Cha Cha Slide

We all need some breaks from the normal routine, especially these last few days of school.  I came across a dance on youtube.com for kids that is basically the Cha Cha Slide. You've probably danced to it at a wedding before.  Anyways, we learned it today and it really does help the kids with their directional skills. Here is a video of the kids dancing ... some of them have some pretty good moves! I thought it was cute so I just had to share it with you. Enjoy! :)

Butterflies

We learned about butterflies last week.  We learned about their life cycle and wrote about them.

 We read the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and sequenced what happened in the story.  This is one of my favorite stories.

The students finished up their butterfly reports this week.  They turned out AWESOME! It is so cool to see how far their writing has come. These will be coming home next week in your child's blue writing folder so be  sure to look for it!

Zoo Field Trip

Well, we had our last field trip of the school year on Monday.  We went to John Ball Zoo. There was a chance of rain all day but it held off and proved to be another sunny, warm day.

The kids were SO excited about this field trip.  The bus ride to the zoo was filled with questions and predictions from the kids about the animals and the exhibits.  This was probably my favorite part of the field trip. I just love their curiosity and excitement for life.

 

Thank you so much to all of the parent volunteers who helped lead small groups around the zoo.  It was so nice to have you join us and I appreciate all your help!

 

 

I kept walking through the penguin exhibit because it had air conditioning (and because I like penguins).  One of the times I walked through I caught the zoo keeper feeding the penguins. It was pretty cool!

 

They did such a great job walking around together in the heat.  

The lion was trying to keep cool in the shade.

I can always count on a silly picture with these kiddo's!

The bus ride back to school was much quieter than on the way there - I guess the zoo tired them out! 

Zoo Animal Reports

The students and I have been reading about zoo animals and writing facts about them.  Last week the kids took their facts and wrote them into a report all about their animal (a zebra, lion or giraffe).

Everyone made their animal's body when they finished their writing.

These are a few examples.  As you can see, the reports turned out awesome and the kids seemed to enjoy writing all about their animal.

Our reports are on display in our classroom now.  If you are in the area, I encourage you to stop in to see them. Way to go owls!

Zoo Animals

In preparation of our field trip to the zoo, we took some time to learn about zoo animals.  The students practiced labeling the animals and putting the animals in alphabetical (ABC) order.

I'm not sure how but the zoo animals escaped the zoo one day and decided to hide around in our classroom (or so we pretended for this game!) The kids had to search around the room for the animals.  If they found all of the zoo animals and wrote their names correctly, then they won.  They did a great job with this.

We read the story, 'One Night in the Zoo' by Judith Kerr.  This story is about what the author thinks the zoo animals do after all the visitors and zoo keepers leave.  

The students responded to this fun little story by writing their own story about what happens.  I laughed so hard reading through their ideas.  From nail polish parties to milk shakes at Captain Sundae - the kids had great ideas!

I love their creative ideas!

Measurement

Hi Everyone! I haven't had the chance to post any pictures recently because I was having issues with my computer. My husband seems to have fixed the problem though!

Last week we learned about capacity, weight and measurement.  We learned what capacity means and decided that if we are really thirsty, we would want to drink a cup that is not only tall but wide, as well. The kids practiced measuring objects using blocks and cubes.  They learned what taller, shorter, wider and longer mean.

The kids enjoyed sorting groups of objects from tallest to shortest and vice versa on the Smart Board.

We compared our body height.  Some of  us are tall and some us are short.

I showed the class a water balloon and a regular balloon filled with air.  The students made predictions as to which balloon weighed more.  As you can see, most of the class thought the water balloon weighed more. After we put the balloons on the scale, we quickly figured out that the water balloon weighed more because that part of the scale went down so almost all of the predictions were right!

We will continue to learn about measurement and measure things around the room this week.

Worm Investigation

We continued our living and non-living science unit this week. This week's activities involved worms - yes, living worms! We investigated our worms and learned that they are alive because they breathe, move, eat and grow.

Before we looked and touched our worms we tried to move like a worm around the room.  We quickly realized that having no arms and legs makes you move a lot slower!

The students enjoyed using the microscopes to zoom in on the worms features.

Some of the students were very brave - daring to touch and hold the worms.

I think everyone named their worms.  Some of the names they came up with really had me laughing.  "Spike", "Princess".... one group decided to name their worms "Mr. DeYoung" and "Mrs. DeYoung".  I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not? :)

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After we played with our worms and investigated them, we set them free outside.  We decided they would like to live in their natural habitat more than the small classroom container they came in

Since it was such a nice day outside, Mrs. Heyboer's class decided to meet up with us on the playground and play a game of Spaghetti and Meatballs. 

What a great day!

Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar?

We enjoyed reading the story, Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? last week. You can't read this story without eating a cookie so I splurged and baked some cookies for the class.

After our snack and story, we played a game where we all sat in a circle and chanted the "Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?" cheer and practiced inserting our own names into it.  We passed around a container of fake cookies, too. On the back of the fake cookies were different types of punctuation.  Who ever's name was chanted picked a cookie from the bag and told the class about the punctuation mark - what it is called and what it does.

This was a really fun group activity I saw on Pinterest.com. It helped the students recognize the different types of punctuation better, too. Man, what would I do without Pinterest?! :)

Popcorn Word Push Ups

Most of the students in our class have earned all 40 stickers in their popcorn word sticker books which is awesome! This means they can recognize all 40 Sitton words.  We continue to work on spelling these words accurately when we write.  The other morning we turned our popcorn words into a morning workout.  This picture shows the students doing push-ups as we spelled out the words.  We jumped, clapped and hopped as well. They're writing has come so far. Keep it up owl friends!