Happy Halloween!

Our Party Pictures!

Our sing along!

Pete The Cat

"I'm so happy that Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year!" said no teacher ever.

 ~Author Unknown

 

Guidance lesson

We love it when Mrs. Belthoff comes in for our Wednesday guidance lesson. She teachers us about our feelings, and how to get along with other children. We get to role play and we love that!
At the end of our lesson we get to do YOGA! We are really good at that!

Brain break yoga for kids


From Yogi Bhajan, Guru of Kundalini : Yoga ~" “Feel good, be good, and do good.”

Sorting shapes

                                We can sort shapes by many different attributes!
                                                            
                                                        

 

.....by shape

                                      

                                                               ...... by color

                                                              .....by size

                                                     ......by number of sides

 

                                                          ...by number of corners

Standard:
1.G.A.1

Geometry
Reason with shapes and their attributes.

1. Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation, overall size) ; build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes.


Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Enjoy this book!



"Squares and triangles agree....circles are pointless!"

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin!

We have to decide who draws each item and label our drawings! We work cooperatively!

Then we present our learning to our classmates! We love doing this part!

Life cycle of a pumpkin      nonfiction

The Pumpkin Patch story    fiction

I'll leave you with this joke:
Q: How do you mend a broken Jack-o-lantern?
A: With a pumpkin patch!

Columbus Day Collaborative Group Work

We had fun learning about the "Columbus Day" holiday in library and class. As a follow-up activity in class we worked in groups creating a poster highlighting our learning.

According to Susan Munro, Mary Utne O'Brien, John W. Payton in their article on Edutopia:
Common Ground: Teaching Kids the Benefits Of Working Together - October 19, 2006
Cooperative learning helps create the essential skill of working and compromising within a group. 
During the course of the assignment, the children work together for a shared benefit, realizing that all members share that goal and the rewards of achieving it. Cooperative learning goes hand in hand with social and emotional learning (SEL). Briefly, the two approaches help develop a number of skills, including

• self-awareness: recognizing feelings and identifying interests, strengths, and weaknesses.
• self-management: managing feelings and behavior to control impulses and persevere in achieving important personal and academic goals.
• social awareness: understanding the needs and feelings of others, while appreciating similarities and differences among individuals and groups.
• relationship skills: maintaining positive relationships with others.
• responsible decision making: making good choices and contributing to one's school, one's community, and the world.

Studies of cooperative-learning strategies regularly report an increase in engagement and active participation in the learning process, which in turn increase student motivation, time on task, and retention times and improve cognitive reasoning and the ability to see from others' perspectives.

Available at: http://www.edutopia.org/common-ground

Columbus Day

 

 

Fall Audubon Experience!

We had fun exploring the fields.......

and writing our observations in our journals!

The wetlands were fun to explore.......

we saw deer tracks and learned about beavers!

We loved learning about the forest.......

and galls!

Enjoy the following links:

Why do leaves change color?

Clifford's First Autumn story