More winter stuff

We got to take home our snowmen to make room for mittens in the window display. Goodbye cute snowmen.

Not very many more 'blocks of ice' were glued tonight, but enough to make a doorway and start in on the next level. You can see them starting to lean it so that it will make a roof/dome shape. Keep on sending in those milk jugs! (We also welcome extra lids.)

Wintry things like mittens and an igloo

Here is our modified Venn diagram comparing/contrasting two versions of The Mitten.
Today we tried to clip mittens onto the clothesline to make sentences. Reading practice plus some fine motor practice with the tiny clothespins.
We counted different colored lids
Then we recorded our numbers on a graph. There was a lot to count and graph. We'll be working on this more next week.
More milk jugs have been glued. It's starting to curve in a little. Keep sending in milk jugs. We've already collected more than 200!

Martin Luther King Jr.

One more blog post for tonight: I just wanted to share how much I love teaching about Martin Luther King Jr.

For one thing, it is good for them to hear that grown-ups make mistakes too. Yep, they're the ones who made those silly laws about water fountains and where to sit on the bus and what school to go to.

We also read the story of Ruby Bridges, who was 6 years old - just like them. Young children are important and can do hard things like forgiving people who are mean.

But my favorite part of teaching about Martin Luther King Jr. is that they don't get it. They don't understand why people would be mean to someone just because they look different. They are glad that everyone in our class can be together at school regardless of their physical appearance.

Martin said in his most famous speech that he had a dream of children living in a nation in which they were not judged by the color of their skin. I'm not going to debate how the world or country is doing as a whole, but I can tell you that the dream is reality in our classroom.

I is for Ice

I is for ice. Today we 'rescued' animals that were frozen in ice. It was a popular activity.

Working Together

Several children decided to work together to build this structure (I'm not sure exactly what it was). By the time it was finished, about half the class was involved and it included wooden blocks, cardboard bricks, plastic cups, kitchen toys and little rhyming houses. Hooray for creativity and cooperation!

K-4 Games

This game makes me laugh: spin around until you're dizzy, and then try to run in the shape of a
star.


The star/spoon relay:
3 legged star walk; it was neat to see some of the older students taking charge of the younger ones.

Igloo post 2

Even with only one layer complete, it is already a popular place to be.
A little ice fishing during center time:
More clean ice chunks ready to be glued.

What it looks like now:

Tomorrow

This is what your children will see when they get to school tomorrow (minus the hot glue gun). Our igloo is started. As you can see, it still has a ways to go, so please keep the jugs coming!

More Wintry Pictures

This one isn't wintry, but oh well. We made wind tassels to measure the weather. If it's down, there's no wind. If it's moving, there is some wind and you can tell what direction it's blowing. If you run with it, it makes it move too. :)
We moved around the letters in snowman to make new words.
We read winter words and learned about compound words. (Snowman artistry credit goes to 2nd and 6th graders in daycare)

Snow Day Pictures

First off, a big THANK YOU to Mrs. W. and Mr. H. for going to get the snow and shoveling it all out of the truck for us to play with here! And now we will start the pictures with the shrieking mob. Don't worry, we forewarned the other teachers...
She actually looks wintry!
A big snowball
Another big one. (And only in Phoenix do we have snow days that don't require jackets)

Look! It's snowing!
Digging tunnels...
Some attempts were made to build tiny snowmen.
We threw a lot of snowballs at the wall.
And we wrote/drew on the wall.
Sitting on top of the 'mountain':
Group shot:
All that was left of the pile after 30-45 min.s of children
Wet mittens/gloves drying in the sun.