This Week in Review - October 15 - 19

                                     This information is also found in Walter's weekly email:

After a no-school day on Monday, students were excited to get back into the swing of things on things on Tuesday. It was a very brisk day, but sunny – the perfect day for a Fall nature hike with our naturalist at County Farm Park, Kelsey. While we were there, we identified many different types of leaves.

In our math group, we are continuing our work through 1001 Things to Spot in the Sea. Students are finding that it takes careful work with the materials, and double-checking with their figures to make sure that each page is counted correctly! We also used our number sense skills to make a good estimation, in hopes of winning a prize! If we guess the number of candy corn contained in a jar at the Dexter Creamery, we may win cups of frozen yogurt! There was a picture of the container posted on their Facebook page, so we each studied it, talked about it, and came up with our best estimation. Wish us luck!  Edit: 1057 turned out to be the exact amount - our estimate was 980. So close!

After reciting and illustrating this week’s poem, a rather lovely one called “The Blackbird,” students looked through all of the poems they have illustrated so far. There have been seven, since this is the seventh week of school. Each child picked out “their best work” to be included in their portfolios. This feeling of pride and self-reflection is an important part of the portfolio process. It also teaches children to be critical curators of their own work, and encourages them to do their “best work” more often. We will do the same with our writing pieces (Memory Books) in a few weeks.

In Science, children played pollination tag! Each child decorated a sheet of paper – one side was a flower with a cotton ball middle (the pollen), and one side was an apple. They held up these pieces of paper with the flower side showing when they tag game started. Two children were the taggers (or the pollinators) – If they tagged you, you needed to give them your pollen, but you could still keep running. If you were tagged a second time, you had to flip your piece of paper over so the apple side showed and sit down. The game ended with all the flowers were pollinated.

Our third EB was this week – in my EB, the Fairy Tale Feasters went up the beanstalk with Jack to meet the Giant. On the way, they made some delicious beans and golden eggs!