Students have been enjoying a little extra recess during the nice weather - and taking on science learning opportunities on the playground. From giant leaves to finding insects to chasing butterflies and dissecting flowers, students are extending their learning while engaging in the scientific process. Students were heard making observations, predictions, and questioning during today's morning recess!
What a great way to practice fluency in reading - reading/singing poetry! We've been learning a variety of color poems this week and children are really enjoying (and asking) to 'perform' in front of their peers! Check out these videos of your amazing children! More to come next week!
On Monday and Tuesday night, a handful of chicks broke out of their shells and were welcomed by their Kindergarten friends. This week, students learned about how to care for chicks and what they need in order to survive. Students enjoyed talking with the chicks and even reading them stories during library time on Friday. We spent a lot of time observing what the chicks look like and how they are responding to their new environment outside the egg. On Friday, we said goodbye, and wished them well - a Kindergarten family from Mrs. Dostie's class has brought them home to their chicken farm. 
During literacy this week, we continued to journal and learn more about life of a chicken on a farm. We read a range of "Little Red Hen" stories and responded to various prompts. Children are being encouraged to listen carefully to the question and come up with a resposne that directly answers the question. They are also learning how to stay on topic while expanding their thoughts with multiple sentences. Most children are just learning how to include various forms of punctuation and are working on pinpointing when to use a period verse an exclamation point and a question mark. Students also spent some time imagining they were a chicken and thought about what they would say when they first hatched out of the egg. Kindergartners wrote their thoughts in a speech bubble and created some chicken art. 
We lucked out with another beautiful weather day for ECO. We beat the rain and had sunshine streaming down on us all morning. The focus of today's lesson was to think about how people and our community use Harrison Field/Forest and what people need to help them use this area. Students explored ways that they could make this area more assessible and user friendly. Children explored the forest journaling ideas on how to improve the park. Ideas ranged from putting in trash cans, making signs, maps and trails, fixing bridges, clearing brush, building play structures made of natural materials, creating an outdoor meeting place, and helping people find their way through the forest and field. In first grade, we plan to take on a few of these projects as a grade! After this exploration and meeting in the forest to share out ideas, students spent time building fairy houses using materials from the forest floor that were already dead and on the ground. 
You may have heard from your child yesterday, but a chick hatched over the weekend. When we went to turn the eggs on Friday afternoon, we noticed a small crack in the egg and then a few hours later, we began hearing a faint, "cheep cheep" and saw an egg tooth appearing! We were quite surprised and by Saturday morning, we had welcomed our first healthy chick - many days earlier. On Monday, this prompted a conversation about early births and students engaged in the questioning process of why this may have happened when the typical egg hatches after 21 days. Students met and chatted with this first chick yesterday and in a few days, it will move to a local farm to continue its growth while we await the arrival of the other 2 dozen eggs. As we were turning the eggs today, students began to notice that the eggs were becoming a bit heavier and hope that they too hatch soon. We continue to journal our observations and questions while reading more about the life cycle of a chick. Our class is adding to a vocabulary chart of interesting words we come across in our reading and adding them to our chart. INQUIRE with your child what an egg tooth is or what an embryo is! In math, we are now working on solving number story problems all about chicks! Students are becoming quite efficient in showing their thinking during this process!
Thank you to Steph and her little assistant who graciously spend an hour a week helping me with preparation and organization around the classroom. I'm so appreciative of her willingness to help me out with various projects around our classroom ranging from cutting and pasting, labeling, and taking down bulletin boards - most activities that are not so fun - but quite time consuming! Thank you Steph!
