Thank You, 5th Grade Science!

Our friends had such a cool opportunity thanks to Mrs. Swidorsky's 5th Grade class. We've been studying living and nonliving things and have now moved into studying the life cycle. What a cool opportunity to get our minds going than to see the life cycle happening in a 5th Grade classroom!
Mrs. Swidorky's class had an incubator full of fertilized eggs. The incubator was about 100 degrees inside! Once the eggs hatched, baby chicks were born! We had the opportunity to view a chick hatching out of his shell over the WCCE telecast. When we went to visit the classroom, our students couldn't believe their eyes and had so many questions to ask.

We can't wait to really dive into our life cycle study and learn how people and different creatures grow and change!

Readers to Leaders!

Each nine weeks, the students at Chets Creek are awarded for the different goals they have met. A very important goal to meet is the Readers-to-Leaders goal, which is part of our million word campaign. By the second nine weeks, students had to have read 55 books in order to meet this goal! In our classroom, we log a book each day during Reader's Workshop. Students record the title, level, genre and whether they enjoyed the book or not.Friends are also required to read a book at home as part of their homework. Because our Principal is so awesome, she awarded the First Graders who met their reading goal in a very different way than previous years. This nine weeks we were invited to play Barnyard Bingo! The coolest thing about it was that EVERY single child in the room won the first round of bingo. When they yelled out "bingo!" they picked out a prize and took it back to their seat. Many of the prizes were books--and they even got a cool, new pencil! The next few rounds, some friends won again! It was so great to see how excited First Graders are about winning more books to read! Our friends who met this goal really enjoyed this day and even wrote Principal Phillips 'thank you' notes. :)
We'll be looking forward to seeing her *smooch* a pig next nine weeks!

Science: Needs of Animals

We've been studying the basic needs of animals and have noticed that animals have the same basic needs: food, water, air, space/shelter. Our friends worked in groups to create a poster that includes the basic needs of different house pets. Each group was assigned a different pet which is pictured on their poster. They did an amazing job working with their friends to discuss and agree on the basic needs of the animals as well as drawing and labeling those needs on their posters. Our pets included: a hamster, fish, dog, cat, rabbit, and turtles. Once the groups completed their posters, they presented their work to the class. Each friend in the group explained something on the poster. Check out the slide show below to see these super scientists in action!

Happy 100th Day of School!

Wednesday, February 3rd marked the 100th day of school. We can't believe we only have 80 school days left until our friends are second graders! We thought we would put an interesting twist on the 100th day and ask our students to dress up as if they were 100 years old. We could not believe how AWESOME they looked. We had such a fun day discussing what life was like 100 years ago. They were so curious about when certain things were invented, such as cars, ipods, microwaves, and toilets. We did our research and could not believe how different life is today! Check out the slide show below to see the fun centers we did throughout the day (scroll over each picture to get info about each center).

It's That Time Again...

It's time for our second Author Study of the school year! We are soo excited to begin to learn all about Kevin Henkes, read and respond to many of his 'Mouse Books', and even have the chance to act out some of our favorite titles through a Reader's Theater. Check out the following website to learn a little bit about Kevin Henkes and his books. Look out for more posts in the upcoming weeks because we will have a lot to show off throughout this unit of study :)

http://www.kevinhenkes.com/