Happy 2017!

It is very fun to finally all be back together again!  (Minus one still soaking up some sun!)  I brought some of Costa Rica back with me to share with the kids.  We learned about Costa Rican money called colones, and listened to the ocean in some shells.  I showed the kids some pictures of the Friends School in Monteverde, Costa Rica where I got the grand tour from my brother who teaches there.  The Kindergarten class has a pet cat that lives in the classroom.  After the kinders found that out, everyone wanted to move to Costa Rica to go to school!  One thing that I was very impressed with at the Friends School is their "Peace Corner".... a place where students can go to resolve conflicts in the classroom.  I showed the kids pictures of the Peace Corner (below), and told them that we will start a Peace Corner in our classroom.  This backfired, however, when a couple of girls started conniving together to have an issue so they could visit the Peace Corner!

We drank coconut water and cracked open a coconut to eat the inside.  

Ms. Shauna Lee came in to give us a geology show and tell about obsidian.  This obsidian was special because it was made in our very own school boiler!

We celebrated Olivia's birthday this week, and she earned the Pet Shop prize card, so her kitty Twister got to come to her birthday party!  

Please excuse the fuzzy photos in this post.  I am getting used to a new camera!   But this is our class at reading working on story order as well as vocabulary and retelling skills with the Ugly Duckling.

In science we are started a new unit learning about weather and seasons.  Here we are doing an experiment about about the water cycle.  After coming up with some hypotheses, we created a mini water cycle in a cup!  We learned about evaporation and condensation by putting hot water in a cup and watching water droplets form on the plastic on top.  After the experiment we made good use of our hot water by making hot cocoa 😊.