What A Week!!!!

Our Class Goes To A Sugar House, Experiments With Light, And Builds Leprechaun Traps

In a busy and exciting week, our class took a trip to Branon's Sugar House in Fairfield. We got to do a sugaring activity outside and took a trip into the woods to see how the Branon's collect their sap. We also toured their sugar house and had a chance to climb into their giant tractor.

We also made leprechaun traps, a study in construction and engineering. We set the traps with Green Luck Charms, only to come back from lunch to see he had visited and made a mess of the room. The leprechaun did leave a chocolate gold coin for each student for their incredible effort. We also participated on a leprechaun scavenger hunt.

On Thursday, we also had a wonderful science workshop experimenting with the colors of the rainbow. We made our own rainbows on black construction paper through a neat experiment, and used flashlights, prisms, and mirrors to bend light and look for and create rainbows. It was a fun filled week with lots of great scientific thinking and observations.

It's Sugaring Time!

Our Class Taps A Maple Tree

With the help of Physical Education teacher, Mr. Branon, our class got to see how we tap a maple tree. The use of a new high powered drill, precision guide, and newer buckets showed our students what current and modern sugaring looks like. Mr. Branon talked about how we pick the spot on the tree for tapping, considering old holes and following large branches upward. He asked lots of questions and the students did a very nice job in telling him what we have learned so far in our class. Next Wednesday the kindergarten classes will all go to two sugar houses. One is the Branon's newer style sugar house and another will show students what it looked like many years ago.

100 Day In Kindergarten

Our Class Celebrates It's 100th Day In School!!!

It has been a wonderful year so far and it is very hard to believe that we have logged this many days already. Today we counted one hundred pieces of many items for our GORP afternoon treat. We hung a string of one hundred plastic chain links in the hall and the class contributed one hundred thumb prints for a hall poster. During math, the class used over sized ten frames and counted out and sorted 100 beads. We did a fun writing and drawing exercise with the sentence prompts; "I wish I had one hundred ____ and I don't wish I had one hundred ____". We also built structures on the carpet with one hundred wooden blocks. A very fun close to the week and break. Have a safe and fun time.

Groundhog Day!

Our Class Learns About Groundhog Day!
Our class was very excited to see whether or not the groundhog would see his shadow. He or she emerged and told us that we are in for an early spring. Some students were happy and some wanted more snow. We also discussed the probability of a groundhog being able to truly predict the weather. We talked about folklore, traditions, and myths. There was also a discussion about how this tradition was brought to the United States by immigrants and how the ceremony in Pennsylvania is 130 years old. Our class also made fun groundhog puppets and did some sentence writing on the subject. Lets hope the groundhog is right!!!!!

Gingerbread Houses

Our Class Makes "Sweet" Houses

On Friday, our class celebrated Fun Friday by revisiting our gingerbread stories by making some very cool houses. There was frosting and candy flying everywhere. The students came up with some great ideas and Mrs. Scott's class joined in our fun. The two classes worked so well together and we finished by creating a "Group Plan" large gingerbread house. The students were given directions that would allow for sharing and kindness and it went very well.

Owl Presentation

Three Live Owls Visit Our Library

As a wonderful way to end our owl unit, our guest from Outreach For Earth Stewardship, Craig Newman, presented our class with quite a treat. Craig brought three owls from their aviary; An Eastern Screech owl, a Grey owl, and a Barred owl. The students were fascinated and asked lots of super questions. We got to see how the owls hide from their predators using bark from trees and why their wings are so quiet when they fly. The students were able to pass around owl wings and talons and got to see the owls spread their wings, (the Grey owl even took flight around Craig).

Discovery With Owls

Our Students Discover What Owls Eat
As an incredible extension to our owl unit, the students were able to dissect owl pellets. Owl pellets are the fur and bones that the owl spits out after digestion. The students use tweezers to carefully pull apart the pellets to find out what their owl had eaten. Charts with the bones of rodents, voles, moles, and small birds were handed out as well as a paper showing a full skeleton of a vole. By careful scientific observations, the students matched their bones to find out what type of bone it was and what animal it belonged to. I think we have many budding scientists for our future generation. We were also able to pair the class with Mrs. Scott's class and the students did very well being able to work with students that they may not always see.