Ask Me About Thursday, May 21, 2015

Let's catch up!  Sorry I missed a couple days blogging.  I had a workshop and a meeting after school a couple days this week and didn't get to blog.  So just a few highlights!  
We took a nature walk yesterday to study trees.  I reviewed the use of the binoculars, cameras, and hand lenses.  We studied the deciduous trees by the playground and between the two wings of the building.  We will go out another time soon to study conifers.  The children were so interested in what they saw, and were amazed at what they hadn't noticed before in some of the trees.  They saw beautiful blossoms on some of the trees that you are easy to miss if you are always in a hurry to get to the playground!  Their focus was really on using the new tools I gave them, but they did some sketching and wrote some notes about what they saw.  They seemed very excited and one child was overheard to say "I'm really into nature now."  This was very evident later when we were writing poetry in writing workshop.  Several of the children wrote about nature, especially wind since it was a very windy day when we went out!  
We are continuing with our poetry unit of study.  We practiced trying out different words, and listening to our poems to hear the rhythm of them.  I am amazed at their interest and their work writing the poems.  They are revising as they go along and reread, and really give a lot of thought to the topic choice and the words they use. 
We have been doing some testing in math, and we have been working to extend their understanding of place value by playing Digi-Pig.  They love playing math games!  
Today we watched a short video of puppies.  As we watched, we talked about what we were seeing and searched for words that really told how the puppies were moving and their character traits.  We contrasted that with photographs of eagles, then compared those to penguins, and finally looked at kittens.  We shared a lot of great words, then the children got to work on writing poems about animals, specifically on how they move.  
We read a beautiful story today about a woman from Massachusetts who moves to North Carolina because her husband wants to live there.  She is a librarian, and has always wanted to have a brick library in the center of town.  But in the blue mountains of North Carolina, there is no money for the town to have a library.  They take up a collection and are able to buy a panel truck and, with donations of books, she is able to have a bookmobile.  The book is called Miss Dorothy and Her Bookmobile, by Golria Houston and beautifully illustrated by Susan Condie Lamb.  We took a quick look at North Carolina and saw photographs that showed those beautiful blue mountains at different times of the year.  We also learned that North Carolina is home to many furniture manufacturers.  We took a quick look around Cape Hatteras too.

Don't forget, our field trip is tomorrow to the College Park Aviation Museum.  Children need a bag lunch for the trip.  

Have a nice evening!
Juliet