Painting to our hearts content

Such a fun messy class this week. We started out by making a color wheel. We even mixed our own secondary colors. It was great watching the color discoveries happening up and down the table. We then painted a gondola. Our book character, Papa Piccolo, loved to travel in gondolas! Our gondolas were certainly not ordinary. They made the perfect place to put our cat, tiger, or lion stickers.
Lastly, we kept on painting (to the chagrin of a few students) by adding the finishing touches to our Valentine pockets! They turned out adorable! Next week we will use them to deliver our friends' valentines.

So PLEASE this week make ready Valentine cards or messages for all our classmates. If you are going on the field trip, Teacher Jennifer will deliver them for you and give you your valentine pocket when you return.

Here is our student list:

Parley
Eli
Josh
Julian
J.J.
Daniel
Lily
Naomi
Tayler
Damsel
Vivian

THANK YOU

Sent from my iPad

Week 4- Papa Piccolo - Pet Care and Sardine Charts

Another great week spent learning about Papa Piccolo, the tomcat turned papa. Last week we were left hanging when the kittens accidentally ran away on a taxi gondola. Well, the friendly gondolier found them and brought them back to Piccolo! Upon their return Piccolo decided to name the kittens Marco and Polo! It was a happy reunion and Piccolo gladly gave up his bachelor life to raise and teach the kittens everything they needed to know. He even taught them to eat spaghetti?!?
We discussed how to take care of kittens. We discovered they need A LOT of the same things we need. They need to stay with their mom when they are young (Julian proclaimed that HE is staying with his mom until she dies!), they need love and cuddles, food, toys, comfortable beds, shelter, collars (we don't need these), and they also need to be told when they do something wrong.
After our stimulating conversation we made a graph with rainbow goldfish. We figured out which color of goldfish we had the most and least of with a little charting exercise.
And those who brought special friends to class introduced them before class was over. We met Dog, Duckie, Kai, Intrepid and a Transformer. It was great to see all these great "pets."

Next week we will be PAINTING!! So please don't come all decked out in fancy clothes.

Also, on February 12th we are going to have a Valentine's Day party. We are working on valentine pouches to use in our exchanging of cards. We would LOVE for all the kids to participate in the exchange!
Below is the class list:

Lily
Damsel
J.J.
Daniel
Eli
Julian
Naomi
Tayler
Parley
Josh
Vivian

I believe there is a field trip for the Rescue Heroes class that same day, so I will leave it up to you whether or not you want your child to participate in the card exchange if they will be on the field trip. I will gladly deliver their pouch of Valentines when they return.

THANK YOU!!! Your children are fabulous!

Sent from my iPad

Week 3- Papa Piccolo

Animals were on the agenda today. After the super amazing visit from Jumbo Jet and Scooter (and Kathleen), we headed to class and started reading our new book, Papa Piccolo. The book is about a carefree tomcat named Piccolo. He stumbles onto a box of kittens! They turn his life upside down! I don't want to give anything away because we weren't able to finish the book in class. Next week, we will see if Piccolo can find the poor little kittens.
We are also going to talk about how to take care of pets. So please have your child bring their favorite stuffed animal to class.
Thank you!!

Scooter the armadillo

Week 2 - Never Eat Soggy Waffles

Week two with our book, Katy and the Big Snow, took us into studying the compass. In the story, Katy shovels snow to the north, east, west and east. She was an extremely hard working snow shovel!
We identified N, S, W, and E on our own copy of a compass and learned that the phrase "Never eat soggy waffles" will help us remember the order they go in.
We each looked at our own map of the beautiful city of Port Orchard. We put stickers on the compass and then took a close look at the legend. We identified each symbol in the legend and marked map sites with more stickers. We found some excellent spots for camping and using the restroom!
We then put our compass skills to test and went on a little treasure hunt outside our school building. We went north, south, west, and east!!(all with the help of our compass!)
We found a treasure of cookies!!
With our few remaining minutes we each chose a mini car or truck and tried to build it a snowplow out of clay. Even some convertibles got snow plows:)!

Next week, we head to Italy (oh I wish) in our book, Papa Piccolo! It's a good one:)!!

Week 1- Katy and the Big Snow

We had a great start to the new semester with the book Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton.  The story takes us to the make believe city of Geopolis.  The city is hit with snow and more snow!!  Katy, the tractor, saves the day with her snow shovel.  

We talked about character, setting and personification.  This is the second book we have read by this author.  She likes to use personification.  We sure enjoy it!

We had a fun discussion about community helpers and their jobs.  We learned a couple of our classmates want to be police officers.

We then went over traffic signs and what they mean.  These kids are so smart and so close to passing the driving test!

Lastly, we created our own city.  Everyone was responsible for a block of our city.  We created jails, police stations, parking lots, hospitals, swimming pools, and much more.

When we finished our city we were surprised with a huge storm of cotton balls (snow)!  Katy came to our rescue and we set about rebuilding our city after the snow clean up.

Next week, we will talk about maps and compasses, and maybe go on a little treasure hunt.

Sent from my iPhone

Week 12 - Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening

We had a most thrilling, thought-provoking Thursday class this week.

There were only a few things we would have liked to tweak.

We enjoyed reading Robert Frost's classic poem and looking with wonder at the beautiful and engaging illustrations by Susan Jeffers.

The illustrations show a man (who looks a bit like Santa Claus) stopping in the woods to make snow angels and feed all the forest animals.

We talked about alliteration and rhyme! It was fun picking out the rhymes in each stanza and finding the repeating sounds.

We strung cheerios to hang outside for the birds.  We matched animal tracks to the corresponding animals.  And we created our own wintry, snowy scene.

Next week, we are going to read some wonderful Christmas books.  We will also be sending home a semester's worth of work!  The kids have done some amazing things.  I hope to see them back for next semester.  This class has been GREAT!!  THANK YOU

Week 11 Cranberry Thanksgiving

Our book was the perfect lead in to Thanksgiving.

Cranberry Thanksgiving is a delightful story with a big lesson about judging the character of others based on their outside appearance.

The kids had supposed Mr. Whiskers was a bad man because he had a full, scary-looking beard.  It turned out that he was the hero of the story.  It was great to see them discover this as the story was read.  And fun to talk about "judging a book by its cover."

Teacher Jennifer Wright brought in some delicious cranberry bread and taught us why cranberries float and how they are harvested.  It was fascinating!

We then worked on our scissor skills by cutting cranberries out of colored paper.  We pasted them on our papers with the yummy cranberry bread recipe from the book.

This book is highly recommended.  Such a sweet story, but as we found out, it is HARD to get your hands on one.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

When we get back we will read a classic from Robert Frost.