Pamela Duncan Edwards & Henry Cole

How fortunate are we that we had Pamela Duncan Edwards and Henry Cole visit our school for the 3rd time since we have opened 12 years ago. What a gift to be able to see them present to an audience. One of the best things about this wonderful duo are the way they work together. Mrs. Edwards began her presentation on how the story of Livingstone Mouse came to be.



When she had given the background of the story, she went on to read the book. While she read, Henry Cole did an illustration. It is amazing at how quickly he can draw a picture to go with a story.



When they were done, they created a new character with help from the audience and included extra characters (it was about a cat who was going to a dance). It was great to see how they could take one simple character and start to put the character into a story line.



Through the years, both have worked closely together to write and illustrate many books. Make sure you ask your child about the books we heard in class by this dynamic duo!

Eric Carle Celebration Day

Nothing is more fun than having a culminating event where kids celebrate and author they have come to know and love. Friday we celebrated the work of Eric Carle. Our morning consisted of stations where kids did activities based around his work. We played on an animal game on the smartboard, we made tissue paper seahorses, had a hungry caterpillar reley race, made pancakes and played Eric Carle bingo. Then after lunch we made hermit crabs out of pasta shells, hungry caterpillar necklaces, decorated cupcakes, and decorated butterflies. In between all that we even got in a game of duck, duck, goose just for some fun. Here are the highlights from our day.

These were the kids favorite activities:
Ezra - cupcakes
Addison- hermit crabs
Sean - seahorse
Lania - relay
Taylor - duck, duck, goose
Jack - butterfly
Bella - butterfly
Elizabeth- relay
Simran - butterfly
Jacob - relay
Ava - seahorse
Ethan - duck,duck,goose
Lynethe - butterfly
Emily - bingo
Alex - relay
Matthew - relay
Trey - panckaes & bingo
Nick - relay
Keely - pancakes & bingo
Skyler - hermit crab
Sierra - butterfly

The Luck of the Irish

Today the luck was on the side of that tricky Irish Leprechaun who came to visit our classroom. While we were at lunch, he snuck into our room and threw everything around. He messed up all our traps - what is it going to take to catch him? He threw some gold candy pieces around the room even left us a snack though - green milk and gold oreo cookies. Here are the highlights of the Leprechaun visit.

What have we been up to?

Over the last couple weeks we have been so busy. In skills we have been learning different ways to make the long a sound (ai, ay, a with a bossy e). Here was a really fun activity Ms. Peters did with words that end in /ay/. Each student wrote an /ay/ word on a black dot and then we put them on the ladybug!



In Reader's and Writer's workshop, we have been studying so many Eric Carle books. One activity we have done is to do a picture retelling of the story. This helps us to understand all the parts of the story and retell the story in a response to literature. We have a lead sentence, retelling of the story, connections, and even write about our favorite parts. Here is a picture retelling of The Very Busy Spider.



In Science we have been talking about animals! All sorts of animals. We have learned about land animals, water animals, and animals that can live in land and water. We have learned what makes them unique to where they live such as land animals have lungs and water animals might have gills or even blow holes to breathe. We have been learning about animals as we prepared for the zoo. Here are some fun crafts we did to go along with zoo animals.



















In Math we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes. The kids love shapes! One of their favorite activities has been learning how to use shapes to make different patterns and learning how those shapes can be made from other shapes put together (ex. two trapezoids make a hexagon, two squares make a rectangle). Here are some pattern sheets completed in class.

Why Kindergarteners love Music

Here is a view into a lesson our class had in music last week. Music for Kindergarters is not just about singing little songs. Make sure you ask your child about this great lesson.