Thanks to Veronica Valentino, our student teacher who has been with us since late March. She has helped develop this month's newsletter and has given the children many great experiences during her student teaching time here.

Spring has sprung and the students have immersed themselves into a mini-investigation on the beautiful colors of this season. Following the colors of a rainbow, the students created works of art by using bubbles, non-toxic paint, and straws! The students would blow air, using the straws, into a soap and paint mixture to produce lots and lots of bubbles! They would spill over the top of a cup and the students would “catch” the bubbles to create a picture with their lasting impression. The students loved seeing the colorful suds froth up and enjoyed noticing them overlap. We also marveled at these vibrant hues in a Magic Milk experiment. The students made predictions about what would happen to food coloring that was dropped into 2% luke-warm milk. At first, we discovered that a plain Q-tip would not disturb the colors when held still, but much to our surprise, when the Q-tip was covered in dish soap the colors instantly repelled. Then the colors began to swirl! We were shocked to notice the way the dye spun and twisted! The children made inferences that there must be something in the soap that is causing this reaction. The students were amazed at this quick response in the milk!
     After returning from our spring break, we added coins into the student’s discovery materials to offer a way to explore money on their own. The children became absolutely enthralled by the money! They were curious about the differences between the coins and how money is a part of our lives. Seeing this enormous interest in currency, the instruction began to build towards understanding money and using it authentically. The students used their scientist observation skills to notice details about each coin, and how to tell them apart. Hair styles, color, size, weight using scales, and perspective are the ways the students began to view individual coins to help them recognize the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter. On the penny, it was observed that this president is looking the opposite way than the silver coins. Singing also became a part of our circle time, with a specific song about money.  Furthering our understanding of coins, value was also learned to aid in differentiating characteristics of each coin. To give students a way to apply their new knowledge, the classroom began to buy their snack from an alternating banker. One-by-one students would pick out the correct coins for the price needed to make a purchase. The money would be brought to the banker and in return they were given a napkin and a snack. A cash register aided the daily helper to organize collected money. While we are still making our way through all students to have a chance with being the banker, these smart cookies are well on their way to becoming financial experts!
     To connect this topic with the information we have been learning all year, there is now a Bakery Shop in the dramatic play area. Students take turns in the role of baker, store clerk, and shopper to get the full experience of the different aspects involving money, baking, and a store. We also looped back to our study of The Night Tree, as we talk more about what money is used for and how we save money. An expert naturalist from Grant Nature Park visited our classroom to remind us of how important it is for animals to have a home and what taking care of a park entails. She brought with her different bird nests and eggs, animal pelts and feathers, as well as tree branches. This planted the seed about one aspect of money use, and the students marveled at each object presented to them and were brought back to their time spent at the park! We are headed in the direction of learning more about money customs such as buying items we need, buying what we want, paying for services, and helping others; for example donating to a charity or a fund raiser. Students will use their new Bakery Shop to buy the something they need, such as food, and practice the taking and giving money as a way to exchange goods, while we investigate the other ways to use our money to help others, such as the animals at Grant Nature Park. We remember our fall field trip to Grant Nature and how it provides a home to many animals. We will be revisiting Grant Nature soon, to bring our investigations complete. We are targeting the book Where Once There Was a Wood by Denise Fleming to remind the students the importance of keeping the woods a safe place for animals.

We took an unexpected turn when we were faced with a dilemma. We had two giant bags of apples left over from snack a couple of weeks ago. Even though we fed more to the animals and supplemented our snack many days with them, we still had so much. It happened to be a day where we couldn't get over to the senior center to feed the animals that we talked about what to do with them. We came up with the idea to make apple pie! The children were very excited, and worked hard to cut the peeled apples into chunks using plastic and real butter knives. We followed a visual recipe and baked two pies. They were DELICIOUS!!! So as a side lesson, we talked about waste, and felt good that we put the leftover into use. We now have bakery type supplies in our drama center, and the children continue to role play as chefs and bakers. What will our next yummy treat be?

Our night tree looks great! The children have done a great job retelling and recalling events in the story. We addressed concepts like setting, characters, and have compared/contrasted Night Tree to other stories like The Mitten, and Bear Snores On.

The February snow allowed us to see and take pictures of some very interesting animal tracks. We read books about tracks, and used the books to help us predict what tracks we saw. While we only saw squirrels and birds during the day, we think that a rabbit, a raccoon, and possibly deer visited our tree to eat! Thanks to Savannah's mom we were able to borrow some animal track stamps to use in our classroom!

In preparation to create animals for our night tree, we began to research through many books. The children have worked in groups to tag pages with sticky notes that tell us new information. While there are too many facts to list, we have learned:
some deer warn other deer of danger by using their tails
an owl's claws are called talons
owls eat small snakes, mice, birds, fish, and bugs – when they are finished they spit out the bones
some squirrels dig burrows, others build nests
squirrels use their tails for balance

We have learned so much about woodland animals. We have painted and sketched in detail to help us think in detail about how they look and move.

The children chose from a variety of materials (thank you parents for sending in empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls) such as fabric, paint, paper, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, glue, staplers, tape, etc. to ultimately create various animals of interest. Some students chose to work on their own, and some students formed partnerships and teams to work on a common animal. Through questioning, and thinking in details, shapes, and textures, we have created an owl, a rabbit, a chipmunk, a skunk, a cardinal/red bird, a robin, a deer/fawn, mice, and a squirrel!

We have worked at individual levels to incorporate literacy concepts such as letter formation, letter sounds, and vocabulary to label our work and write messages. With minimal support, one student wrote the words “Please don't touch our rabbit. We worked hard on it, ” to supplement the animal she worked on.

We also incorporated math skills to measure how tall our tree was. To our surprise, it stands almost 16 markers tall! We discovered that 16 markers is about 2 children tall. We thought back to the beginning, and how we formed the base of the tree. We counted and found out that we painted and cut 53 pieces of paper to construct this masterpiece.

This has truly been a meaningful project! I am so proud of the children, and this project has really allowed us to model and teach “thinking.” The children have participated in a thorough process (more valuable than the product) for learning, thinking, and making decisions.

Conferences are coming up! Please be sure to check out our work in the hallway when you visit :)

We have had such a wonderful start to a new year! We have been discussing, retelling, and creating our own investigative activities based on the story Night Tree by Eve Bunting. For those of you that are not familiar with the story, a family visits their “night tree” in Luke's forest every year around Christmas time. They pack hot chocolate and a box of decorations, drive through the night and out of the city to their spot. They take a flashlight to find their way through the trees. They use food as decoration, and they hang oranges, apples, seed balls, and popcorn chains to feed the many animals who live there. We have used props in our room to help the children act out and retell the story ~ targeting concepts like first, then, before, after, the concept of character/setting, and overall comprehension/memory for the events in the story.
We have talked about winter weather and food availability for animals. We are fortunate to have an observatory room in the senior center next door that we can sometimes access in the morning. There, we are able to watch the squirrels and birds play and scurry around for food. There are a few trees around there, but one in particular that resembles the same type of tree as the “night tree.” We decided that this would be our “day tree” and that we would decorate with the same types of treats for the animals around our school. We worked hard to create pine cones covered with bird seed, and we strung cheerios to hang. With help from the teachers, we cut incisions in the apples and oranges so we could hang them as well.
We checked our “day tree” the next week and almost all the food was gone! We discovered animal tracks, and could tell that something nibbled on the oranges – they were split open! We knew right then that we wanted to provide more food for them. This time we thought maybe they might enjoy some bananas and nuts too! We will be checking the tree at the end of the week to see if all the food has been eaten!
Right outside our classroom, we have been constructing a 3-D type night tree! The children worked with various tools and shades of green to create many pieces of paper for night tree construction. Everyday for almost two weeks, children chose to cut the paper to create a branch/pine needle effect for the tree. One of the students commented how tall the tree was! Another student asked the question “How tall is it?” We will soon target math concepts by measuring our tree and counting how many pieces of paper we used to assemble it.
Now that the foundation tree is finished, we continue to develop fine motor skills to assemble more strings of cheerios and to cut out paper apples, oranges, and seed balls. We can't wait to add the decorations to it! The night tree is surrounded by snowflakes also! We worked with coffee filters, snipping and cutting to create beautiful snow flakes (suspended in our hallway). Together with the children's paintings and sketches of trees, our hallway is almost like a journey through the story!
We will be learning more about the animals discussed in the story, and will begin constructing some animal friends using various materials to make our night tree complete! I highly recommend you check the book out to enjoy at home!

Through our research, we learned about so many animals that lay/don't lay eggs. Mrs. Mount heard of our research and offered to let her son's pet snake “Pinkie” live in our classroom for a couple of weeks. We learned that snakes lay eggs – what a great opportunity! The children were fascinated with how Pinkie moved and looked. In our research, we summarized 3 main things we could do to learn more about a topic.

1. research in books
2. ask the computer a question
3. ask a person/expert
We wondered many things about Pinkie. The computer told us that Pinkie is a corn snake, but we had other questions. We discussed how we could find answers to these questions, and decided to ask Mrs. Mount and her son, Riley (the experts) about the snake. The problem we faced was that Mrs. Mount teaches in another building, so we emailed her. Through discussion, we wondered:
- Is it a boy or a girl?
- Does it like rainbows?
- Does it like trees?
- Does it like other animals?
- How old is it?
- What weather does it like?
- Does it like water?
- What does it eat and drink?
- Where did you get it?
- What kind of snake is it?
- Is Pinky done growing?
- Where would Pinky live if were not in our classroom or your house?

The children used the computer to each type their name to the email of questions to Mrs. Mount. We were so excited to get a response. This is what our experts told us:

Hi!!
Pinkie is a boy. Pinkie loves rainbows, but he can't see as many colors as we do. He also likes trees because his native home is the forest by fields. He likes other the forest animals except for owls because they try to eat him. Pinkie is less that one year old. Pinkie likes warm weather because he is cold blooded. Pinkie likes to drink water, but doesn't like to swim. Pinkie is a corn snake and he came from Jack's pet store. Pinkie has just stared growing and may some day be 5 feet long!!

We enjoyed taking Pinkie out of the cage and watching him move. He felt cold and smooth. The most exciting thing was watching him eat. We saw the food move through his body, and noticed that he didn't chew his food. He works his mouth to engulf the food and swallow it whole.

After Pinkie left, Savannah shared her pet bull frog, Kayak, with our classroom for a week. We were surprised that he didn't make noise, but he sure hopped around a lot! Savannah served as our expert. She reported that she found Kayak in a pond in Michigan, and only makes some croaking sounds at night when it is quiet and dark. He loves to swim in his small pool of water in his cage. He eats meal worms and crickets. She brought meal worms in for us to feed Kayak. Kayak didn't chew his food much either.

The past two weeks we shifted our focus from science to celebrations. The children are always excited around the holidays, so we took that time to learn about how other cultures and people celebrate. We talked about the concept of “south” in relation to a map, targeting Mexico. We made makeshift maracas and sang Feliz Navidad with Mrs. Gould's class. Leah served as our expert about Hanukah. Her grandpa is Jewish, and she was able to bring in a menorah, some dreidels and gelt, as well as a giant dreidel to play the game with her friends. Together as a class, we used a griddle to make latkes, a traditional snack associated with Hanukah that are like potato pancakes/hash browns. The children loved them, and enjoyed doing the cooking! Lastly, we talked about England, where they celebrate St. Nicholas day. The children take their shoes off for the night (we set ours outside our classroom) then find chocolate coins, a citrus fruit, and candy in them when they wake up! The children were so excited to find these surprise gifts in their SHOES!

To wrap up our weeks before winter break, we listened to the Watts Middle School jazz band and choir sing holiday songs for us! They were REALLY good!

So much has happened since our last posting! Our journey as "scientists" has continued...

Both of our chrysalises hatched successfully, just a few days apart. We were able to get some of the hatching on video to show the children (both emerged while the children were out of class). We wondered..."Is it a boy or a girl?" We did some research to find out. We "asked the computer a question" together in our room and found that if there are two black dots on particular areas of the wing, then the butterfly is a boy. We examined our butterflies and discovered that ours were both boys! We released them back into the garden, discussing the needs of these beautiful insects and targeting overall respect for them and their environment. The butterflies continued to flutter around outside, happy to be outside drinking nectar from the abundant flowers in the garden.

We used books to reflect on the changes we had seen with the caterpillars. Based on our reading, we knew that caterpillars hatched from eggs that we didn't actually see. It is so interesting to think about the 4 stages they go through - egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, then butterfly. We learned that the butterfly lays the eggs, not the caterpillar, which led to other observations in the classroom. Two of our friends were working in the drama center (which was a garden/flower shop at the time) looking through some nature magazines, and commented on actual photographs they saw. "Birds lay eggs," said Leah. "Hey, snakes lay eggs too," reported Savannah. The girls did this on their own, using the magazines as a resource. This sparked a conversation with the whole class, and we wondered about other animals that lay eggs. The children knew that people don't lay eggs, and we talked about how they have "live babies." But for our other questions, we made a list, wondering whether cows, ladybugs, raccoons, pandas, turtles, bees, skunks, horses, deer, fish, and sharks (to name a few) lay eggs. Currently, we are exploring this topic, stressing the concepts of research, books as tools, and finding information. Pictures can tell us so much, and we can always get help to read the words. We have been investigating tons of non-fiction books, marking our findings with post it notes so we can go back to certain pages to read about various animals.

The children are very excited to find information on their own, and I am so impressed with their interest level for this topic. We couldn't find all of our answers in the books we had, so we will begin to ask the computer different questions.

A few weeks ago, we also took hike at Grant Nature Park. We learned so much and had a great time! We learned about the 4 main "neighborhoods" of Grant Nature - the forest neighborhood, the meadow neighborhood, the prairie neighborhood, and the creek neighborhood. Our expert guide, Miss Rosie told us all about the animals that live at Grant Nature. They have everything they need right there to survive - food, shelter, and lots of space to play. We asked the children what their favorite part was about the hike. Most of the children recall the prairie because it has tall grass, and the deer like to hide there. On our trip, we pretended to be deer and marched through the tall grass and sat as a whole group, hidden from sight. They also liked the creek neighborhood. Fish, frogs, and craw-dads live there, and we got to hike over tons of rocks and running water. I was very proud of the children and the observational skills they demonstrated. They used all of their senses together experience a perfect hiking day outside.

In addition to our research, we are currently noticing all of the changes outside as Fall is finally here! This past week we had a fall party, and spent the days talking about our costumes, voting on shapes to carve for our classroom jack-o-lantern face, making fall cookies, and reading some extra books for fun! We are also beginning to wonder..."Why do leaves change color?"

We've had a great first month of school!

           From the very first week of school, we became scientists in many ways. First, we were very interested in our beautiful garden. We took magnifying glasses outside, and found many different things. We found lambs ear, elephant ears, and milkweed plants. Butterflies swarmed and covered the many flowers in the garden. We were able to touch their wings!
In addition to being scientists, we explored our classroom community. We talked about our classroom, learned about the different centers, discussed our schedule, met and made new friends, and learned names. Every student practiced identifying their name and counting the number of letters in their name.
            Throughout week 2, Miss Yoppolo, our student teacher from UD, facilitated a science experiment about static electricity. We tested to see if when we “charged” a balloon (by rubbing it/creating friction) if the static would “grab” and attract different materials. We tested objects like rice krispies, salt, pepper, jello powder, paper, fabric, blocks, crayons, and coffee. We learned that the balloon “grabbed” some objects but not others. Some students thought that it wouldn't grab objects like blocks and crayons because they were too heavy. We documented our results by constructing a graph of all the objects we tested, indicating “yes” if the object was attracted to the balloon, “no” if it wasn't. We remembered a lot about this experiment!
           Sparked by our findings in the garden, we continued discussing and investigating butterflies in week 3. We read the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We talked about the different ways illustrators make their pictures and we noticed that Eric Carle uses paint in his books. During art, we explored his method of creating pictures. We used various colors and tools to create two giant class paintings. Then, we used an Ellison machine to punch butterfly shapes out of our painting. We also practiced using scissors to cut butterfly shapes out. We revisited the photographs of butterflies we took in the garden to sketch butterflies. When asked to sketch, the children are challenged to think and look in more detail. We also illustrated our own butterfly books, targeting the life cycle of a butterfly, and practiced retelling the story. We learned a lot about what authors and illustrators do to create wonderful books!
          We looked at all of the beautiful butterflies outside, read about them, and sketched them, but we had yet to find any caterpillars. We searched for them the first few weeks of school, and had finally given up until one afternoon when a group of students spotted a caterpillar in the garden! They took the teachers back to the milkweed plant where they found it. As we collected milkweed to make a home for it in our classroom the students spotted another one! We now had 2 caterpillars to watch grow and change in our classroom! We learned about what these monarch caterpillars need to survive and what we had to do to keep them as our new class pets. We were so excited to have them in our classroom! We sketched the caterpillars, noticing their many stripes, antennae, and huge appetites for milkweed. With so many photos and sketches, we created an ongoing display in the hallway to document our findings.
            The fifth week of school was Miss Yoppolo's last week of student teaching in our classroom. We had a lot of fun with many new experiments this week. Over the weekend, our caterpillars had changed into a chrysalis on the top of the cage. We were so excited to see the change! We read Water by Frank Asch and noticed that he illustrated his book in a different way than Eric Carle. We discovered that Frank Asch uses water color to create pictures. We explored water color, and began to talk about the importance of water. We talked about all the things we can do with water. We talked about why when we cut fresh milkweed from the garden for our caterpillars, we put the stems in water. We noticed when we didn't put milkweed in water, it dried up. One student wondered if caterpillars drank water. We discussed this idea and came to the conclusion that we thought since the milkweed plants drink the water in the bowl that maybe when the caterpillars eat the plant they are also getting some of the water from the plant! What good thinkers we have in our classroom! With discussion of plants happening, we we conducted another experiment. Together, we planted the same seeds in two different containers. Throughout the week we watered one container and not the other. We predicted that the one we watered would grow and the one without water might “die”, or just not grow. Quickly, sprouts began to appear in just the “watered” container. As another center, Miss Yoppolo had gathered parts of plants from our garden and we explored the leaves, roots, stems, seeds, flowers, dirt, and sticks. We also made a seed collage to take home. We continued to talk more about how plants “drink” water. We used red and blue food coloring and placed some celery and white carnations in the colored water. We also split one piece of celery and put half of it in blue water and the other half in red water. We predicted that the plants would drink the water and they would change colors. We thought the split celery would either turn purple or half would turn red and the other half would turn blue. After a couple of days, we cut apart the celery and were able to see the “straws” that it had and used to “drink” the water. On the split celery, we counted 18 straws!
          Currently, we are awaiting the birth of our two butterflies. We are checking the chrysalises daily in hopes to witness the hatching!