Wednesday, September 23, 2009

We are Exploring....

A spider wandered into a classroom.... Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke! Actually it was the beginning of our first (possible) project of the school year. Tuesday morning a spider was found walking leisurly along the west wall of the classroom. After carefully capturing the spider a group of children and Ms. Amy took the spider outside to release him. Once the children began to talk about the spider and share their thoughts it was decided that we would take the spider back inside and learn more about it. Both the morning and afternoon classes shared their thoughts, fears and questions with us.

Here is a bit of what we talked about:
"Spiders can climb on walls." "Spiders walk on webs and go up and down." "Spiders have 8 legs" "Spiders can bite." "Spiders need good healthy food (like bugs) and drinks (like apple juice) and energy." "He needs air."

Unfortunately we did not consider the air factor yesterday when we were leaving school and our spider died. This of course opened up another area of conversation. We are currently on the hunt for another spider to study. We will keep you posted on how this proceeds.

We also wanted to say a great big THANK YOU to our first group of Guest Chefs. Last Wednesday Mr. Doug (Annie's Dad) came to make strawberry and apple mice and Ms. Brenda (Hanna's Mom) came to make personal pizzas with us - they were so brave to go first! And today we had Mr. Nick (Nick's Dad) make edible spiders and Ms. Margie made chocolate dipped pretzels and marshmallows - delicious! The October calendar is up - get a spot while they're available; they do go fast.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has tried to log in as a follower on the blog. Apparently there are some technical difficulties with this process. I am emailing the host to see what we can do to make it easier for everyone. Any questions, concerns, comments please feel free to leave a comment here or email us at vickroom107@ameritech.net . Thank you!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Week one well underway!

We have been in school for a few days now and we are all beginning to learn the schedule and a few of the classroom rules. Throughout these first two weeks we will really be concentrating on these skills in order to have a great year together. Our classroom was also chosen to be a part of a pilot program at Vick called "Calm Classroom". You will see the children practicing deep breathing, yoga poses and relaxation techniques. These practices help us relax, pause to take in our surroundings and gain a greater sense of focus on the tasks at hand. If anyone is interested in learning more about the program please let us know, we would be happy to share the information with you.
Please remember to join this blog as a follower so that we can begin to track how many families are accessing this communication tool on a regular basis. The classroom email address has also been set up; you will receive the information Wednesday at school and through an email later in the day on Wednesday. Please let us know if you do not receive it.
Thank You!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Welcome Back to School!

Hello to all of our Room 107 families! We are so happy to have seen all of you at school today. So many of our friends from last year have returned after spending the summer getting taller and taller. And it was very exciting to meet all of our new friends as well. We are happy to offer this forum for classroom communication again this year; we hope that many of our parents, grandparents or family members will use this as a tool for keeping up with classroom life and as a means of communicating with your child and our classroom staff.