What did we grow????

We found this in our garden.............but nobody knew what it was!














We wrote down a list of what the children thought it was:

• mango


• lemon


• apple


• pear


• peach


• cherry


• watermelon


• orange

We took each fruit and put it next to our "home grown fruit" for comparison.

We wrote down the differences between each fruit, the children did a great job. We heard comments like,

"This one is bumpy on the outside, and this one is soft."

"This one is a circle, and the other one is an oval."

When we were done with all of the fruit we thought it could be, we realized that nobody had given the correct answer. We still didn't know what it was!!!!!

So, we cut it open and into pieces, and we passed it out for all of us to taste!

The kids said, "Hey! We have had this for snack before!"

And finally.......someone shouted out, "It's a cantaloupe!"

Great investigation ;0)

Book orders

Just a quick reminder that all book orders will be due on Monday, August 31st. Please turn in your order form/forms with payment. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Feet

We are still working on the "dinosaur project". If you refer back to the "Feet" post last Tuesday, you can see how the project took a turn to studying the difference between dinosaur feet and human feet. The children started drawing human feet, spelling and reading words about them, and becoming more aware of the characteristics each type of foot had. Notice below.....Madison's pink feet! Today, the children were talking while holding a toy T-Rex, and Ella said, "people feet are bigger than the dinosaur feet!" The teacher said, "If a real dinosaur was here, whose foot would be bigger?"

We got mixed answers, so we looked to the class computer for answers! We read that a T-Rex foot print was found, and it measured 3 feet long. Hmmmm.....now what is 3 feet?

We got a ruler to see what 1 foot was. The T-Rex foot print was 3 feet, so how many rulers did we need? .............. THREE!!!! The children lined them up to see how big the foot print was, and then they put their shoes next to the rulers to compare the size of their feet to the T-Rex.

Yep, the T-Rex foot was bigger than Ella, Natalie, and Ashley!

They drew a T-Rex foot. It had three toes, and long sharp claws. The kids worked together to spell T-Rex.

We traced our feet................no body had a foot bigger than the T-Rex!

Not even Trevor or Max!

We each spelled our names next to our feet. And to finish today's work, we let our creative juices flow and painted our feet in all the colors of the rainbow!

Wow, we did so much in just one morning!

Tree House

Little by little, we are adding to our tree house. The children sit and talk together about what else the house needs. Then they work together to make the different parts. Look at the awesome ladder they just made!

Dinosaur Project

We have the hardest working group of children! They are working so hard to make their art look beautiful. Some of the children have worked on the same piece for 3 days now! Wow! Talk about dedication!

We are making different dinosaurs, their habitats, and the foods they ate.

Tree House

Just a quick update on the class tree house!

We are still working very hard to perfect our tree house. The kids are making a ladder out of wood, and making the tree house out of cardboard.

Feet

Our dinosaur project has taken a slight turn in the past couple of days! We have been watching a film in class about dinosaurs, and it taught us that the difference in dinosaurs and some reptiles was that dinosaurs could stand upright like humans.

This got the kids talking about our feet and dinosaur feet. Griffin started drawing his feet, toes, and toe nails. The kids counted their toes, drew their toe nails, and spelled "feet" and "toes".

Madison and Ashley wanted "nail polish"! They drew their feet and then painted them blue and pink. They spelled "blue feet", "pink feet", "pink toes", and their names. When they were done spelling, they read the sentences.....

"Madison has pink feet. Madison has pink toes."

Some of the other children wanted to make feet out of play dough! They used the play dough to outline their feet! Look how creative they were!

A New Twist on Hop Scotch!

Here is a new twist on hop scotch! Sorry, I couldn't turn the video right-side up!

Tree House

Some of the younger children in the class have revisited our tree project. They have been having conversations about tree houses. Yesterday Trevor and Griffin made a tree house for our tree, but they discovered that there was no ladder for people to climb up the to the tree house!

Great observation ;0)

So they worked all afternoon perfecting the tree house and putting ladders everywhere!

Today, the other children wanted to make ladders, so we used popsicle sticks to make them.

We drew them and used pastels, water color, paints, and color pencils to finish our art work. WOW!

"Chomper"

We have chosen dinosaurs that we love! The children asked if they could make dinosaurs out of cardboard......what a great idea!

"Chomper" is what we nicknamed a Kronosaurus.

First, we looked at the pictures and drew a detailed picture of what we saw.

We read that the Kronosaurus had teeth that were 10 inches long!

This was the perfect opportunity to practice our measuring skills ;)

We measured 10 teeth that were 10 inches long. Some of the children measured shorter teeth, but Vianna showed them the number 10 on the ruler, and we made sure that they all measured at ten inches.

Our dinosaurs are starting to take shape........

All they need now is a good paint job!

Dinosaur Project

Today, the children were interested in "plant eaters" and "meat eaters". We talked about what the difference in the two are, and we are starting to use the terms - HERBIVORE & CARNIVORE.

We got out our books to look at the different dinosaurs. The children picked dinosaurs out of a box and made them out of a special "salt play dough" that we made in class!

We put our dinosaurs to bake for one hour so they could harden. Once they were done, we painted them.

Look at how BEAUTIFUL our dinosaurs are!

We are now working on making drawings to describe what our dinosaurs eat, and what type of habitat they live in. As we finish them, we sit together as a class, to hear the "artist's interpretation" of his/her piece. We love to hear what each other has to say! Maryam is writing down our words so that they can be on display with our art!

We spelled dinosaur together, and we all worked on writing the letters that make up the word!

Dinosaurs

Okay, one group of boys has taken the dinosaur subject and ran with it!

Today they started talking, and CJ said, "Guys, I am gonna teach you about dinosaurs"..........."One day a rock was falling down to Earth. Long necks were eating grass. The grass caught on fire from the rock, so the long necks caught on fire too! They were trying to eat grass that had fire on it. Then all the dinosaurs died and they were gone!"

He drew a picture to show his explanation.

Dimitrios said, "Well, also a volcano exploded when a rock came and hit the Earth!"

Both boys had SO much to say, and it looks like we will spend the next couple of days investigating both theories ;0)

While they worked on this project they counted 16 dinosaurs, practiced writing 1 - 16, spelled words about dinosaurs, and drew their favorite ones.

We are doing so much learning, and having fun at the same! Updates on this project will be posed as we do them..............stay tuned!

So much writing and painting!

We are kicking off August with a lot of painting and writing!

Slowly everyone is making it back from the summer vacations. We are glad to see everyone, and eager to get things back to normal!

We are all interested in so many different subjects........

Dinosaurs

Flowers

The Beach

Humpback Whales

Ice Cream

Swimming Pools

Let see what direction the kids will take us!

We would love to have parent involvement, so any materials or suggetions on these subjects would be great for our project work!

Thank You!!!!