Swinging into Spring!

Thank you to everyone who was able to join us for our second "Lunch and Learn"! It was a very successful afternoon learning all about book levels and just right books for your child's reading ability. I really enjoyed having parents and grandparents in our classroom listening to the children read, getting excited over new books, and sharing their classroom with the ones who mean the most to them! Thank you for showing your child your love of learning, reading, and how much you value education. It was a great afternoon! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask!

This week we learned about Arbor Day and worked on Arbor Day projects. Students were able to choose to paint, draw, write a story, or write a poem about Arbor Day. We had a lot of fun learning all about trees, and are excited to see if we have any Arbor Day winners from our classroom! Mr. Brown has delivered the projects to the committee in Cadillac that will select winners for this contest! Fingers crossed!

This week, we have been working so hard on making graphs, collecting data, interpreting the data on a graph, and learning how to ask questions about the data. Thank you to everyone who participated in the math challenge----students found some really great objects and home and made some great graphs! The learning is always so much more meaningful if the children have a vested interest in the topic/concept. Thank you for taking the time to do a meaningful math activity with your child at home! I hope you were able to get an inside look at what we have been doing in the classroom!

After working so hard, we needed to venture out of the classroom.....so we took our learning OUTSIDE! We used our Forest View nature trail to go on an Easter egg hunt. We looked for various eggs and tallied the number of each kind. Then, we graphed the total for each category. After that, we were able to interpret the data. Check us out! Here's a video and some pictures of our mighty math minds at work!

Can you see the egg? It's hidden pretty well!

Collecting data and recording the information!

Also, this week we've added another outdoor activity. It is such a perk to have our classroom located where it is. We use the outdoor space as much as possible! Students are enjoying using the water table for building words (spelling words, ball words) with interlocking crab letters. They are bath tub toys----but with 2 sets, you get enough vowels to build all sorts of words! Sometimes when you think your children have outgrown a toy, think of a creative use for it. Grab some bath tub alphabet letters and your child would love to practice spelling words at home!

Congrats to Leo for earning his teacher lunch with 75 class dojo points!

Last, but not least....gosh, we pack so much into a week....our brains are growing at astronomical rates.....we worked in teams to research 4 fun facts about planets. The teams had to divide up the jobs: technology person, writer, reader, and supply manager. They worked together to find songs, articles, or e-books that gave their team fun facts to record and share out to the rest of the class. This was a great opportunity to practice leadership, compromise, teamwork, responsibility, and to have FUN with friends while learning about science!