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 :-)

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

I've been working in the garden

Spring is in the air, the temps & sun are gorgeous: It's time to go a'plantin (That is a real word, right?) hehe This year we planted carrots & we tried our best to get them in pretty rows too (laid a yard stick down in the box)

get the soil broken up and ready to plant the seeds

Maddy using the magnifying cube to check out a leaf

We found a worm while we were digging

trying to find some things to put into our magnifying cubes





Day Eighteen

Today our chicks are on their eighteenth day of development. Over the four day weekend the incubator sat on a end table in my living room (the eggs need turned 3 times a day) and Maddy helped me turn them each day.
This afternoon Miss Barbara, from Franklin County 4-H, came into our room to continue to talk to our classroom about the chick's development and growth. She read them a story then showed them pictures of chicks on various days of growing. She brought us in jars that showed actual chicks that were caught in various stages of development and then died (these pictures are kinda disgusting and not the best quality)







I am happy to report that even though one egg was not fertilized and three have stopped developing (through NO fault of our own), the other 26 chicks are developing nicely! While we took our time looking through the jars, Miss Barbara called up the tables to take turns candling the eggs to see inside.

We are continuing to draw and document our chick's growth in our journals

Over this weekend, they will begin to peck through the air sac to get to the egg shell and you will be able to hear them peeping inside the incubator (too bad we won't be here to hear it)

On Monday they will begin to hatch :-)



Growing plants and minds

The past few weeks Miss Miller has been creating and teaching a unit on seeds, plants, plant part, and how to grow and care for plants. The children have been truly excited about this unit and have been sucking up all the information like sponges!!

Miss Miller's bulletin board teaching the kids the parts of a plant

her anchor charts

(one is plant vocabulary, the other is a KWL chart)

the kids name posters for the hallway

Our newest project

Well ladies and gentlemen,
Our big announcement: The chicks have arrived (no, no not in that way - they are still in egg form)
Yesterday was Day One when we used a pencil to mark our initials on all the eggs (not only does it give the kids each an egg, it helps us keep track when we have to start turning them 3 times a day tomorrow) and then gently placed them inside the 98 degree incubator.

All of the supplies we need to hatch chicks:

a candling light, chick feed, a heat lamp, and a box to keep them in :-)



We have become documenting their growth in our journals and some of us even wrote about our excitement later on during Kid Writing time

Katy's story:

"We are doing a new project and it is hatching baby chicks! I got one too! My friends got one too!"

Our chicks should begin hatching on March 26th & 27th

Happy GroundHog Day

well if you missed the big news of the morning, Mr. Punxsutawney Phil

did indeed see his shadow, scaring him back into his hole with a prediction of another six weeks of winter. Want to read the whole story? Phil sees his Shadow

The kids have actually been talking quite a bit about this calendar day in bits and pieces all week. This morning, we were blessed with an hour's time (usually spent in the computer lab but 2nd grade was taking their ISIP assessment) to learn more.

We read Substitute Groundhog were Groundhog is too sick to perform his duties and so he interviews other animals to help him by coming out of his hole on Groundhog Day

Afterwards, we made our own groundhog book (check out your child's folder to see their own personal copy)

This afternoon, when I caught the sun poking out from behind the clouds, we quick went out onto the playground to go shadow hunting