Week 1

Hi!  We had an excellent first week.  I hope you enjoy reading about it.

This year's class

Investingating rocks. . .Every student is special just like every rock

Students investigating the special rocks that they chose.

Investigating a cool rock

Goofy science!  (He had permission to do this for the picture.) 

I was very pleased to see this drawing after they were given a little free time on the white boards.

Working on art

working on art

working on art

Mrs. Smith and helper putting the eyes on the butterflies after her art lesson

Our finished art project. . .butterflies!

Funny Sayings from Kids: At our first day assembly, Principal Parmenter asked the new people to stand.  (He was referring to the new faculty at the school.)  All the new students in the school stood!  He just rolled with it and had them introduce themselves too.

We watched a Magic School Bus video to see how the kids on it work together as a team like I want my students to.  In this episode, they discover how desert animals have adaptations that help them survive with less water.  When I was asking what they learned, one student said, "Desert animals have habickations (meaning adapatations) that  help them survive."

"My mom will ask me at the end of the day if I liked school today.  If I say no, she'll get me a new teacher. . .but I'm going to say yes."

Students enjoyed using our science materials at recess this week.  One thing they did was catch bugs and begin to call them "nature bugs."  I guess in their minds nature bugs are different than indoor bugs!

One student picked a flower, brought it in, and said, "This is for your wife."

One student set her purple necklace on my desk on her way to recess and said, "You can wear this if you want."

When my wife came in to teach art, she had our three month old baby.  One student said, "Wow!  He's cute."  As an afterthought it was added that, "He's way cuter than my little brother."

Is this song by Hermit the Frog (meaning Kermit the Frog).

Special Activities: This week there was a special reading assembly where some of the teachers dressed up as bugs for a skit to get kids excited about reading.  The kids enjoyed that.  We had a few guests come speak to us, such as Mrs. Smith (my wife) and our school nurse.

Academics: This week we mostly focused on how to behave at school, but we did do some academic stuff.  The highlights of this week's academics were reviewing vowels and short a words in reading, along with reviewing writing the numbers and introducing addition and graphing in math.