Ninja Training

The boys in the class have taken us from knights and castles to Japan and ninjas!  Lately, the boys  have shown a real interest in learning all about ninjas.

We started off by looking at a books from the library.  We read about where ninjas came from, what they do, and the castles of their era.

We had group discussions of our readings to better understand what the children were learning and what their observations were...

• "Who are ninjas?"

They lived a long time ago in Japan.-Preston

They were born in Japan.-Hendrix

They have masters.-Hendrix

Ninjas fight.-Christian

They are people who have swords.-Noah

Their are bad snakes they fight.-Sam

• "What do they do?"

                                                      They flip and "shing" them.-Bishop

They talk first and the protect the good guys.-Preston

Only knights train.-Preston

They train and than fight.-Bishop

They stand and wait for bad guys.-Musa

They flip and flip and flip.-Hendrix

• "Where do ninjas live?"

                                                                     A dark cave.-Preston
                                                        In a house that is blue inside.-Bishop

A dragon boat.-Sam

A special house.-Musa

In Japan.-Noah

• "What do they wear?"

Black!!

"Ninjas do tricks to confuse their enemy."

"The ninjas would throw dust and smoke than run away to make it look like they did magic!"

I began a conversation where I told them about  ninjas also doing magic tricks too! They were soo shocked and excited. We talked about one particular magic trick that they reenacted for each other to see!

As we talked about ninjas, we got into details about what type of house they lived in. After doing some research we learned they lived in a Japanese Castle!!!

This gave us the idea to compare the similarities and differences with ninjas and knights!!

I asked the boys if ninjas came from japan, where did knights come from?

Hendrix yelled out, "ENGLAND!"

We pulled out the globe to find Japan, England and the United States!

The boys did a great job pin pointing these countries by looking for the letters each country started with..

We compared how knights wore armor over their clothes while ninjas also wore armor but it remains under their clothes, so their enemy doesn't see it! 

After learning many new facts about ninjas, we found a very interesting video on the computer that showed us the inside of a real ninja castle!

We saw many cool things that were made especially for the ninjas...

"A ninja who is training."-Bishop

"The big ninja was looking for the little ninja behind the hidden door."-Musa

"I saw the ninja disappear behind the hidden door."-Sam 

Ninja doing magic tricks.-Luke

This project is taking us in many directions! We will continue to compare/contrast Ninjas and Knights and have also began looking at similarities and differences between a Japanese and English Castle.

So many amazing things are happening with this project, please check back soon for updates!

Cheese Roll Ups

One activity we LOVE to do and are really good at, is preparing and baking something! Because of this, we will continue baking something every Friday!

Christian's mom told us about a recipe that he loves to bake at home, so we thought it would be a great idea for us to try it out at school!

We were excited to have Christian's parents come in to help us through the whole process! ;o)

The children loved it and we wanted to share our fun filled morning!

On the Menu: Cheese Roll Ups!

"We love pepperoni!"

"Help!"

We loved Christian's dad, he made us laugh so much! :-)

"Time to roll it up!"

We had this delicious treat with our lunch and we loved it!!

We love as much parent involvement as possible. Please let us know if you have any ideas on any recipes your child loves!  :)

All About Animals

We wanted to share all the different projects we have going on in the our room!

The children are so excited about creating their very own book inspired from our field trip to the Arboretum!

It is titled, "I see the Animals"

Each child created a page of their own, about an animal that caught their eye. Our imaginations ran wild while we came up with this story, and the book has turned out great! We can't wait to show our parents!

Once upon a time we went on a hike in the park when we saw...

We looked through our books based on animals to help us learn fun facts about these animals...

This story has really helped us improve our writing and drawing skills :o)

Spider came back looking for food to his spider web, but he didn't see worm anywhere...

Another great idea we came up with was to create our very own picture of one of the animals that we liked.

We were very focused on every detail as we drew on watercolor paper.  We looked at how many eyes, ears and legs each animal, insect or bug had. Than we used our facts that  we learned about to describe our picture.

Some of our work is being displayed in the classroom, feel free to come check it out or ask Ms. Ambreen or Ms. Jojo!

These are paintings we are very proud of! 

 "Birds are very good at spotting movement, which is why its so easy to scare them away."

By: Preston C.

 " If you are close to an armadillo, and you stay quiet and stand still, the chances of it not noticing you are there are fairly good."

By: Hendrix P.

 "Rabbits had long ears and a little nose."

By: Christian D.

 "Rabbits can run as fast as 18 miles an hour."

By: Sam R.

 "Earthworms help make land fertile by spreading nutrients through the soil."

By: Musa S.

Some of students wanted to learn different facts about these animals sooo we thought it would be a great idea to do some research from our books we have checked out from the library and information from the Internet!

First Kylie and Cami wrote down all the animals we would be finding information on...

Than we moved over to the computer to practice our typing skills....

We got a big poster board where we are charting all our information we are learning about!

Some things we are finding out about are:

• What do the animals eat?
• What class are they?
• Where do they live?
• How many legs do they have?
• Is their skin soft or hard?

This is an ongoing project that all the students are joining in on since we are focusing on so many details with so many different animals!

We hope to be finished soon so we can show you all our great work!