This week we completed our Africa reports. I provided an introduction and a conclusion and students each wrote their own body, focusing on how life in Africa is different from that in Vermont. They did a fantastic job on these. We also had several very productive sessions of writer's workshop this week. We have been talking about trying to write sentences, starting with capital letters, and leaving spaces between words. It has been amazing to see the progress everyone has made and the level of independence many children are now showing.

We did another science experiment today. Ask your child to describe what happened when salt and sugar were added to oil floating on water.

Tomorrow we will continue our work on the Pennies for Peace project. We read the book Listen to the Wind today, which tells about the efforts of Greg Mortenson. Please feel free to send in pennies anytime. We have a collection jar in the classroom and soon there will be one in the lobby as well.

The children have so enjoyed the African dance residency this week. We had the added bonus of hearing the drumming throughout the days, as our classroom is so close to the gym. There is a culminating performance for the older students tomorrow morning. Our class will not be part of this, but we will be watching.

It is hard to believe it is time for another vacation, although the illness and fatigue tell me it really is time. I hope you have time to enjoy the week wherever you are.

We had a very busy day today! Our morning began promptly with African dancing. Ask your child to tell you about his or her experience with this. I heard lots of positive, excited comments. Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. We will be dancing again on Wednesday and on Friday morning at 8:00 there is a culminating performance that will include some students. (I'm not yet sure if any Kindergarten students are part of this.)

Then of course there was Valentines Day! The children were very excited about this and spent a fair amount of time passing out their cards and examining the contents of their mail boxes.

We were joined this morning by Alison Champlin, who will be doing an internship with us for the next several weeks. She will be in the classroom on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and joining Mrs. Belknaps's class in the afternoons. The children put her right to work and it was nice to have an extra set of hands.

Today we began a service-learning project called Pennies for Peace. This program was started by Greg Mortenson, the author of Three Cups of Tea, which is about his mission to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan giving all children access to an education. The Pennies for Peace program is designed to help students broaden their cultural awareness while having a positive impact on a global scale. More information about this program is available on the web site: www.penniesforpeace.org. We will be collecting pennies for the next couple of months as we work on this project.

Today we read a Liberian folktale called Head, Body, Legs. It is a story about cooperation. We also read parts of a book called Weird Friends, about animals that live in cooperation and help each other. Ask your children if they remember how the rhino and cattle egret help each other survive.

Please remember students are welcome to bring in Valentines on Monday. A class list is posted in the previous blog entry.

Wow- February is flying by! It just occurred to me that Valentine's Day is Monday. If your child would like to bring in valentines for classmates that is fine, but please make sure there is one for everyone. We have 15 students in our class: Amalia, Amy, Beckett, Brooke, Ciera, Cody, Damon, Emma, Gabe, Kai, Molly, Nate, Rachel, Tyler, and Zeb.

We have been talking about Africa a lot in preparation for next week's African dance residency. Today we looked at a map of the world and talked about continents. We counted the seven continents and used magnets to label Africa and North America. We have read several stories that depict village life in Africa (Kenya, Uganda, and Liberia) and talked about how life for children in these places is similar to ours, and more notably how it is different. We will be writing a report together focusing on the ways life for some children in Africa is different from life for children in Vermont.

*Please note that my only email address is abeattie73@gmail.com, which is listed on the side of this blog. I used to have a hotmail account, but no longer use it.

Our day began with an assembly at which the whole class showed exemplary audience skills. We followed this with an exploration of taste. Students had the opportunity to taste something bitter, sour, and sweet and attempt to locate which part of the tongue is responsible for each. This was tricky, but we finally concluded that taste buds at the back of the tongue detect bitter tastes, those on the side detect sour taste, and the tip of the tongue is where we taste sweet things. The taste buds for salty are all over the tongue.

Everyone had an opportunity in the last couple of days to make a collection of 100. We talked about strategies for easily counting to 100, and most of us chose to make 10 groups of 10. Some of the collections were 100 dice, 100 crayons, 100 cubes, 100 pattern blocks, 100 tiles, 100 bears, 100 small animals, and 100 letters.

This week we have started talking about Africa in anticipation of our African dance residency, which will take place February 14th - 18th. We have read several books depicting life in an African village and noted mostly the differences in comparison to our own lives.

In math we have continued working on addition of smaller numbers. Today we played a game called "Toss the Chips" that focused on decomposing numbers up to 10, although several students chose to work with larger numbers. We have also been really focused on the number 100 as our 100th day is supposed to be Thursday (probably Friday given the weather that is moving in!)