I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation.  We have had a fantastic and productive first couple of days back.  After 11 days all of the children looked a bit older!

Yesterday during ECO we worked in stations creating a puppet theater,  making puppets for our nature name animals, creating a scene with tracks for each animal, and narrating a brief story to go with the scene.  We had a great time watching several children's  shadow puppet stories and everyone will have a chance to share theirs in the coming days.

Parent conferences will be held in two weeks, on March 20th and 21st.   The online scheduler is open now and you can schedule a conference at any time by visiting the school web site (www.waitsfieldschool.org) and clicking on the online scheduler link on the right hand side under quick-links.  I look forward to meeting with all or you and talking about your child's progress.

We had a fantastic time at our WE ROCK! winter carnival this afternoon.  We spent the afternoon outside in teams working on snow sculptures, having sled races, and generally enjoying all of the new snow in the field.  The student body was split into mixed age teams, so I was only with two children from our class, but based on the energy when we gathered back at the end of the day, everyone had a great time!

For the past couple of weeks we have been exploring non-fiction during writing working on All About posters.  We began by thinking of things we know a lot about and then recording and illustrating what we know.  We are experts on a wide array of things from sharks and snakes to skiing and football, andFlorida and Peru.  Children have been quite motivated to share what they know!

A while ago I started inviting small groups of children into the classroom for lunch.  Several weeks ago I decided to have the whole class come and we have been continuing to have lunch together on Fridays.  We push all of the tables together and use our best restaurant manners.  It has been an absolute pleasure for all of us and something we look forward to all week long.

We had fun celebrating our 100th day of school yesterday.  We began the day by making crowns, then many collections of 100 were created, everyone enjoyed searching for tiny pictures to 100 (I think your child can best explain this!), we wrote about 100 things we would like to have and what we would do with them (ice cream cones, pieces of gold), and even squeezed in a snack of 100 things, although a few children may have just eaten the 10 m&m's.  With anticipation of the snow storm added in it was a very exciting day.

Next Friday we will be having a Valentine's celebration with Ms. Gale's class.   Yesterday your child should have come home with a list of all the children in kindergarten to help with making valentines.  If your child chooses to bring valentines please make sure there is one for everyone!  These can be home-made or store-bought and as simple or elaborate as you and your child decide.

Hooray for snow!

Happy 100th day!

Building with 100 geo-blocks.

Searching for pictures to 100.

Found one!

An animals in winter scene created with third and fourth grade partners.

The coyote is following the rabbit down to the stream.  Notice the tracks!

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.)