Pond Trip To Northfield Mountain!

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on May 28, 2015

We’ve been doing lots of work to get ready for our field trip to Northfield Mountain.  These are the tadpoles and eggs we collected in our vernal pool to bring into the small pond habitat we made in our classroom for the children to observe and study.  IMG_3398 We have been reading, writing, drawing, doing puzzles and lots of research about ponds.  IMG_3399 IMG_3407

And today was our big trip!  We arrived at Northfield Mountain and met Kathy, our Pond Teacher, who led us through their Pond Probe program.  IMG_3419 After watching a slideshow about all kinds of living things that live in the pond, we went outside to collect animals carefully with our nets and “creature extractors” along the pond’s edge.IMG_3420 IMG_3422 IMG_3423 IMG_3426 IMG_3427 IMG_3429 IMG_3430 IMG_3431 The children looked carefully, and by the time we had been there a while their eyes were getting used to finding tiny creatures buried in the mud and water.  IMG_3433 Into the buckets they went so we could bring them inside to observe them under microscopes.  IMG_3434 IMG_3435 IMG_3436 IMG_3437 IMG_3438 IMG_3439 IMG_3440 IMG_3441 IMG_3442 IMG_3443 We drew pictures and labels of what we saw.  IMG_3444 IMG_3445 IMG_3446 After the program ended,  we had a picnic lunch and then headed into the woods for a brisk hike on the trails.  It was a hot, fun hike.  IMG_3448Lemonade and watermelon cooled us down at the end.   IMG_3450 IMG_3451 IMG_3452 IMG_3453  It was a very fun day!  Thank you to all the chaperones who joined us:  Jill, Tara, Mark and Kevin!

PONDS!

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on May 13, 2015

It’s been an exciting week, starting off with Alina’s dad bringing in a brand new, one week old baby goat for us to meet!

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We have started our unit on Ponds.  This is what showed up in the block area during choice time:  a mini pond made of blocks, little animals, legos and carpet pieces.

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Guess where we went today?  We dressed in our rain boots, gathered our clipboards and magnifying glasses, and headed out to the vernal pool on our playground to see what we could see about pond life.

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The children found frogs, tadpoles, a sac of frog eggs, water beetles, snails, and lots of other small creatures.

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It was a lot of fun and we came in with very muddy boots.

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After we dried off, we wrote about what we observed, drew pictures and came up with “I wonder…” questions.  We shared them with our classmates.  Check out your child’s work, which will be in the homework folders tonight!

 

More Good News

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on May 7, 2015

Last week on May 1st, the children’s Morris dancing team, the Johnny Jump-Ups, came to dance and sing for our whole school.  Our very own Alina was one of the dancers!  She did a fantastic job and we had so much fun watching, dancing and singing with them.  I thank them for dancing in some of the beautiful weather we’ve had lately!  The children were full of questions for Alina after the dance celebration, and many wanted to become dancers, too!

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Adam’s number scroll is now officially as tall as me.  He is writing numbers well into the 1000’s  and can tell you the place value of each digit.

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The kids are loving making polygons with straws and pipe cleaners.   IMG_3353 IMG_3354 IMG_3355

Lots of News!

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on May 6, 2015

We are back!  After a few technical problems with the blog, we are back with lots of pictures and updates from the last few weeks.

Look at these beautiful spring trees that are hanging outside our classroom.  Our student teacher, Tina, made them with the class using the glued sounds we are learning in Fundations.  IMG_3316 IMG_3331large IMG_3320 IMG_3321

We filled our jar once again, after lots of positive teamwork, helping each other clean the room and show kindness to our friends.  Deb made us DELICIOUS brownies to celebrate and we went outside for extra recess.

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After her week long residency with us, poet Verandah Porche led the entire school at an assembly and helped us write collaborative poems together.  1st and 6th graders worked together to create a group poem.  Each group presented their poem and now they are hanging in our school.

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We said goodbye to Tina who is graduating soon from UMASS.  We really enjoyed having her in our class these past few months.

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Creation Station

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on May 1, 2015

Look at all these beautiful creations coming out of Creation Station!  We are looking for donations of any kinds of material (found, recycled, or purchased craft supplies) that the kids can use to make creative projects like these.  Please send them in!!  A huge thank you to Uli’s parents who have helped us greatly improve our art area in the classroom.

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Look at these symmetrical designs students have been making at math time.  They look so pretty against our white tiles.

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More pictures to come!  I’m having a hard time uploading pictures to the blog these days, so we are a little behind in our classroom updates.  We’ll be back with more news soon!

 

 

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