Strawberry Hill

On May 10th, our school was blessed to be visited by the Strawberry Hill Association and they did a primary session on using our five senses to explore nature (on our own school grounds)



• For smell, we have film canisters filled with a cotton ball that had been doused with a particular scent. The 1st grown up that walked through the children had them smell the scent that the students then had to ID by smelling the rest of our canisters and matching the scent (the kids didnt particually care for most of the smells emitting from the canisters hehe)
• For taste, the kids were told about how the different zones of your tongue and how your taste buds taste different flavors then gave them Smarties to test out the zones

• For sight, we had the children walk through of the garden where they had to notice items that didn't belong there AT ALL! (they had hid a jump rope, rubber hand, stuffed animal rabbits & dinosaurs, plus much more!).
• For touch, we partnered the students up, blindfolded one, then had them lead their partner to a tree. When the blindfold off, the child had to go find out which tree their partner had led them to while they were blindfolded

• For hearing, the kids were told about "deer ears" and were asked to be quiet and hear everything in their environment around them



Renfrew or bust

On Monday, May 7th, our kindergarten class hopped on a bus (which we had ALL to ourselves!!) and headed over to Waynesboro where we were attending our annual trip to Renfrew Musuem & Park (a simply marvelous place if you have never visited Check it Out)
We were signed up for two sessions (Life on a farm 200 years ago and Discovering Nature with our 5 senses). For days (weeks actually), our kids have been super excited about our field trip, and let's face it, it was hard not to be excited! A whole day out of our classroom walls, exploring nature and learning at the same time?!?! Yeah, I was super stoked too (and this was my 3rd time visiting the place with a class) The weather was a little chiller than we had anticipated but there was no way that was going to dampen our experience :-)

Lily, Clara, Madison, Sophia, Riley, and Miss Chandace
(we are waiting our turn to go up the steps by the smokehouse)

sitting around our teacher to learn about planting our seeds
and how the farmers lived on the land 200 years ago

Mr. Jerry helping the boys get into their dress up clothes
(ah, Mr. Jerry you were a God-send on this trip!)

Boys & Girls in their dress up clothes

Our whole class
(with full bellies from lunch, ready for our afternoon session)



I taught the kids that when you are using your listening cups in the woods to hear sounds if you press it around your ear, you will actually not have to hold it with your hands anymore

Miss Bergan took pictures of our whole class around the circle trying this advice out

The pictures are totally priceless

I love looking at Maddy in the bottom photo on the end.

The angle shows straight into the cup displaying Maddy's ear for all to see :-)

It's been awhile

Well I guess you can all tell that it has been a few weeks that Miss Miller has been done teaching: now I don't have all the free time to blog our classroom's events like a good, little diligent teacher ;-) haha
Things have been going fantastic though (aside from all our moping around missing Miss Miller!) We just started a new ELA (English Language Arts) unit where we are going to be discussing fact vs. opinion and learning how to write persuasive writing.
In math, we have begun learning how to master addition, which they are REALLY good at, and have just finished up a mini unit on shapes (2D and 3D)

I look at the last 4 weeks we have in front of us and while a small part of me cannot wait for summer vacation (you dont want me to lie, do you? haha), the bigger part of me just wishes that our time together would never end! (nobody minds if I just stay on and become their 1st grade teacher do you? hahahahaha)

We have many memory making opportunities left, though, and we will do what we do best: have the time of our lives!

• our field trip to Renfrew on Monday, May 7th (did you see how much fun we had last year?)
• 5 senses puppet show on Thursday May 10th
• field day on Monday June 4th
• kindergarten graduation on Friday June 8th