Blowin' in the wind....

Today was a gorgeous day! The kids were eager to learn, the weather was sunny but cool. We could eat lunch out on the deck without sweating up a storm. Perfect!

Next Friday, if you can participate in the field trip, plan to be here at the school house at 9:00. We will catch a hay ride down to Farm Days. Parents can take the hay ride down OR follow us and park closer to the show so you won't have to catch a shuttle back. Feel free to bring siblings, grandparents, whomever! We will hit the educational highlights as a group, but everyone can mill around with their families for as long (or as short) a time as you'd like!

REMINDERS
No Classes 9/19-9/30. The last class in September will be on 9/16. We will resume Oct 4^th!

THURSDAY 9/15 is Grandparents' Day!  Come join us from 1:00-3:00 for an afternoon together!


FRIDAY 9/16 is Field Trip Day!  We're changing the meet time to 9:00 at the school house.  Wear play shoes and your school shirts!

Grammar- We learned about action verbs today, which was a review for everyone. We will be exploring the other types of verbs (linking, helping, and state of being) later on.

Spelling- We played the hamburger game today, as we reviewed our super tough spelling words in list 5! Instead of eating our imaginary hamburgers, most of them get “saved” up for an imaginary hamburger fight at the end... “miscellaneous” and “multiplication” sure make huge hamburgers!

Reading- Today, we talked about chapters 8 & 9 in The Indian in the Cupboard. The introduction of the cowboy was really exciting to the kids! We discussed all the book's recent happenings, and then we talked about the way that Omri brings more things to life in order to give Little Bear tools and help. Using clay, sticks, and rocks, we created our own tool for Little Bear to use. I will be baking these and we are adding them to the cupboards that we made!

Math- Today, we worked on word problems. We used the part/whole model in order to figure out what information has been given, and what we need to know.  Afterward, we worked on those mental subtraction skills with another card game.  They love math games!

Poetry- We read through the poem, “The Duel”, a few times today. We focused on the first stanza, acting out the parts of the cat, dog, plate, clock, and narrator. Don't worry if it takes a while to memorize... It will!! We have months to get it down... and when we do, we can act it out and make our movie!

Science-

Today, we learned about seed plants and how they reproduce. This was a big lesson with a lot of information.... pollination, fertilization, germination... lots of big words with big concepts! We learned about how plants make seeds... and how seeds grow into new plants. Plants need for their seeds to fall far away from their shadows and root systems. But, how do seeds get from place to place? We used our imaginations and ingenuity to create our own seeds! Using only 2 pieces of paper, tape, a paper clip, and scissors, each student worked to make their own seed- dropping them from the deck railing to test their flight. After a period of test drops and restructuring our seeds, we dropped them all to see which designs fell the farthest from the “plant”.

Social Studies- What an awesome job the kids did on their “Why Explorers Explore” packets! Today, they learned about the technologies that explorers used to help them as they explored the New World.

Writing- We talked about why graphic organizers are important. When we write down our ideas and details beforehand, it speed up our writing process!  We then talked about how to add adjectives, examples, and descriptions to jazz up our writing.  To illustrate this, we played a game!  I gave one student a noun-- snowman, egg, sun, etc.  The student had to get the others to guess their word... by only using adjective cards!  He or she could put adjectives into three categories:  definitely, sort of, and not.  After someone guessed the word, they had to come up with a sentence about that word using at least two of the adjectives on the board!  FUN!