We put on a special play for Ms. Jerre's retirement celebration. The children made their own costumes (impressive, huh!) and then I read the story and they acted out the parts.
One of the parents took and sent me these pictures--I didn't get any of our play, so I was excited to see these in my inbox! Thanks!
Monday our plant to add to our gardens was a mint plant.
We learned about the structure of a flower. We made a project to help learn the parts.
We colored some watercolor paper flowers with markers. We used straws to represent the pistil (tube that transports pollen into the flower) and pipecleaners for stamen (which holds the pollen).
It was great fun to spray the flowers with water!
Talking about the parts of the flower with Ms. Rosalba.
All our pretty flowers!
Finished product:
We used my bee to demonstrate how pollen is transported by bees, butterflies, bugs and birds. Ignore my marker-y hands. We had a bit of an incident in the marker box. :)
Talking about the mint plant.
Jon Paul reading a book when he finished his work.
Alright Families, I am still waiting on many of your reading pictures! In the meantime I am just going to post another of my own until you send me yours! Vlada (on of our amazing volunteers!) is also my babysitter in the afternoons. Every day she reads to Quinn from our current chapter book before Quinn takes a rest time. Vlada is such a good reader even my dog wants to listen!
Quinn is listening to us read Junie B. Jones books right now and she loves em like crazy! And you know I also checked out the cd's of the audiobooks from the library, which she listens to during her rest time on her cd player!
This version is a little different than the Rachel Buchman version we use in class, but this close enough! Here's a song the kids are also enjoying singing together!
Except that we have something different in our egg--ask your kids what it is!
First off, here is one of the body movement poems the kids really love. Their favorite part is shooting up like a rocket, of course!
Several of our favorite "Plant Songs" come from a cd I checked out at the library--Sing a Song of Seasons by Rachel Buchman. You might want to check it out and listen at home!
Our plant to add to our gardens on Friday was Aloe Vera. We drew it in our Plant Encyclopedia section of the journals and learned lots of interesting facts about the plant.
Then we read the fable about the Goldenrod plant, so we added that to our journals, too!
We'd been talking a lot about parts of plants--and even the parts we eat. I brought some carrots from my garden to show everyone. The kids were surprised by all the tiny roots all over the carrot--and we talked about the fact that the part we eat is the taproot.
Then I brought out some greenbeans, and we talked about beans being seeds. That sure surprised the kids!
We had been soaking lima beans in water--the kids had peeled off the seed coats and opened the cotyledons to look at the baby embryo inside. Now we rechecked the unused seeds and boy were they swollen! They were starting to stink, too, so we decided we'd try planting them outside later in the day.
We planted grass seeds in babyfood jars--we're eager to watch the roots from the glass sides!
Then we went on a seed walk. We used a big piece of clear tape and walked around in the field searching for seeds to stick on our tape. Everyone LOVED this activity--I'd recommend trying it at home with your kiddos again! They will surprise you how good they are at finding seeds! This is lots of fun and we found so many different types of seeds!
Here we are planting the bean seeds along the fence.
And here's the playground where we get some exercise every day!
Taking our gardens back to their little spot under the stairs.
Look at that concentration on Raymond's face! These are heavy boxes for the little ones!
