Costume Party!

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Thinking A Story

Today our older class wrote stories about the following picture. It was entertaining to hear what each child came up with as we thought about the picture. Ask your student to tell you what else they thought about the picture.

R - Rob* was walking to the store to buy some food. He bought a pickle, a carrot, and some soup to give to a bull. Rob used the food to try to catch the wild bull. The bull chased Rob and ate up his food, but Rob could not catch him. But the bull caught Rob! Rob shot the bull. THE END.

T - The man named Stinker was running from the bull. The bull crashed the hotel which fell onto Stinker. Stinker was dead. THE END.

H - Gatabol was running fast. He wanted to run home to eat some food. Then he ran to the doctor to see a baby. He ran in pink shoes. Some bugs swarmed him because his shoes were stinky. The bugs bit him and flew away home. Gatabol had lots of ouchies. THE END.

M - Once upon a time a girl was running because there was a bull attacking. The bull wanted her pretty shoes so he could be a human.The other bulls wanted to kill the girl and thought the first bull was funny for wanting girl shoes. THE END.

B - I like to run in the hallway at my home. I run past my door and Edward's* door. Then I run back and forth and back and forth. Then Edward and I run into the living room without slipping. There we watched T.V. THE END.

* These names were changed to protect identities.

See Me Run

Today we gave our ribbon twirlers another work out (we danced to this song last week) dancing to our favorite song "See Me Run."

It's so fun to see the kids in action. They are a good little group.

The First Week of School

What an exciting week! We've learned our three classroom rules: 1. listen to and follow directions, 2. be kind and keep your hands to yourself, and 3. keep trying and do your best. We also decorated the letters for our cubbies, made ribbon twirlers, read a pile of books, and played all sorts of games. It was lots of fun. Some of the younger set was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the third day of school and some tears were shed. :( Luckily the weekend break was enough to refresh some drooping spirits and the new-found familiarity with our daily routines and structures is making life easier and more predictable. My only regret from the first week of school is that I only managed to get pictures of the older class on the first day of school.Phooey! I'm glad the parents managed to get some shots in during the hectic first minutes of school. :)

 

The Dinosaur Tracks

Last month the boys and I went on an outing to the dinosaur tracks in Washington. It was an impromptu winter adventure, but couldn't have been more fun. Well... it might have been better if I had remembered snacks. Luckily the hungry boys lived and we found plenty to distract us from our growling bellies.

 

The sand was perfect for hiking - just wet enough from the recent snow to be firm, but past the muddy stage. The first phase of the hike was downhill and the boys enjoyed jumping, racing, and crashing in the sand. At the bottom of the hill we found a few dinosaur tracks, but most were hiding under sand that had recently washed down the hill. If only we knew to bring a broom, then we could have been better paleontologists.

The trip down to the tracks wasn't long enough, so we zoomed off down the trail to see what we could see. We found lots of other kinds of tracks and liked hunting down our own tracks. The boys found other evidence - the stinky variety - of recent wildlife and were quite pleased with their discovery.

We traveled far and found some cliffs in which to play. That was lots of fun, but the weather was getting colder and our school time was quickly running out, so we hi-tailed it back to the car and home again. What a lovely day! It was a most pleasant break from all the icky-sicky-ness that's been hounding everyone this season - too bad our lovely N couldn't join us :( We missed her.

All About Me

For the last month and a half we've been learning "All About Me." We've learned about our body, healthy habits, and feelings. The following are pictures of some of our adventures with teeth, sleep, and Halloween (which coincided very nicely with our discussion of fear and other feelings.)

The following is a song from Signing Time that the kids learned just last week. We recorded it at the end of the day, so their attention is definitely straying, but they are each so funny to watch (what with J's disappearing act, C's "dreams" coming out his ears, and N's bouncy-bouncing) that I just had to post it.

The lyrics go, "Lay down on your bed, pull your blankets high, turn out the lights, welcome the night. Dream, dream, sweet, dream." See if your child can still do the actions by following along with the video.

Paved Road, Rocky Trail, Shady River!

For N's special day we went exploring to Confluence Park. We took some cues from Dora, and followed a special map. We saw lots of cool things on our way: stink bugs, a cave, ooey gooey mud, a semi truck, a fairy reading a book, horses, road apples, different foot prints, seed pods, noisy water, quiet water, rocks made from a volcano, and a nerf gun stuck in a drain. We had a fun time and were glad the rain only sprinkled on us a little bit.

 

I took more pictures than these. If you'd like to see them/ copy them, I'll have them on the laptop at school.