Since our return from vacation we have been learning about the five senses.  This week we read a book called What Does Peace Feel Like? by V. Radunsky and children from around the world, which portrays what peace looks like, smells like, sounds like, feels like, and tastes like to children from all over the world.  After we read the book we created our own versions about spring.  Some of our thoughts were "Spring feels like soft feathers," "Spring looks like a mother crow feeding her babies," and "Spring sounds like birds chirping in the trees."

With the arrival of spring the temperatures have been pretty variable and  our playground is at times quite wet and muddy.  Please continue to send snow-pants, boots, hats, and mittens until the snow is gone.  Extra dry clothes are also very helpful!

Weather permitting, we will return to the Wu Forest for ECO on Wednesday, April 8th, and subsequent Wednesdays until June 3rd.  I will send an email with further details closer to the date.

This coming Wednesday, April 1, we will be traveling to the Flynn Theater in Burlington to see Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We will leave around 8:15 and plan to be back in time for lunch.  If you haven't already sent in $3.00 for the show, please do as soon as possible.

We are also collecting shoe boxes (or similar sized) for a project to accompany nature name reports.  I have 13 so far.  If you happen to have one to donate we need 5 more!

We had a great time on Wednesday morning with Angie and Mary Colleen talking about spring and making sugar on snow.  I'm sure you heard a bit about it!  We have also had a fantastic time this week learning circus skills.  We are looking forward to the show tomorrow evening at 6:00.

For the past couple of weeks during writing we have been working on opinions.  While everyone seems to have strong opinions about a given topic, we have been working on supporting our opinions with evidence.  We have spent lots of time practicing this orally, often by telling wether or not we like a book that was just read, and using evidence from the story to support our thoughts.  Children also really enjoy convincing me that they should earn class tallies for a given portion of the day, which is dependent on solid evidence.  They have become very creative in their reasoning!
We have practiced writing several opinions as well, including "Which do you like better, recess or choice time?" and "Would you rather have hot lunch or cold lunch?"  As part of this we have worked on wrapping up our writing with a concluding statement.

Angie Barger was with us again on Wednesday morning for some more tracking fun, using plaster tracks to make stories in sand.  This week we have also been sharing each child's shadow puppet show, which tells the story of tracks in the snow.

Some highlights from our week:

Creating models of three dimensional solids with play dough and straws.

Making tracking stories as backdrops for shadow puppet shows.

Decorating bags to hold all of our valentines.

Nature name portraits created in art class, now hanging outside our classroom.

This week we celebrated our 100th day of school.   While Thursday was our official 100th day, with the snow day and early release day our celebration was spread throughout the week.  Our math stations on Tuesday and Wednesday included counting and building with 100 geo-blocks, playing a game to 100, and completing a numbers to 100 scavenger hunt in the classroom.  Children particularly loved the scavenger hunt, which involved wandering the room with a clipboard- ask your child to explain what they were looking for.  During choice time many children chose to count collections of 100 things, using the strategy of ten groups of ten.  We ended our celebration by making 100's crowns and having  a special 100's snack.

While Valentine's Day falls on a Saturday this year, children are welcome to make cards for their classmates to share on the 13th.  I have sent home a list of all of the children in our class- if your child chooses to bring valentines, please make sure there is one for everyone in the class.  We will have a small celebration while we look over our valentines.

In math we have started a unit on geometry.  We have been exploring 2 dimensional shapes in a variety of ways, noting the characteristics of each shape, as well as similarities and differences between shapes.  Children particularly enjoyed using geo-boards to create shapes and making shape pictures by adding details to a given shape (a rectangle can be a truck).

This week we also recently read Grandfather Tang's Story, a Chinese folk tale about two fairy foxes told in tangrams.  The foxes shift their shapes to become different animals throughout the story.  After we read the story each child made their own tangram animal.  Soon we will shift our focus to three dimensional shapes.

On Wednesday we were thrilled to have our Angie and Mary Colleen from ECO, visit us in the classroom to spend the morning learning about animal gaits and tracks.  We began the morning making our own tracks with plaster of paris and rubber molds.  We then spent a good chunk of time learning about different animal gaits and trying each one out, a feat that required lots of concentration and agility!  Ask your child to demonstrate.  After snack we went outside and followed trails of tracks, marking them with colored water so they were easier to see.  Finally we ended the morning thinking about the stories that tracks can tell and creating our own track stories.