We have had a fabulous first week of school! Getting the year under way takes an enormous amount of patience and perseverance on the part of students, with lots of spent listening and learning new routines. Everything from walking in line to using classroom tools needs to be taught, modeled, and practiced, ensuring future success and independence. Your children have done a fantastic job!

A few of the things we have done this week include:

• began our days with a morning meeting, which so far includes calm breathing and a greeting
• explored materials we will use during math
• practiced writing our own names, learned our classmates names, and compared names of several students at a time, looking for things that were the same and things that were different
• practiced walking safely in a line in the hall as well as on the sidewalk for when we walk back from ECO
• learned about our system for rewarding expected behaviors with cards that are collected school wide, eventually earning a whole school celebration
• watched 2 caterpillars turn into chrysalises
• met our 3rd and 4th grade reading buddies
• spent lots of time playing in the classroom and out on the playground

It was a very full week!

 During our last ECO session our focus was gratitude for the forest and our ECO experience. We spent some time in the classroom thinking about favorite ECO activities throughout the year and we wrote thank you notes to Victoria, our ECO leader.  We also spent time talking about the many aspects of the forest we are grateful for, including trees and animals. Children then had an opportunity to make notes or pictures of thanks to the forest on birch bark that we placed around our outdoor space. We are extremely fortunate to have such a great space to visit every week. Thank you to parents and the WES PTO for supporting this fantastic opportunity as well!

As a final writing project we recently completed informational books about our nature name animals. After spending time with Eric listening to books about their particular animals, students retold some of the key facts they had learned and turned them into pages for their books. We finished by making colorful collage covers. Everyone is very excited to bring these home once we finish putting them together.

Since our return from vacation we have been working on opinion writing during our writing block. We began by talking about what an opinion is (what someone thinks, there is no right or wrong answer) and compared opinions to facts. We talked about the importance of making our opinions convincing by supporting them with reasons. Students have really enjoyed playing "Would you rather...", a game that involves moving to a side of the room depending on our opinion. We play this game with a wide range of questions from "Would you rather have ice cream or cake?" to "Would you rather be invisible or be able to fly?" After children move to the corresponding side of the room, several share a reason for their choice. This is a fast paced game that provides practice not only thinking about opinions, but also backing them up with evidence.

After mastering sharing opinions and reasons orally we have moved on to expressing them in writing. Kindergarteners have strong opinions and they love to share what they think! Some of the topics we have written about include favorite toys, recess time versus choice time, and snow versus mud. We have also written opinions in response to several books, including Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant, and the nonfiction book Frog or Toad: How Do You Know? by Melissa Stewart.

 Last Friday we walked to the VG for creemees with our reading buddies as part of our whole school celebration of 1000 We Rock! cards. It was a perfect way to end a hot spring day!

 For the month of April, our calendar has focused on different ways of measuring objects. Each of the calendar markers features a measuring tool and an object being measured: an eraser next to a ruler, grapes on a scale, rice in a measuring cup, a penguin on ice beside a thermometer that shows the temperature is 24 F. The tools and objects illustrate different measurable attributes and provide opportunities for students to make comparisons using words such as longer, shorter, heavier, lighter, etc.

We have also explored some of these attributes during math. Students have enjoyed measuring the length of various objects around the room using cubes. They have also had an opportunity to use pan balances to compare pairs of objects, and to weigh objects by balancing them with sets of counting bears. For example, scissors weigh the same as 6 counting bears. We also compared the capacity of various containers by filling them with cubes and counting the number of cubes each container held. All of this has provided students with a strong introduction to the idea that objects can be measured in different ways and we use different tools depending on the attribute we are measuring.

For the last couple of weeks, as we wait for the forest to dry out a bit, we have eased back into our ECO routines with shortened sessions at school. The first week, while the field was covered with many inches of snow, we focused on great horned owls, perhaps the only birds that nest and lay eggs in late winter. Children worked in pairs to build nests (we imagined they were in trees, but actually made them on the ground) that would keep their eggs  (colored ice cubes) warm and safe. While one partner went out to gather food, the other partner was responsible for watching over the nest so no eggs would be lost to sneaky predators. 

This week, after all of the snow had rapidly melted, we focused on amphibians and their spring move to vernal pools, where they lay their eggs. We talked about some of the dangers they face trying to get to these spring pools, including predators and cars, as their routes often take them across roads. Working in teams, children were challenged to build a bridge for a salamander to safely cross. Students had many creative ideas for constructing thier bridges and did a fantastic job of working in teams  to build some pretty awesome bridges!