Today students had an opportunity to engage in water exploration.  Half of the class worked in pairs exploring sink and float while the other half used a variety of materials to experiment with water flow.  Some of the observations children made were the size of the object doesn't determine whether it sinks or floats  and gravity causes water to flow down, but the force of air from a baster can make water shoot up through a tube.  Needless to say the room was a little wet!  We will do this again on Thursday (hopefully outside) so children will have a chance to do both activities.

Yesterday Tyler Buswell of Highfields Composting introduced a new school-wide composting program to our class.  He talked to us about the process of composting, and how through composting we can "close the loop" in a cycle that starts with plants and produces new soil, which can then be used to grow more plants.  He also talked a bit about what happens to food waste when it is not composted and why this is a really important thing for us to do.

Kay Marcelle has finished compiling the students' animal reports.  They are all in an ebook format and next week during drop off times I will have them available for viewing on two ipads.  The children did fantastic work, both in the recording of their facts and in their illustrations.  Kay is also exploring a way to  make them accessible via a link from my blog, or to burn them to a disc for everyone.

In case you hadn't heard, artwork from students at Waitsfield Elementary School is included in the student art show at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe (upstairs from the Stowe Library).  All Waitsfield kindergarten students have a piece of art on display- some amazing work!  Amanda Kalichstein sent the photo of the kindergarten display which appears on the left and said it is well worth the trip to Stowe!

Tomorrow we will be welcoming a new student, Noella, to our classroom.  She is coming to us from Bethel.  We talked briefly today about how we can make her feel welcome, but any conversations you have at home about this are helpful as well!

Today hopefully everyone received a letter from Sue Dillon about Fifths Disease.  We currently have a child in the room who has Fifths Disease, which is most contagious before symptoms appear.  These may include a rash, low grade fever, and red cheeks that look as if they've been slapped.  Sue's letter is much more specific, but if you have further questions about this please feel free to contact Sue.

Today we began a study of solids and liquids by exploring water drops.  Each child had an opportunity to use a pipet to explore and observe water drops on a plastic plate.  Students made many wonderful observations.  Some of these included "when you blow on drops they connect to each other", "the drops are round", "it's not easy to put two drops really close to each other", and "if you get two drops close without touching they come together like magnet".  Lucky for us, when we went outside there were lots of water drops  and puddles, so we continued our observations.  Students noticed the puddles too were rounded, drops on the green benches were flatter than the drops we made on plates, and drops at the bottom of the slide were bigger than at the top, probably because several smaller drops traveled down the slide and  joined together to make larger drops.  We will continue this exploration in the coming weeks.

As most of you have probably heard or noticed, we are in the midst of a paper mache project. Each child chose an animal to focus on and first completed a written fact sheet for the animal. Students used these in the computer lab to create a "report" about their animals. Many have finished this component and Mrs. Marcelle is working on a way for the final products to be shared. Hopefully we will be able to create a link so they can be accessed from this blog.

In math we have been working on recording data using tallies. Children have been sorting sets of objects and using tallies to record data on a table. We have also been looking at compliments to 5 and 10, as well as counting on from any number, for example starting at 63 and counting on. This can be tricky, particularly changing decades, for example 69 to 70. If you find yourself with a couple of minutes of down time, this is a great skill to practice!

Our next field trip will be to the Flynn Theater on Monday, April 30th (This is the day after our vacation- I will send lots of reminders!) We will see the show Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, an African Cinderella story based on the book by John Steptoe. In preparation for this we will be reading and comparing multiple versions of several stories. We have focused on Little Red Riding Hood stories this week, reading a traditional version, as well as an African, Chinese, and modern day retelling. Ask your child which version he or she liked best.