What's NEW with our class?

Catching up a little... my students are obsessed with origami, thanks to our art teacher! She taught them how to make origami puppies. At least two students are making origami at the end of each day for free choice. They are also obsessed with "mail call." Students can write notes or make crafts for one another and put it in our "class mailbox," as long as it is addressed correctly (who it is to and who it is from). Students have made origami, paper snowflakes, "you are my best friend" notes, and even wrote out numbers "counting by 5's" on a paper to give to another student who doesn't know how to count by 5's yet but wants to be in the "Counting by 5's Math Club." How cute and thoughtful is that?

Several students, myself, my family and other teachers and students from our school volunteered two weekends ago to clean up the school campus. We worked on the school garden. We spread mulch and coffee grounds, planted seeds, and pulled weeds. We saved the potatoes until Monday so that the whole class could have the experience of planting. We planted three different types of potatoes, including blue potatoes. We are going to be going out to check on them once a week and record our observations as scientists!





We learned all about the Chinese New Year from Mrs. Johnson (Andrew's mom). She showed the students traditional ceremonial clothing, taught them about the meaning of The Chinese New Year, allowed them to make a paper dragon, and gave them Chinese fortune cookies. The students really embraced learning about this Chinese tradition. Thank you Mrs. Johnson!!
We also have been having a great time with our weekly Spanish lessons with Mrs. Wilson (Zachary's mom). She has been coming every Wednesday and reading books, playing games, singing songs, and teaching simple words and conversation pieces. This has been a dream of mine for a long time, to be able to expose my students to other languages, and it's coming true!!!! I already have Mrs. Rushe (Patrick's mom) signed up to teach a few words and a song in Italian this month too! Thank you to Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Rushe.