We met with our 3rd grade Book Buddies from Mrs. Gargano's class. The kids love doing activities and reading with their buddies. The 3rd graders are wonderful role models! We are hoping to do a Book Buddy snack get-together when we return from vacation. Should be a lot of fun!
We had a visitor from The Open Circle Curriculum through Wellesley College come and model a lesson for us. Mrs. Granoth got to even pretend she was student instead of a teacher. We thought that was pretty cool. We were on our best behavior with this new teacher and had a lot of fun learning about the way our brains work. We talked about ways we can get our brains and bodies calm when we feel upset. We also learned how to do a "rainstorm" in a circle. Mrs. Granoth will definitely be doing this as a quick motor break in the future!
During Valentine's week, we got to do a science experiment using the little Valentine's candy hearts! (Of course Mrs. Granoth explained that we could only look at the experiment with our eyes and could not touch or eat anything used during the lesson.) As a class we talked about what a hypothesis meant. I then showed the kids bottles filled with soda, water, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, and air. The kids formed a hypothesis about what they though would happen when I put the candy hearts into each bottle. The kids had great ideas! Some predicted the hearts would float, sink, change colors, dissolve; the list went on and on! We loved watching the bottles over that school day as well as the next. When we came in the next morning some of the hearts had dissolved completely while some floated to the top. We also made note that the liquids changed to various colors. The kids absolutely loved the idea of being scientists and putting on their "scientist thinking caps" for this one.
Last Thursday was "Game Day" at Barrows. Playing some board games and interacting with each other was a nice change in our normal routine. The kids were so excited to share what they brought in; they did a nice job explaining the rules of their games and then had time to explore their own as well as other peer's games.
And last but not least......Friday before vacation was not only our Valentine's Day party but also DAY 100! Boy were the kids proud of this accomplishment! We count every morning and finally got to reach 100! It was a busy day, but we got to celebrate both activities in style! A BIG thank you to Brendan and Kasey's moms for coming in to help with the chaos!
Before signing off of this long entry, I wanted to also share some of the student's writing. They have just come so far! In Fundations the kids are working hard at tapping out those basic cvc words. They are beginning to make the connection between what they say and hear and getting it to paper. Their writing skills have grown dramatically and I am excited to watch them take off even further from now until June. We read Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. The children were to write about what they would like to do on their own snowy day. They are always reminded to use uppercase letters to start a sentence, proper spaces, and punctuation at the end. We also did a fun artsy project prompting the kids to imagine that they lived in a snow globe. They got really creative with their photos and writing! Check out some of our work:
