Happy Spring Break!

Spring Break has finally arrived! Wahooooooo!!!! Well... at least for your child it has. I am stuck here at school until 4pm today, but after that, I'll be home free :) We ALL need this break! When we come back to school on March 31, we'll only have 2 months left. Can you believe it????? It's a bittersweet feeling. I love my class so much, they've really developed into young little adults.

St. Patrick's Day Fun
Monday was filled with so much green mischief. I have to say, I didn't expect students to go all out with green apparel, but they outdid themselves!

In last week's blog post, you got to see the creative leprechaun traps we made. We put them out on Monday morning to see if we could catch any leprechauns scurrying about. When we came back from Specials, the class came to a room full of....well, take a look for yourself! 

Footprints!

Someone had fun with our play stations...

Hmm....where does this trail of TP lead to?!

The green toilet water absolutely cracked the kids up! Watch their reaction when they discover what the leprechaun did to our bathroom.

The leprechaun took our friend Tyler's hat and put it on Kelso the Frog

Uh oh, he left his hat behind...

What is this?

At the end of the chaos, we didn't catch a leprechaun...but he DID leave us a special treat!

St. Patty's Stations

Writing CVC words

Writing sentences using St. Patrick's Day words

The leprechaun was messy and took my gold.

The leprechaun put my Barbie in the bag and the leprechaun put my chair away from the table.

The leprechaun left his hat at school and Campbell wrote the leprechaun a note.

Filling in the missing letters in color words

Smart Room Action

Show your child these photos and ask them what's going on at each station.

Spring has finally sprung! And it feels so so so good. Our Ecostar from St. Catherine's University, Mrs. Vadnais, came to us on Wednesday to teach us a lesson on spring. She kicked off her lesson with a fun scavenger hunt around the room for spring things.

She read us a fun book on what spring looks like in different parts of the US and then had students draw a picture on what spring looks like in MN.

In science, we've been learning about living vs nonliving things. When I asked the class if trees are living or nonliving, their answers were very mixed. Many think that because there are no leaves right now, trees are dead. We were able to see hands-on if trees are alive on Friday. At Jeffers Pond, we have a ton of maple trees out back and got to tap a few maple trees! The kindergarteners paired up with their third grade buddies and learned how to spot maple trees and which ones are good to get sap from (trees with small circumferences aren't the best to get sap from; bigger ones are better because they're older and hold more sap inside). 

Measuring the circumference of the tree with yarn.

Drilling a hole into the tree

Putting a spout into the hole and tying a bucket to it. Once the temperature is above freezing, sap will start pouring into the bucket. We went outside when it was in the 20s, so sap didn't start coming out until the afternoon. 

End of March

We wrote in our monthly Self Portrait Book.

The class is becoming more and more independent in their learning. I've been giving them more freedom to come up and teach the class. Of course, I am still teaching as well, but I love seeing my students be in the spotlight. They pay attention to each other that much more when they're in the "drivers seat." 

Have a wonderful spring break...See you all in a week!