THANK YOU EATING WELL MAGAZINE! (who knew we could have such fun with old calendars?)

A friend of mine works for Eating Well magazine and she sent in the old 2012 calendars.  I was originally going use them for collage picture cutting, but when I saw how many there were, I gave each child one!  We talked about the foods in the pictures, and the recipes for each month.  *Be warned that your children now want to cook the recipe for their birthday month!

The most amazing thing about this whole "event" was that the kids started finding their birthday months, reading, comparing the recipes and numbers, and thus began a student based learning experience.  I facilitated more learning by asking them to find their buddies that had the same birthday month, to find their number of their birthday, and more!  You should have seen the excitement as they poured over their calendars!  (well you can see a bit in the photos) They sure were disappointed when they had to put them away.  This afternoon, they want to put their friends birthdays on their calendars.

  One of my favorite things about teaching, is following a "path" that was not planned... in order to let students lead and be invested in the learning!  This calendar activity is a perfect example!

OUR UVM INTERN IS HERE!

This is our U.V.M. intern, Miss Kristen!  We are so excited to have her join us every Tuesday and Thursday!  She enjoys working with children, being outdoors, and dancing.  We are hoping she might teach us a couple dances!

CRAZY KIDS!

For our sense of sight, we made crazy glasses!  Aren't they cute?  

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OUR FIVE SENSES!

We have been learning about the Five Senses this week (and will continue next week as well).   Our experiments this week included a "smelling test", where the students smelled different jars and guessed what scent it was.  The onion jar was interesting!

 On Thursday, we focused on our sense of hearing, as we listened to a recording of sounds and guessed what they were.

 Today, we focused on sight.  They made glasses...wait until you see them...and we also played a "guide dog" game.  One child was the guide dog, while the other person was the visually impaired person.  They lead each other around the room, giving them directions on where to walk, stop, and turn.  They also stopped them at an object and had them use their sense of touch to guess where they were in the room.  It was one of the cutest things I have seen...the pictures speak for this!  They were so careful with their classmates and guided them safely (thank goodness) around the room.  

CUTE!

TURNING OURSELVES INTO SNOW PEOPLE AND MAKING OUR OWN PUFFY PAINT SNOWMEN!

There was no stopping my students as soon they started working on their snow-people!  I traced their bodies, into a snow"man" shape, then they decorated them.  They are super cute...stay tuned for photos of the finished product!  

Then we made our own puffy paint, using half glue and half shaving cream!  Didn't they turn out adorable?  

OUR FIRST FRIEND TO EARN 100 STARS! WAY TO GO!

With our BeASTaR program, our students have a chance to earn stars for good behavior and choices.  They also earn prizes when they get to 10 stars, 25, 50, 75, and 100.  I have a couple other students who are very close to 100!  Way to go!

LEARNING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND! PLUS OUR "CHUBBY LITTLE SNOWMEN" AND THEIR FUNNY NOSES!

Isn't this beautiful.  Teamwork pays off!  

Our "Chubby Little Snowmen" poems.  The two above are cake noses and blueberry noses.  

Carrot nose and Mushroom nose!

Cookie nose and Cookie nose!

Chocolate nose and Cookie nose!

Berry nose!

Marshmallow nose and Broccoli nose!

 Carrot nose, Blueberry nose, and Broccoli nose!

Carrot nose!

Marshmallow noses!

SNOW BALL FIGHT IN THE CLASSROOM!!! WHAT?

Here are our sight words so far.  (Actually we have a couple others as well)  Don't worry... the "snowballs" were made of crumpled up paper.  When they opened the "snowballs", they had to read their sight word.  We had a lot of FUN!  I couldn't stop laughing the whole time we were doing this!  

As you can see, they mostly like throwing them at me...hum???

Meeting in the "pit" to read and share our sight words.  After that, more snowball fights!  

HOLIDAY BRUNCH and READING TO OUR PARENTS!

And they finished with a song and dance!  Cute!