Field trip to Renfrew

On Wednesday this week, our class took our field trip to Renfrew Park in Waynesboro.

We got to explore nature in the morning and after lunch we took a tour and learn alot about the big farmstead and living 200 years ago.

Ring around the "grandfather tree"

Our tour guide Laughing Tree told us that this tree was called the Grandfather Tree and challenged us to see if we could hold hands, make a circle, and make it all the way around.
Later on that morning, I had to take a student back to the bathroom and we walked past the Grandfather Tree. The following convo ensued between my student and the tree.
"Hi, Granddaddy Tree! Have you been seeing a lot of kids walk past you today?"
(pause to listen to tree....)
"Oh, that is so nice. I bet you really like kids, huh?"
(pause again to listen to tree's reponse...)
"How many squirrel families live with you in that tree?"
(pause, pause, pause...)
"Wow! 8 families! That is like an apartment complex!"


hahaha I LOVE children's imaginations :-)

Listen to the sounds of nature

When this exercise began, I leaned over and told Isaac that I hoped he didn't hear the sounds of the beach when he listened to the woods. When we were finished and Laughing Tree asked the kids what sounds in nature they heard, Isaac raised his hand and said, "Mrs. Eckenrode's voice" LOL

"muddy ice cream sundaes"

Looking through our kaleidoscopes that we created by finding different colors of nature and placing them in a dish at the bottom of the tube.

the kids LOVED spending the day with Miss Bergan and Miss Naylor again

Landen playing hopscotch. The kids were tickled pink to discover that they already knew how to play a game that kids use to play back in the "old days"

Carly taking a breather moment

Evan dug right into this book while all the other boys around him began to dress up in their olden day clothes

Ok, seriously, who thought that the boys were actually going to pretend to use the handkercheifs in their apron and pants pockets? LOL

Alexis playing dress up with the girls' clothing

making quilts

the secret staircase disguised into the perimeter wall

Our chickies

Well it is time to say goodbye to our chickies today.....

They have been an AMAZING learning experience for us in our classroom. Through these cute lil animals we have learned about responsibility, a chick's life cycle & development, birth, caring, "nice touches", sharing, sympathy, and unfortunately, even death (8 of our eggs did not even hatch and so we had a "funeral" yesterday to say goodbye to them all)

I hope your children have enjoyed this experience as much as I have!

if you look really closely, you can see his "egg tooth" on the end of his beak

Sebastian and Isaac spending time with the chicks who were under the heat lamp in the box (at this point, we had 9 in the box)

I know that they were just born, but how they could sleep with 22 kindergarteners and my big teaching mouth in the same room is a miracle all in itself! haha

Joel and Alexis at the incubator (we still had about 7 chicks inside of it since you were only able to open the incubator once a day to let out the ones that had hatched)

Meet KFC

Ah, we feel like a bunch of proud Mommas and Papas tonight: We hatched our first egg (ok the incubator really hatched it, but we helped ALOT!)

This morning, I came in and the incubator had an egg that looked like this:

A little hole with one HARD working chicken stuck inside of it

Remember how many times that chick has to peck to get out?

20,000 times!!!!!!

At the end of the day, I took the kids out for an extra recess since they sat for a double music period to get ready for the concert. I poked my head in across the hall and told Mrs. Schoenberger to bring her kids over and see the beak poking out of the egg. I also told her that if the kids were super quiet they would also hear the "peeping" noises

We came back inside from recess 10 mins later and the chick was hatched!

(with about 6 more really starting to crack so I bet they will be  hatched when I go back to school in the morning)

Now all of our eggs have our initials on and we named our eggs too 

(the names ranged from Fuzzball, Spike, Agent Isaac, Lily, George, etc...)

but sadly the egg was cracked and so without initials we don't know our first little chick's proper name

So, improvising meet the newest (and tiniest) member of our classroom:

KFC

Kindergarten's First Chick 

Hellooooo Chickies

Today, Miss Barbara (from 4-H) came out to educate us and K1 a little bit more about our lil chickies that are getting ready to hatch in our white square incubator at the back of the room

Some interesting chicken hatching information?

• a chick will peck at the shell an average of about 20,000 times before they are finally done
• eggs must be turned three times a day to prevent sticking to the sides of the eggs and to help develop their muscles

Our eggs are on day 8 and will be hatching around day 21 (monday May 23th)

Miss Barbara also did something called candling with the chicks where you use a special light to be able to see inside the eggs to see how they are growing. On day eight this is basically what the kids saw:

She pointed out the chick's eyes to the students and the good news that is that 26 out of our 27 eggs have all been fertilized and growing right on track :-)

Happy Mother's Day

Just wanted to wish all those Mommas a very big "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!"
I hope that the card your child made you has made it into your hands (some of them grumbled about the color pink - told them it wasn't THEIR card haha) and that the plant they grew for you also made it safely into your hands without any soil spilling out

We planted them for you on the first day of spring (while snow flurries fell around us) and they have been growing on our windowsill ever since

Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever. ~Author Unknown

Enjoy your day!

Teacher Appreciation Week

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who made Teacher Appreciation Week at New Franklin so wonderful this week. We were provided lunch every day (so DELICIOUS) with leftovers for next week even. There were cards, hugs, presents, and a joyous atmosphere this week. Sometimes in the day to day living, we feel defeated by the pressures of the curriculum, students, or politics that seem to run rampant. This week I took a breath, lifted my head up, and remembered why I do what I do.

It seemed all too appropriate to end the week with a graduation ceremony 3 years in the making. I finished my master's degree in education: curriculum and instruction with an early childhood concentration. Our speaker (a former kindergarten teacher herself) during her speech recited a popular poem entitled "All I Really need to know I learned in kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

I have heard this poem many times in the past, but hearing it last night while sitting in a cap and gown in front of hundreds of people brought a tear to my eye. I wasn't just sitting up on that stage for myself and my family - I was sitting up there for my "other 22 kids" (which coincidentally one of my student's moms was sitting three seats down from me - Congrats Cori Seilhamer! You go girl!) and for all "my other kids" that I have taught in the past or the future to come. They inspire me every day to get up, go to work, and do what is best for them: educate them and try to prepare them for the future that lies ahead. Yes, in the process, we sing a bunch of songs, dance, and read some of the BEST picture books, but we are learning, trust me....

So THANK YOU to my "other 22 kids" that keep me young, the parents who support me in the process of educating their children, and thank you for trusting me with your children. I promise to try my best not to let you down. 

Au revior Miss Naylor

Well today is a very bittersweet day in our kindergarten classroom: Miss Naylor's last day of student teaching. Can it truly be here already? Wasn't yesterday January 18th and her first day?

Egg-tastic

We are the official new home of a batch of 27 baby chickie eggs. They are due to hatch in 20 days (the week we have our Renfrew field trip). They were placed in the incubator this morning followed by a classroom meeting of the rules and some of the things to expect: "Please do not ask me if the eggs are going to hatch this week or next cause it is going to take awhile!" haha Each child gets their own egg marked with initials and a large X on the other side to use for turning purposes. We have a lot of work ahead of us: change the water daily and turn the eggs three times a day. Woo-boy! Will keep you posted :-)