Friday, December 21, 2012

Pictures from our classroom holiday party

Just some pictures of our 3rd graders doing what they do best... talking and eating.  Thanks to Mrs. Johnson who purchased our classroom their very own popcorn machine we had loads and loads of popcorn.  Our room was covered in popcorn!

We enjoyed hot chocolate, a movie and tons of cookies.  The end of our celebration was a school wide sing a long in the gym lead by Mr. T!

Happy Holidays

Mr. D
The Polar Express and a really messing classroom

Not much to say about this one.  MJ got his cupcake eating on!

The entire classroom floor cleared and they want to sit on the desks!

MJ, LW, AV, PC, and DR camping out in their Pjs

SG, JJ, DR, BH and KU talking, screaming, laughing, acting like eight year olds.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Making Holiday Ornaments!

Today my students made holiday ornaments! Check out the work they did!







Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Our Thanksgiving Feast

Yesterday our classroom family shared a banquet of food for our classroom Thanksgiving feast. Several families brought in food and my room moms help organize our meal! We had corn, cornbread, cranberry sauce, scalloped potatoes, veggies, cookies, cakes, and a 17 pound turkey. For desert we had a turkey cake, cookies, and brownies.

The kids destroyed that turkey!

Check out our pictures below.

The first few so our Thanksgiving craft. For morning work these past two days I had the kids write short answer responses to these two questions: what are you thankful for? What is your favorite Thanksgiving memory. Yesterday they could write either of those on their paper which was attached to their project. The crafts were not the easiest things to put together. They had to read instructions and look at a very small picture of what they were suppose to look like when completed. Just like any kid in this modern age, they weren't satisfied with the directions- I think they wanted the picture bigger! If they could have I think they would have tapped the picture to make it expand like pictures on iPod touches. I was so proud of how they worked together and helped each other finish each project. Check out one of our kids using the hair from the pilgrim sets to experiment with a new look.

The next set of pictures shows our feast.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Mr. D















Friday, November 9, 2012

Stone Soup

This week we have been reading the story Stone Soup. In one of the versions we read strangers convince a group of townspeople to share what resources they have to make a meal together. By sharing everyone has an enjoyable experience and learns to care about each other.

Today, as we worked, a kettle of soup cooked away. We reenacted almost the entire book, adding ingredients just like the characters did in the story.

Last night I cut up veggies, meat, separated spices, precooked noodles, broth, etc... All was done so each of our kids could add one ingredient. Each time I would recite the lines from the story, "ah this soup looks great but the last time I made stone soup, carrots made it more delicious. But why ask for what I cannot have."

Our room, and the hallways of our school, smelled amazing all day. At first the boiling meat wasn't too amazing. One of our students asked told me he wasn't eating anything that smelled like that. As we added the ingredients the smell changed. I think he had two bowls later on!

We enjoyed our soup as a snack after lunch. Some of our little people had two bowls while a few had three or four. I walked out of the school with a completely empty pot! Check out some of the pictures from our day.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Outdoor reading!

The other day we took advantage of the nice weather to do 15 minutes of reading under a tree. I encouraged the kids to find a spot outdoors, with permission from Mom and Dad, where they can relax and read.

We will try to get outside a few more times before freezing weather!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Thick vs Thin Questions

Today we began our first unit of inquiry under the PYP theme How We Express Ourselves. This first lesson was teaching the kids how to ask thick questions. Thick questions require an answer that needs to be researched or explained. Questions that only elicit a yes or no answer we defined as thin questions. The purpose of teaching our kids to ask thick questions is to drive them to wonder and explore whatever topic they would like to learn. Any of the PYP units we study this year will require them to ask questions and research to discover the answers. Mrs. Fox, our PYP coordinator and speech teacher, tested our class on questioning. She presented the item shown below and asked the kids to make thick questions.

They said- what is it made of?
Why does it have a groove on one side?
Why is it flat on one side?
What is it used for?
These are example of thick questions.

The item, called a Coffee Joulies, is shaped like a coffee bean. It is used to keep coffee warm. Apparently one of these can be plopped into hot coffee and this will keep that coffee warm for hours!

The kids were amazed. They did a great job with this first lesson however it does take practice. It is so easy to generate a question about something that only requires a yes or no answer.

Later lessons will then challenge the kids to research the answers to their questions.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012