Herb Garden Part 3: BUILDING

Staple guns, tape measures, backing, and fun! Today Mrs. Willmore came to help us build this big, painted pallet! We measured, cut, measured again, stapled, and voila! Stay tuned for next week.....

Herb Garden Part 2: PAINTING

Once we shared our journals and discussed the many places we could plant a garden, I surprised the kids with the news that...we would build our own herb garden! Thanks to the wonderful Mrs. Willmore, we were given a pallet, paint, tarp, and paint brushes to make the magic happen! The kids got in groups of three and each designed a section of the pallet. This was serious business and they had to practice on paper before they could start on the pallet!~

Herb Garden PART 1

We have decided to grow our own herb garden in our classroom. We wanted to be able to watch our plants grow daily and sing to them! We read a fabulous book called, The Curious Garden, by Peter Brown. Peter will be visiting our school this year to talk to the students and share his work. He also wrote Creepy Carrots which inspired last week's design challenge. After reading The Curious Garden, the students wrote in their journals about where they would start a garden and how it would grow. It was very inspiring and these children are so creative!!! Check out their work.

Peyton would start a garden in a basketball court.

Lucy started a garden in a house.

Sarah started a garden on top of an airplane.

Lucas started a garden inside of an airplane.

The 24 dancing SWANS

The children have been working with Miss Kelly from NABC to learn our swan dance for Carnival of the Animals. They are very graceful and serious dancers. I am SO proud!

Place Value

We have been exploring place value; learning about the ones, tens, and hundreds places. The children started off using ones cubes, tens sticks, and hundreds blocks. They are now adding and subtracting using this strategy. Try some at home with your child. They should know how to carry for adding as well as add each place value separately and then combine.
26+38=
20+30=50 and 6+8=14 so
50+14=64
or
  1
  26
+38
____
  64

cREEPY cARROTS Design Challenge

Author Peter Brown will be visiting our school in May! We read one of his newer books, Creepy Carrots, which was awarded a Caldecott Award for best pictures. The story centers around a rabbit who is terrified of the carrots he has been eating. He thinks they are creeping around trying to scare him so he builds a fence to lock them up. Well...this is exactly what the carrots wanted so he wouldn't be able to eat them anymore. Our design challenge was to design a way to keep the carrots safe without using a fence. We had several check points and brainstorms throughout the process. The first checkpoint was to determine the meaning of the word fence! Many were trying to build fences out of metal or rope instead of the wood fence in the book. Once we looked up the meaning of the word fence they realized they had to start back at square one! They were stumped for a few minutes but they quickly regained composure and their brains went to work. Don't you wish all adults could think outside of the box without the fear of taking risks or assuming it could never happen?!!! Monday they will write about their designs, so be watching for this to come home!

Researching aquatic life

 

 Did you know that the parrotfish can drop one TON of sand a year back into the ocean? Did you know the barracuda is nicknamed the "tiger of the sea"? How about this...the coelacanth fish was around before the dinosaurs!

 I did not know any of these interesting facts until your children told me. They researched long and hard to become experts at their fish of choice. They used books, laptops, and previous knowledge to gain information about aquatic life.
Ask them what they learned!!!!