Everyday we end math class by asking children to come up and share something they are proud of accomplishing during math time or something new they learned. This week we learned a new game call Circles and Stars. The kids love it. You may see it coming home in the backpacks. It’s an adding game that is preparing them for multiplication (but they don’t know that!). They just think it’s a lot of fun!
Our class is now studying Ponds! In preparation for our field trip to Northfield Mountain on June 5th for their Pond Probe program, we are learning lots of things about the animals and plants who live in the pond. We are raising tadpoles in our classroom. Today we took a trip out to the vernal pool on our playground to see what lives there. What we found was a LOT of mud and a LOT of frogs!!! I think we will find many more animals on our pond trip, but today was a very fun start! The kids took notes and drew pictures of what they observed. Look for those coming home in the homework folders today. My favorite quote of the day was from Logan who said, “To be a pond scientist, you have to LOVE the mud and you have to BE QUIET!!” Well, we did a great job with the mud. The being quiet part wasn’t as easy with a group of 6-8 year olds!
We just finished a short unit where we studied American Heroes. We read several narrative biographies about famous Americans who had an influence on other people’s lives. Then we wrote opinion pieces on who we each thought was the best American hero we studied. The children’s first task was to be detectives and find evidence/examples of when the person was reliable, kind, courageous, honest, worked for fairness or achieved great things with her/his life. They used those examples to write their opinion pieces. Then, they used Kid Pix to illustrate a picture that matched their words. Our stories are now hanging in the hall. Come take a look and learn about our favorite American heroes!! 
American Heroes
