Almost the end...

I can hardly believe we have 1 1/2 weeks left of school.  Makes me sad! 

Here is what we've been up to lately.

The kids got to figure out that I AM HAVING A BABY!  They were so excited!  This baby is already very loved.

Meterologist James Spann came to visit and reinforce our weather unit.

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a FIESTA!

We made pinatas to take home and BUST!

We've enjoyed the beautiful spring/summer weather at recess, as well as the friendships we've made.

The teachers have enjoyed our time together, too!

We've worked hard and learned about geography and plants.

We celebrated the many cultures at Deer Valley by traveling around the world in one day!

I branched out and got "mehndi" (henna) on my hand.

What a beautiful design!

We've shared morning snacks outside in the sunshine.

Leanne taught us the Korean alphabet.

We played Korean instruments.

The kids have really enjoyed taking the class camera outside to take pictures of their friends and nature.  They've taken hundreds of pictures so I couldn't post many.

Hopefully this won't be the last post so come back and see us!



simple machine centers

This week, our class and Mrs. Nichols class will be working in centers that focus on simple machines and how they make work easier.

We tried to have a race between a real wheel barrow and a kid-made wheel barrow and were surprised when the kid-made wheel barrow won, until we realized that the real wheel barrow had a flat tire! Oops!

The lego groups has to build models of simple machines by following the directions on the cards.

This group is working on building a pulley that will lift a heavy rock.

Who knew that racing cars had anything to do with inclined planes?! The kids had a lot of fun experimenting with the slope of the wood and how it affects the speed of the car.

This group built a machine out of PVC pipes.

This group experimented with levers. They used levers to lift each other up. They had fun placing the fulcrum in different spots.

This group experimented with wedges (nails) and levers (hammer claws).

This group of kids used different kinds of screw drivers to put screws into wood.

Stay tuned for more fun and learning!

What we've been up to...

Dr. Seuss week was so much fun! We enjoyed celebrating his birthday and dressing up like our favorite Dr. Seuss characters. We also ate some yummy Seuss snacks! Unfortunately, due to early dismissal, I don't have any pictures of the kids all dressed up!

We've really been working on double-digit addition and subtraction strategies. The kids are doing a wonderful job applying and practicing these strategies.

Here are a few of the kids who finished their work early and began working on counting strips. They were counting by 10s to see how high they could count. I believe a few up them counted past 3,000. WOW!

We knew that Lovey was going to have babies but we didn't expect to get to WATCH her have them this morning. What an amazing experience! As adults, you may find this a little hard to look at, but the kids were fascinated!

If you look closely at the picture below, you'll see Lovey cutting the umbilical cord. It was neat to listen to the kids questions and comments and talk about animal instincts with them.

Come back and visit soon!

Hall of Heroes, Valentines, and more!

Thank you to everyone for participating in our Hall of Heroes project! We have all enjoyed reading them and learning about the special heroes in your children's lives.

Our class read "You Are Special" by Max Lucado. We talked about how the words we say impact others in positive or negative ways. Every time you say something hurtful, it puts a wrinkle on that person's heart. We shared instances in which others have put wrinkles on our hearts and talked about how hard it is to remove a wrinkle once it is there- in fact, it's impossible to remove it completely. SO, we vowed to think about what we say and make sure it is something that builds people up! We also vowed to not worry about what other people think about us but to be secure in knowing that we are special and that we are making good choices and doing the right thing.
Here we are celebrating our friendships by exchanging valentines. We had so much fun!

During Free Friday Time, some of the kids decided to have some fun with pattern blocks!

Can you figure out what this says?

A dear friend, colleague, and mentor of mine, Colette Tatum, came to present the book that she has written about Mardi Gras. We learned a lot about the traditions of Mardi Gras and the process of writing and publishing a book.

We hope you'll come back and visit soon! Coming soon...biography projects and QR codes.