*Our spring music concert will be on Thursday May 23rd.  Not sure of the time yet, but wanted to give you the date!

We had a great time at the Flynn yesterday!  The show we saw was eight short skits for different picture books, which we had been reading in class over the last couple of weeks.  As we read the books we talked about which ones were our personal favorites, telling why and giving examples from the stories to support our reasons.  Today everyone actually wrote about a favorite and supported their opinions with evidence from the story.  This skill is one that will receive more and more emphasis as children progress through the grades.  Most children picked the trickster tale Borreguita and the Coyote by Verna Aardema as their favorite because it is funny.   Some of the evidence of this included, "it is funny because Borreguita tells the coyote the moon is cheese," and "it is funny because Borreguita knocks out all of the coyote's teeth!"  Other favorites were Owen, by Kevin Henkes, and Imogene's Antlers, by David Small.

During the month of March our calendar has a bird pattern, so we have spent a little bit of time talking about birds, particularly their return for spring!  Today we went a little deeper with our bird conversation and did an exploration of bird beaks.  Children began by working with a partner looking at pictures of two birds with different kinds of beaks.  Based on their observations they guessed what each bird might eat.  Later in the day they had an opportunity to try out different kinds of beaks on different kinds of food.  For beaks they had tweezers, a toothpick, a clothespin, and a spoon.  They experimented with food that represented twigs, worms, seeds, and berries.  Their job was to decide which kind of beak worked best for each kind of food.

A pelican's beak is good for eating fish!