Brand New Year

SOOOOOO....is it now 2010! Hard to believe that the school year is almost half over! The students came back to school half asleep (as well as their teacher). It was fun to hear all of their stories about their Christmas break and what Santa brought them! We also got a new student to add to our Brilliant Butterflies! They have been great this past week showing him the ropes! We began our winter unit this week that will last for the next week. We will be learning so much about bears, penguins, winter animals, snowmen, etc. We did a mini illustrator unit on Robert Sabuda, a paper engineer, this past week. We learned through different websites, his books, and PowerPoint presentations about him and how he constructs his books. On Friday, we even got to make our own mini pop-up book! What a fun week!

Toro and the Texans

Another part of our crazy week.....Toro and the Texans came to visit us! Toro and the football players "calling" in talked about to us about proper excercise and eating healthy. The best part was when students from the audience got to dance with Toro! One of our students was able to break it down with Toro!!!

Counting Down....

How many days left until Christmas??? The students in my class are looking forward to the Christmas break just as their teacher is!
Last week, our elf Elfina came to watch over us in our classroom! At night, she goes up to speak with Santa to tell him about our behavior. It is SO fun having her! Every morning, we look for her in our classroom to see where she chose to land next. We write her questions and sometimes she even writes us back!

We also read many different versions of the Gingerbread Man last week. Some titles include The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett, Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett, Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Earnst, and The Gingerbread Man by Karen Schmidt. There are SO many different titles to choose from! After reading the The Gingerbread Man on Monday, our gingerbread man ran away! We went on a week-long hunt throughout our school looking for him! We finally found him our classroom on Friday and he brought us a treat.... gingerbread cookies!

Another busy week....

Last week was a busy week.....
We started off the week with a visit from Casey Curry, a meteorologist from Channel 13 news. She was very nice and informative and certainly kept the students' interest.

It was also GO Get It week where we concentrated on the importance of higher education. Students decorated pennants at home with their favorite college and sent in to be displayed on our classroom door. We also showed our spirit by wearing a college shirt on Thursday.

Friday was Career Day! We had many parents that graciously volunteered their time to come in and talk with students about their career and the education needed. These parents came in during our PEAMs time, but we also had the opportunity to have a real-live scientist visit our classroom......Dr. Bill! Ava's dad, Mr. Jackson, did many different things with the students including discussing the changes in matter, demonstrating it, and even involving the students! What a treat!

Dr. Bill giving us the scoop...

Video of snow

Our first video....

This is right when the snow began.







Our second video.....

This was after lunch when the snow began to stick

Snow in Pearland!!

It was a crazy day on Friday when snow began to fall before 8:00am and didn't stop until near 4:00pm! We had an amazing day playing in the snow and even just watching it fall out the window! We decorated our Christmas tree in our classroom during our spare moments and even made hot cocoa! After reading Who'll Pull Santa's Sleigh Tonight by Laura Rader http://www.amazon.com/Wholl-Pull-Santas-Sleigh-Tonight/dp/0060080906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260158557&sr=8-1, a great story about Santa and Mrs. Claus using hot cocoa to help the reindeer get better, we decided as a class to use our measurement skills to follow the recipe in the back. What great fun!

Our yummy hot cocoa

What was left of our class after early dismissal was announced....

November....It has flown by!

I am sad to say that I have let the month of November go by without posting.....I HAVE got to get better about it! :)

The month started off with our celebration of the 50th day of school with a 50's day celebration. We had a lot of fun during the day doing including different activities, learning more about the time period through a short video and PowerPoint, and a 50's sock hop in the hallway! The children absolutely loved it! They were able to dress the part by rolling up their jeans and shirts, poodle skirts and pearls, and scarves around their necks....of course it had to remain in dress code. :)

We also learned about the usual pilgrims and Native Americans and the story of Thanksgiving during the month of November. We did an in-depth study using online resources, videos from Discovery Education, and different types of literature, fiction and non-fiction.

During this time, we did an investigative unit about corn. We manipulated different types of corn including Indian corn, yellow corn, popcorn, candy corn, kernels, etc. The students worked hard to identify different properties of corn through investigations such as sink or float and comparing the different types using hand lenses and their five senses. We recorded our information on a large corn stalk with the properties listed on corn cobs.