We are loving Spring!!!

We had such a great time at our Book Buddies sledding party on the 16th!  S'mores all around! Our aide Ms. Jocelyn even tried her very first s'more ever!  She said she wasn't a big fan... too sweet. 😂

We did a mini dinosaur unit, and made dinosaur fossils, as part of our study of geology!

We finished up our space unit as well, learning about stars and constellations.  We made pokey pin constellations!

The kinders all created a constellation and then wrote an original legend to go with it!

We also learned about stars of different colors.  We used a lighter to demonstrate that different temperatures of fire are different colors, and stars are the same way.  The kids were fascinated to learn about the life cycle of stars, and how many stars are in the universe!  Then we made colored star cookies by melting hard candy in the middle!

Last week we had a unit on rain and rainbows and color.  We began with Dr. Seuss's book, My Many Colored Days, and discussed how our feelings relate to colors.  Then we drew pictures of the colors we were feeling that day. 

We made mini water cycles in a cup, by putting hot water in the cup and watching as it evaporated and then condensed on the plastic into big drops that then fell down back into the cup!  We wrote in our journals about our experiment. 

Adding a little creativity into our rain unit, we read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and wrote about what we would have it rain out of the sky!  We had everything from 100 dollar bills to sparkly clothes and rainbow cotton candy coming out of our clouds!

We went outside after learning about how rainbows are made, and made our own rainbows with cups of water on a very sunny day!

We learned about color theory by mixing different colors of cookie dough to make all of the colors of the rainbow.  Then we layered the different colors into rainbow swirl cookies!

We are LOVING Spring!!!  The kids are enjoying the puddles that are fast disappearing.  Collecting water beetles was the favorite activity this week at recess!  

Spring also means lots of living things in our classroom!  We have preying mantis egg sacs, luna moth cocoons, painted lady caterpillars, and duck eggs incubating!!!

The kids earned a bouncy house party on Friday by getting their rocket to the sun!  The kids had a fun surprise after recess to come into our room  and find it filled with a bouncy house!

 

Rock cycle, paper airplanes, puppies, and bugs!

Never a dull moment in our class... that seems to be the motto for this year!  One thing I love about my job is that on Monday you'd never guess what will happen by Friday. :) 

This week began with with continuing our study of the Earth and geology.  We learned about gems and minerals and mining, and then went cookie mining!  We used pick axes (toothpicks) to mine gems (M&M's) out of the dirt (cookies).  Then we graphed the gems we found!  Of course we ate the gems afterwards!

We are working hard on becoming independent writers, including the skills of being able to chop of up words, hear the individual sounds, and translate them into letters.  We call this "kid spelling".  And once kids achieve this milestone and realize they can write phonetically, even if it isn't the proper spelling,they are so excited to be able to communicate this way!  Having your child write notes and letters and signs at home is a great way to practice these skills!  Here the kids are enjoying some small group time with our wonderful aides to practice independent kid spelling...

We had one of the subs in the school, Brandon, come in and teach the kids how to use a range finder and practice skills like estimating and measuring yards and feet.  They enjoyed hearing about the application of this kind of math in hunting and construction! 

In science we had a yummy lesson on the rock cycle!  We used Starbursts to create layered sedimentary rock.  Then we squeezed and twisted it to become metamorphic type rocks.  Then we put those "rocks" into the oven to create igneous rocks!  We looked at real examples of each kind of rock as we went along.  Edible science is the best!  

We got to visit with the cutest puppy this week! Mr. Larrabee brought in his new Bernie Doodle puppy named Asha to see the kids.  She was so mellow and cuddly! Everyone loved her. 

Ms. Michele from the greenhouse brought us a preying mantis egg sac to hatch out in our room.  It hatched the very next day, with hundreds of preying mantises crawling out!  It was so much fun to watch them hatch! Then we released them in the greenhouse to help eat some of the aphids.  The kids got to pick a radish while they were there.  The greenhouse is looking amazing!   Go Michele!  This is just the beginning of the creatures we plan to have in our room this spring... ladybugs, butterflies, and ducks still to come!!!

Friday afternoon was the perfect time for a paper airplane STEM project.  We built a glider from a kit, and then the kids made their own paper airplanes, and we had a great time tweaking them to fly better.  Some kids cut in flaps or tried different designs.  They have been so excited about planes ever since our field trip to Forty Mile Air, so this was such a fun project!!!  It kept going all through P.E., when the kids were flying and chasing their planes all around the gym, and got the other grades in on it too!!!

Career Week, Easter, and April Fools!

 First of all, we had SO much fun playing April Fools tricks on people around the school.  We laughed so much all day on April 1st!

The day started off with this Morning Message, met with total silence: 

Then I told them it was an April Fools joke.  We were really going to have a BrownE party later that afternoon.  Funny thing was, later that afternoon one of the kinders reminded me that we hadn't cleaned the bathroom yet! :) 

Then, we played a trick on Mr. Larrabee.  Morgan pretended he had cut his arm badly and we took him to the office for some first aid.  Good thing for masks... once we were in the office he couldn't stop smiling!  

Next was a fake vomit clean up call for the janitor, Mr. Goneau.  

Lastly, I told the kids we were having a Brownie party, but they got only some brown E's.  Later, of course we did have some yummy Brownies!!!   

The kids got way into the spirit of April Fools Day.  I can't tell you how many times they told me I had a spider on my head. Ha ha!

We did lots of fun Easter projects this week too, including easter math and reading, symmetry, putting rhyming egg halves together, making easter glyphs with shapes, making shaving cream swirled eggs, edible bird nests, and having a fun easter party on Friday.  Thank you Combs family for the yummy treats and Ms. Jocelyn for playing Easter Bunny to the kids!  

This week and last week we had SO much fun having parents come into our classroom to teach us about careers, and inspire the kids about why school is important, and the fun jobs that are possible in their future!

We had Becky Nauglebaugh come in to talk about construction project management, and the kids all wanted to build roofs after that so they could climb up on the roof!

Kory Labbe came in to talk about being a counselor, and helped the kids identify some of their emotions and how to breathe to calm down.  They loved it!  They did a coloring project that Kory brought in about their feelings and we had a good discussion sharing our drawings!

Cody Omta told the kids how to be safe around snowplows and showed them some cool pictures of how he fixes roads and saves baby squirrels! 

Jeff Wells and Bob Gingue showed some movies about how they count caribou and dart animals to study them.  Then they did a cool demonstration with radio telemetry, having half of the class pretend to be the caribou herd and the other half the biologists searching for them outside.  It was a blast!

Michele Flagen came in to teach the kids about being a photographer, and actually let them take their own polaroid pictures, most of which are of their friends, now taped to the their lockers!

Cody Webb taught the kids what Alaska State Troopers do, and let them talk on the radio in his cop car!  They loved the badges he gave them too!

Stephanie English came in to give the kids a behind the scenes look at how their healthy lunches get to them.  They all had fun with their milk mustache stickers!!!

We got to take a field trip to 40 Mile Air to learn about being a pilot, and explore the life flight airplane!  The kids learned that they need to know math if they want to be a pilot, to make sure the planes aren't overweight.  We weighed the class: 1010 lbs!  

I can't say enough thanks to the families who supported this careers unit!  We really loved having family members come in and visit (thank you for jumping through covid testing hoops!) and the kids were truly inspired as to what possibilities lie ahead for them!!!  It is always nice to have a FUN REASON to learn math and reading!!!

The middle school put on a Medieval Faire and we were invited to see all of the kings and queens and their kingdoms!

It was a fun and eventful couple of weeks!  We also had Book Buddies Rock party last week, but I was too busy to remember to take any pictures!  This Wednesday the 7th we will have a Book Buddies sledding party at airport hill.  Families are welcome to meet us there, we will have a bonfire and cocoa, from 9:30-11:00.  

Also, don't forget the Easter egg hunt Saturday April 3rd at 10am at the school playground!