January and February Flyin' By

January and February flew by.  We had a most wonderful student teacher and did some amazingly fun activities.  We went on a field trip for this city reads and to the dentist.  We celebrated 100 day and Valentine's day, President's Day and Martin Luther King Day.  Many of our students are Mon so they celebrated Mon National Day as well.  We had friends and families that went to be a part of that special day.  We talked about Winter and hibernation.  Miss Blanchard (our student teacher) built us a cave.  We are adding and subtracting now and many of us are readers.  This two months has left little time for blogging and we are so sorry. We (meaning Mrs. Keen) will make more of an effort to keep you posted much more regularly with more photos to come as well, as our school year rapidly approaches the end.  If the last two months are any indication of how quickly the next two months are going to go, first grade is just around the corner.  Happy March everyone.

December Holidays

We had a great time learning about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas.  We made Menorah's, and played Dreydl and made delicious Hanukkah Latke's.  We made Mkekas and Kinaras for Kwanzaa.  We had a school wide holiday program; we were snowflakes.  We made stockings and ornaments for Christmas and Mrs. Milam came and read us the book Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett.  Then we got to decorate gingerbread cookies, graph our first bite (the right leg was the winner of most first bites) and then eat a most delicious treat.

 Jia'Aunna measuring potatoes for Latkes

 Scemore stirring Latkes

 Frying Latkes

 Little Snow Flakes

 Zan Mehm's gingerbread man

Shawn and Eris and their gingerbread men

Thank you Mrs. Milam.  That was a fun and delicious activity.  You are the best!!!

It was a busy and fun December.

Dreydl

We played dreydl. Come on shin!!!!

Shin is the symbol that means we get to have all the buttons in the middle.

 Dvimon, Danay and Zan Mehm

 Jordan, Scemore, Thin Myat and Kaylyn

 Aubrey, Eris, Dvimon

Nathan, Jordan, Scemore, Thin Myat, Kaylyn, Magdiel, and Caleb

Hanukkah Menorah's

We are learning about holiday's celebrated in December.

 Alexandra and Paramoi Chan making their Menorah's

Magdiel and Kaylyn working on their Menorah's

Danay, Nathan and Gao Sue working on their Menorah's 

Finished Menorah's 

Math Centers

We have been doing fun and exciting activities during our afternoon math centers and we wanted to share some pictures with all of you.

 Eris is making growing patterns and what a wonderful color pattern too.

 Jia'Aunna and Aubrey are doing some great sorting!

 Shawn covered a penguin picture with pattern blocks.

 Danay and Janoi  Marn Oo counting out sets and matching them to numbers.  Nice ordering of those numbers 0-10!

Layehmarn Ai doing a number puzzle.

Pumpkin decomposing update

We have been watching our pumpkin decompose for about 4 weeks now.  We wanted to share a couple of new photos and let you know that it stinks.

Pumpkin after 2 weeks - It is starting to break down some.  When we swish the jar the water gets a little cloudy.

Pumpkin after 4 weeks - The pumpkin is almost totally broken down,  there are a couple of pieces of rind left, it is mostly liquid and the water is very cloudy.  We noticed last week it is starting to get stinky.  We can smell it even with the lid on tight (but you have to get close).

We are wondering if the smell will get worse or if it will change to a different color?  We will keep you posted with our findings.

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins!!!!

We have been exploring pumpkins for that last couple of weeks.  We have seen many different sizes, shapes and colors.  We have ordered them according to size, measured them, carved them, counted and planted seeds (in paper towels) and are watching them decompose.

White pumpkins of different sizes

Measuring pumpkins

Exploring pumpkins

Exploring pumpkins

Decomposing pumpkin Day 1

This is our list of words we used to describe pumpkins while exploring:

Slimy
Gooey
Wet
Slobbery
Yucky
Icky
Gross