Exploring Plants and Flowers

We have been talking about plants in science the past few weeks. We have been observing different types of seeds, roots, flowers. Last week, each child got to plant a bean seed and some winter rye seeds. It didn't take long for the winter rye to begin growing in our cups, but the bean seeds took a little longer.
This week, we did a experiments with plants. We put food coloring and water in a few containers and placed some white flowers, and roses in the containers. We also did the same thing with stalks of celery. After just a few hours, the colored water began to travel up tiny tubes in the stem of the white flowers and pink roses, and the petals began to change colors before our eyes. The same thing happened to our stalks of celery. We decided to split one of the celery stalks and put half of it in blue water, and the other half in red water. The colored water traveled up the celery, changing the inside color, as well.
A nearby florist was so kind to donate a variety of spring flowers for our class to observe. We set up different flowers at each table with magnifying glasses, and students were asked to describe the texture, color, smell of each of the flowers. Also, we opened up some of the flowers for them to observe the inside parts of the flowers. I think we are all ready for SPRING now.

Sight Word Song

Once again we are singing sight words to a known tune. Ask your child to sing the following words to the tune of "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain."
animal

animal

fall

look

took

watched

why

what

some

loved

under

world

never

also

other

funny

thought

bought

family

children

mother

know

knee

knit

write

learn

father

walked

people

sure

world

busy

build

later

light

night

bright

slight

because

living

wouldn't

couldn't

shouldn't

tomorrow

first

second

before

finally

good-by

YEE-HAW!

Untitled from dayle timmons on Vimeo.

Wordle And The Big Chickens Project

Teachers are always searching for cool new ways to reach their students. While working on the Big Chickens Project the TDR’s decided (after suggestions from our favorite ESE teacher) to utilize Wordle. Wordle is a great little tool you can use to help create “word clouds”. Words that appear more frequently in your text are greatly pronounced based on how often the word is used. You can create different fonts, color schemes and layouts. This is a great tool for any grade level or project. After reading Big Chickens by Leslie Helakjoski we had our students pick three words each that they thought best described the book. We entered the words into the Wordle website and our “word cloud” was created! I don’t know about you but I see a lot more fun with site words in our future!

The leprechauns Visit the TDR's

The TDR's had quite the surprise when they arrived at school this morning. The classroom was turned upside down by some little green visitors. Chairs were flipped over, crayons and papers were thrown all about. The leprechauns even turned our water green! Mrs. Daniels and Mrs. Ruark were very proud of the children as they worked together to clean up the room and get it back to normal again. I must say it was quite a day...I hope those pesky little leprechauns don’t visit again anytime soon!

A Retelling of our Kevin Henkes Day

What a way to end the Kevin Henkes author study. We couldn't believe our eyes on Friday morning. Instead of being greeted by 31 students, we were greeted by 31 cute little mice. There was Lilly, Chester, Wemberly, Owen, Julius, Mr. Slinger, and many more characters from Kevin Henkes books. We rotated from place to place doing special activities. The first stop was outside fun, where our class got to play tug-of-war, make bubbles, play crochet and play jump rope. These were all activities that occurred in the books that we had read. Second stop was watching a Kevin Henkes video of three of our favorite stories, and eating a yummy snack that mice love soooo much, cheetos. Third stop, we went to the Lightbulb Lab, and decorated either a purple purse or a wallet. Fourth stop, we played Jeaopardy and had to answer all types of questions about the stories we had read. Well, you could imagine all of this spectacular fun made our cute little mice very hungry. Thanks to all of you for being so gracious with your donations to our room mom, we had cheeeeeeesy pizza, strawberries, chips and soda for our lunch. We all can't 'THANK YOU' enough. You know our day is not complete until we eat something sweet. Did you know that mice love cupcakes?? Our mice were all given a cupcake and used toppings to make a mouse on their cupcake. Was your little mouse tired when they got home? Sweet dreams little mice.

Kevin Henkes Puppets

Students were invited to make puppets as a family project last week and today they brought in the results. Popsicle puppets, bag puppets, and sock puppets were all displayed. The puppets will be used this week as the children practice retelling the stories of Kevin Henkes! Thanks to all the families that participated and for all of their creativity!

A Visit From Lilly

Friday was not just any other ordinary day. Parker's mom, Mrs. Rossignol came to our class with props and costumes for students to act out the Kevin Henkes story, "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse." We have been working on retelling in our writing, and what a fun way to be able to remember all the events in a story. As if role playing a story wasn't spectacular enough, Mrs. Rossignol made special arrangements for the main character to make an appearance in our class. That's right, "LILLY" was in the house. Well, if you know anything about Lilly, she didn't just want Mrs. Rossignol to show her around by holding her tail, she wanted to get up close and personal. So, Lilly jumped to the floor, and what a show-off she was, running all around the room. We had it all under control, and I kept my eyes on that cute little mouse, as I was standing on the table. What can I say, it's never dull in first grade. Thank you so Mrs. Rossignol for making our Friday, truly exciting.