New Children's Literature

Last night (just like last year New Children's books) Miss Miller and I headed over to Andrew Buchanan for a marvelous presentation on "The Year's best books in children's literature" by Susan Berrier (the librarian of Andrew Buchanan and Lurgan Elementary in the Chambersburg Area School District)
First of all, I forgot how much I LOVE listening to this woman read aloud!! Seriously, if I taught at Buchanan or Lurgan I will totally be going to library with my kindergarteners instead of using the 35 minutes as a prep period :-)
I saw some great picture books that are definitely worth sharing...

Belive me, Goldilocks Rocks! (as told by Baby Bear)

written by Nancy Jean Loewen and Tatevik Avakyan

Bailey written by Harry Bliss

a great read aloud for the 1st or 2nd day of school. Shows the events of a school day from the morning before school through going home at the end of the day, with Bailey the dog as an enthusiactic student

How Rocket Learned how to Read by Tad Hills

An endearing white dog with black spots loves chasing leaves and chewing sticks. He also loves napping under his favorite tree. Then his sleep is interrupted one spring day by a tiny yellow bird that designates him her first student. Rocket wants no part of her lessons, but the bird is determined to teach him to read.

RRalph by Lois Ehlert

The narrator describes discovering how Ralph the dog can talk, appropriately saying words such as "roof, rough, bark, & wolf"

Memoirs of a Goldfish by Devin Scillian

funny first-person "journal" of a goldfish in his bowl, which is getting more and more crowded

Dog in Boots written by Greg Gormley

Dog keeps going back to the shoe store to find the perfect pair of shoes to do all of the things that a dog needs to be able to do

Easter Activities

What a great celebration our class had for Easter
We had a great morning of Easter activities :-)

Miss Bergan played a game "Find the Chick" (sight word practice)



Miss Miller had the students create bunny ears headbands

Lily & Luke

 

and they dyed Easter eggs at the table with me :-)

Hunter and Myleigh

Marissa, Levi, and Trai

Josue & Issac

Overall, it was such a fun day! We ended with an Easter Egg relay race

Xander

Gavin



On Thursday, we had an Easter egg hunt outside (thank you to the 5th grade students who helped us hide 190 eggs!)

"Oh your mark, get set, go!"

Riley

Here a peep, there a peep

It has been an absolute blast bonding with the chicks this week....
All week that little girl from the movie Despicable Me has been playing over & over again in my mind
"IT'S SOOO FLUFFY!!!!"

Happy birth day chicks

Well I have been busy taking pictures/video all week long and I wanted to wait till I got them all before I posted about our exciting week with our chicks :-)
From the beginning, teaching the children about the life cycle through the viewpoint of hatching chicks has been such a wonderful and amazing experience
They began to crack and peck through the hard exterior shell Monday morning and we waiting patiently, hoping that one would be born before we left to go home Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, no luck :-( When we came back to school on Tuesday, we were definitely not disappointed! There were 5 chickies running around the incubator, ready to be placed in the box with the heat lamp to allow more room for the others to hatch

Did you know that with the help of my egg tooth, I pecked that shell 20,000 before I was born?

Throughout the day on Tuesday, we watched a lot of "Chick TV" (I hooked up the video camera to the tv, so while I focused the camcorder on the incubator or box of chicks, it would be projected onto the tv screen. The kids totally LOVED it) and 15 more chicks hatched