more hands on practice with this for all of our students, and they may wish to practice at home as well!

In our Social Skills lessons, we continued to talk about friendly ways to play with a partner. We practiced sharing toys, dividing toys fairly and using a timer to take turns with a toy.

More about the ocean...

This week we learned about crabs, oysters and sea turtles. We made a very tricky red crab and painted some beautiful hermit crabs. We had to listen to the story "A House for Hermit Crab" by Eric Carle, and remember what sea animals decorated the crab's shell. We did this by closing our "speech bubble" and opening our "thinking bubble".  We had to hold all those things in our brains during the story and then use them for our artwork. Every single student did this beautifully!

In our social skills lessons we talked about making friends. We learned that the word empathy means thinking about and understanding another person's feelings. We can use empathy to think about friendly behaviors - smiling, saying "hi" and inviting friends to play. This friendly bunch is getting ready for block recess!  

We practiced friendship skills during partner Center Time too...we share, take turns fairly, and talk things out. 

Two important upcoming events are:

* Our last Parent Support Group Meeting on Tuesday May 12 at 6:15  (note- we are starting 15 minutes later than usual this time). 

* Our Spring Celebration Program on Tuesday June 2 at 2:00 - we hope you can join us as we share some of our learning about the zones!