Despite the weather, we have been getting outside as much as we can.  Yesterday we took advantage of slightly warmer temperatures (although the wind was still pretty wild!) and sticky snow.  We spent an extra long time outside because everyone was so engaged in building and playing.

Last week during ECO everyone had a chance to use animal track molds to create a tracking story in sand.  Each child was also able to make their own mold using plaster of paris.  We will continue with the tracking theme this week.  On Thursday we began working on dioramas of animals in winter with our third and fourth grade partners.  This week we will use clay to complete the scenes.

During math we began a fun unit on shapes.  We have been exploring shapes and noticing defining features of each shape and comparing different shapes.  We also imagined what different shapes could be and used the shapes to create pictures.

Enjoying the slightly warmer temperatures.

The beginnings of a snow fort.

Creating a winter scene in a box.

Tracking stories in the sand.

Raccoon track.

An oval can be a cat!

Thank you to everyone for attending last night's concert.  I appreciate the extra effort it takes to return to school after a full day!  The children were all excited to be here and excited to have everyone in the class here as well.  Many reported feeling a little nervous on stage in front of so many people.  They should be commended for doing such a great job!

To coincide with the full moon (which was actually last night), we gathered with Mrs. Gale's class and read the book Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen.  We followed the book by creating our own owls in the night.  It seems that tonight may be clear and the moon will still be quite full- possibly a good night for owling!  Enjoy the three day weekend.

We had a great ECO session yesterday despite being inside for most of the morning.  We spent time learning about different animal gaits, and how these are connected to an animal's build.  After talking about the four gaits, we had a chance to try them out.  Some were more challenging than others!  Children then used what they know about their nature name animals to try to pick their gait (children with birds were given substitute animals for this).  We were then able to go outside for a very brief time for a few games.

Today Eric Mongeon introduced our class to the ipads.  After talking about how to handle the ipads safely and responsibly and reviewing a few key features (volume!), children had time to explore a drawing app.  I am working on getting everyone in the class set up with an account in Lexia Core5, which is an application that provides explicit personalized learning in literacy.  Once each child has an account we will be able to use the ipads in small groups during literacy time to work on specific literacy skills.

Just a reminder that our school-wide music concert is next Thursday evening at 6:00, in the gym.

New nature name name tags from our ECO leader Angie Barger.

Waddling like a bear, walking like a deer.

Exploring the ipads.

I hope everyone had a fantastic vacation!  With such a long break we have spent a lot of time in our first days back reviewing expectations, especially focusing on what it means to be kind, safe, engaged, and responsible during each part of our days.  We are working on creating a board game that will help reinforce these expectations and also give us practice with math skills.

We have also been talking about animals in winter and what different animals do to survive when it gets cold and snowy.  We have been sorting animals into three categories:  those that migrate, those that are active and need to find food, and those that hibernate (noting that some animals sleep very lightly and may even wake up and therefore aren't true hibernators).  We have read several books about animals in winter and have begun taking notes on what we learn, using pictures and words on larger posters for easy reference.   We will use these notes to do an informational piece of writing in the next few weeks.  We have also been acting out different animals in winter, which has given us some much needed movement when we've been unable to go outside!  I am hoping to do a visual project as well and would like to collect one shoe boxes or similar sized box for each child.  If you have any to share please send them in! (I have several already.)