Happy Thanksgiving

I wanted to make a special post and wish my classroom families a Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope you are able to spend some much needed time with your family and enjoy those moments together.

I also wanted to let you know how thankful I am for every single kiddo in our classroom as well as the family that support them.   Each and every child in our classroom holds a special place in my heart, and I thank you for sharing them with me for these 9 months.  Each child brings a positive spark into our classroom, a gentle spirit or a lively chatter, a continuous smile or a burst of knowledge. Each child has an important place in our classroom and I am soo thankful to be a part of their learning this year.

I have learned so much from your child too.  I have been reminded to slow down and follow their lead. I've learned that we all need breaks and in different ways. I've learned to teach the same material in a different way, to stretch my mind and better meet the needs of the children. Your child has helped me grow as a teacher and a parent.  They have taught me to find those learning moments in places that I least expect them, to find different ways of looking at what we're doing.

And I'm thankful for you, our parents.  I truly believe that the relationships between home and school has a big impact on student learning.  I am thankful for your continued support and your dedication to helping make your child's school year an important focus.  I appreciate the openness and relationships that we've started to build, between parent and teacher.

So as we get this break from school, I hope you are able to find things that you are thankful for.  I hope you get to find some special time with your kiddo during the break, time to tell them that you're thankful for their smiles, personalities, and for them being there.

To my Fremont families.....HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Pioneer Days

Whew...These past two days were a whirlwind of excitement and now exhaustion!  And this is a warning....this post is full of pictures!

As mentioned in previous posts that we've been reading about pioneer life while reading aloud Little House in the Big Woods.  We're soon going to be taking a break from the book and looking at the Nutcracker.  So what better time to celebrate what we know about pioneer life and spend some time actually doing things like pioneers might have?

We experienced many things:

• making bread and butter
• learning how to weave and make a basket
• saw a duck and a chicken, talked about raising farm animals
• learned games like hopscotch, Cat's Cradle, and leapfrog
• made rag dolls

I hope that these activities truly impacted your child and made a lasting impression, driving home the similarities and differences of the times back then. I hope too that these past 2 days your child learned a new skill or found they enjoy something new.

We also had our first FAMILY LUNCH TIME on Tuesday. It was great to have more of our classroom family with us for lunch.  I will let you know if and when we will have another one.  If you have any suggestions or comments please let me know.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving break...hopefully you get to spend some special time with your family.

Learning to play Leapfrog!

Making a RagDoll

Working on their RagDolls

The Cramer family in a duck and chicken...we got to crack open the eggs to compare them!

Chip the duck got to visit our classroom

Checking out the different eggs

Mrs. Cramer and Nibbles the duck (he's the nice one)

We learned some square dancing moves

 

Miss Alison helping with the yarn for our baskets

Just getting started on her woven basket.

The basket weaving was HARD work!

We finished 2 of the 3 parts to the Little House in the Big Woods mini-series

Our Pioneer Journals

A Healthy Reminder

Hello families!   This is just a reminder that cold and flu season is here! !!

Please be sure your child is getting enough rest, practicing good hand washing and eating a variety of fruits and vegetables.   It's important that your child stays healthy so the rest of your family doesn't catch the bug and also so that we don't spread sick germs back and forth in our room.

With that being said...Our attendance has gotten worse over the past month.  Please help ensure your child is at school each day and on time unless he or she is sick.  There is a lot of learning that takes place promptly at 803 am when the bell rings and continues right up until dismissal. 

Thank you for your continued support and helping to make this year a success!!!

(Big thanks to GV for the picture props)

Family Lunch Time

We are really hoping to have a classroom packed full of special family for our first 

Family Lunch Time next week!  

On Tuesday we are welcoming into our classroom our parents to have lunch with us.   Although this is the day before our Thanksgiving break, we're not doing the typical Thanksgiving dinner.  This is a normal lunch time, just in the classroom, with our all of our classmates.  You'll bring in your own lunch and then join us in back in the classroom.   No school work.  No fun activities. No pressure!!

This will be a great time to spend 30 minutes with your child, in our classroom, with our school family.  

I am soooo excited and am hoping for a great turnout!
If you aren't able to make it, another special adult can come in your place. We all hope to see you there!

There's a Sound That No One Knows...

I will go ahead and apologize right now.  But I assure you that we had a LOT of fun.   

Today we sang with Ms Davis' class for the monthly assembly.   Each month one or 2 classes get to perform for the school at the Celebration Assembly. This month it was our turn.  

And if you hadn't heard, we sang the obnoxiously popular song "The Fox" , by Ylvis.  You know the song... 
"What does the fox say? 
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
What the fox say?"

Yeah...that song. So I apologize if your kiddo has been singing that song relentlessly.   If they haven't, I apologize because now it's probably stuck in your head.  So sorry :) If you aren't familiar with the song go ahead and do an internet search....but you've been forewarned. 

The kiddos had a blast though and really "rocked it out".  It is wonderful to see them having fun in front of the whole school, being confident and owning it.   I *might* have recorded it...and it *might* end up on here, I'll have to see if I can figure out how to make that happen. 

Go ahead...I know you're already singing it so just keep singing.  No one's watching, although your 1st/2nd grader may want to join in with you :)

Have a great weekend, families! 

A SNOOPY Field Trip

Yesterday we got to go to Hillcrest High school for their matinee performance of SNOOPY!  We were all excited as it was our first theater showing.   And to be honest it was the first time I'd been to Hillcrest for a performance!  

The performance lasted about 90 minutes,  full of songs and dance and skits and laughs and sad moments.  Be sure to ask your kiddo how it went!

Best parts (as told by the kids):
* Snoopy always sitting on the dog house (MH)
* Snoopy was being lazy (JM)
*when Linus threw a fit because his blankie was being washed (SC)
*When Snoopy gave his collar back to Charlie (OH)

New DonorsChoose Project

Have you heard of DonorsChoose.org?   Check here for a short posting to see how DonorsChoose is affecting our classroom for the best.  I always try to make sure my students have the materials they need to succeed. So I've created a classroom project request at DonorsChoose.org, an award-winning charity.

I'm asking for donations of any size to help out our classroom. For the next week, any donation you make to my project will be doubled by Anonymous Donor (up to $100). If you know anyone who is passionate about education, please pass this along. Your donation will brighten my students' school year, and you'll get photos and thank yous from our class.

Here's our newest classroom request:

Putting Books in Their Hands

To have your donation matched dollar for dollar, enter the promo code CHEER on the payment screen. This awesome match offer lasts through November 17, 2013.

Feel free to copy/paste this info and share with your friends and family members.  The kids and I greatly appreciate your support

The Mole

Did anyone come home last week and share with you about "The Mole?"

If not, you really need to ask them about the little mole we had in our classroom. It was an experience!  After those few days full of rain, rain, and more rain, the kids finally got to go outside for their morning recess. It was during that lovely recess that they found a dead mole; one that had drowned.   Mrs. Englebrecht carefully brought it inside (using all health/safety precautions) and we got to use that opportunity to learn about moles...up close!

The little critter on a bag of ice. Notice the difference in his front and back paws? 

We displayed him on the overhead projector so that we could all see his tiny features. We were able to compare his front feet to his back feet, noticing the size difference and pondering why that might be.  They got to see his tiny mouth, look for his eyes and ears and notice his fur colorings.   We did all of this with Mrs. E being the only one touching him (not me...yuck!)  Mrs. E then took the mole on to other classes for them to see and we had a LOT of new questions so we changed our plans and started a mini-research on moles.

We were able to find videos of moles above ground beginning their tunnel. We saw videos underneath ground...a moles-eye view.  There even was a video where we inside the tunnel and could see the mole digging a new hole.  It was impressive.   We looked up pictures of their tunnels, learning about food runs, burrows, permanent tunnels and why there is always that mound of dirt at the top of their tunnel.   As much as I still think those critters are gross, I learned A LOT about moles.

Looking at him via the projector, getting that close up look.

The kiddos then had more questions after we did our research. They each wrote down one more thing they were wondering (to wonder is to want to know more about....one of our vocab words :) )  Questions included: How long do they live? How tall can they get? Can moles be a pet?

Overall it was a GREAT learning experience that I'm glad Mrs Englebrecht chose to take on.  It's amazing what all comes about when we decide to stop and use those odd, nasty, unconventional happenings as a teaching time and go where the kids' wonderful minds take us!

Dried Foods

In a follow up to our Little House in the Big Woods post here, this one shows you our journey into dehydrating food.   Let me first start off by saying how this was my first time with a dehydrator and I truly only knew what I was doing thanks to directions that I printed off the internet!

In one section of their story, Ma and Pa mentioned drying foods (fruits and veggies and meats) which started a whole discussion on why and how.   This lead to our adventure into dehydrating foods.

Last month, the students brought in foods they would be interested in drying.  The foods included lemons, limes, apples, bananas, and tomatoes.  This was going to be an interesting experience.   

We started at 8:40am, hoping that most of the foods would be done before we left at 3:10pm.  We got to see the whole process, discuss how the dehydrator works with heat and air and then were able to taste the fruits of our labor. We also discussed how the pioneers didn't have a dehydrator but decided that they used air and heat too, just differently. 


Here are pictures that our Class Reporter took to document our process.  Unfortunately we don't have pics of them trying the foods although they did enjoy most of the items!  Dried lemons seemed to be the least favored ones of them all with tomatoes coming in second.   Check out the last picture, too, that shows all the dried foods we've tried as we did this exploration

Don't Forget - Tomorrow is Domino's Night

Don't forget! 

Tomorrow is Fremont's Domino's Night!  

When you call in and place your Domino's order, be sure to mention our classroom and Fremont Elementary.  A portion of the sale will go back to Fremont as well as if our class has the most orders we will earn a pizza party this month!  

So mark your calendars and get the word out!  

Tomorrow is Domino's !!!