Musical Instruments, Sports, Valentine's Day

Along with sports, this week we introduced musical instruments into our "I Wonder" workstations. The students have enjoyed exploring and observing various musical instruments. 

 In our art area, the students have been enjoying making purses and bags by gluing paper together and adding a handle. They have been so proud of their work. Here is Alyssa with one of her creations.

 We also learned about the blend "sh". We earned our SH book and created our blend card for the word wall.

 Mrs. Myers class just finished a study on music and they invited us to watch their presentations. They had 5 expert groups that focused on different ways to make music and shared with us their instruments that they created. 

Below are the "hitting" and "plucking/strumming" groups with their instruments.

 The "rubbing" and "blowing" groups.

The "shaking" group.

 After their presentations, our friends got to explore the different instruments and how they can make sound with them. 

 Thank you to Mrs. Myers class for sharing your work with us! The students really enjoyed it!

 We also read another sports book called "Football Jerseys". We had to read the pages in order to figure out what color the jerseys on each page need to be and then we colored them.

 Myla used our sports step-by-step drawing book to draw a football player catching a ball. She did a great job following the instructions!

We have continued to explore various sports materials and equipment. Soleil is using a paper towel roll as a magnifying glass to look closer at the tennis racket. How creative!

 Here are just some of the sports books that we have explored throughout the week including the "Buster's World of Sports" video that we watched. 

 We also had a visit from some nurses who talked with us about "pretty poisons". They talked about how we need to be careful with things in our house that look similar to poisonous household items and to always ask an adult if you aren't sure what something is before putting something in your mouth. Below you can see they are talking about the different between bug juice and dish soap, as well as baby oil and water. 

 We looked at the different in dishwasher tablets and candy.

We made bags for our Valentine/friendship celebration. We glued paper on our bags, wrote our name and then drew Valentine's decorations on it.

 On Friday, we enjoyed snacks while our friends passed out their Valentines. We had a fun afternoon filled with celebrating friendships.

 One of our friends gave this ring to me and it was a nice reminder to stop and enjoy the small things! 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week! Don't forget that our 100th day celebration is this Friday, February 20th. Please send in your child's collection of 100 items!

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant

Sports Continued, New Student & Going Away Party

We had a busy week this week! We started the week by discussing Groundhog day. Like you saw in the last post, we voted on Friday to guess whether he would or would not see his shadow. On Monday, we watched a video telling us that the groundhog saw his shadow therefore scaring him back into his burrow for 6 more weeks of winter! We filled out a paper as a class with the student's predictions, which one had the most votes (no, with 19), which had the least votes (yes, with 9), if the groundhog saw his shadow (yes), and drawing a picture of it. Here are a few of the students papers.

A new friend started in our class on Wednesday. Meet our new friend Ethan.

Welcome to our classroom!

We have continued to explore sports in our classroom. We are getting close to finishing up the exploration stage but in the mean time the students are enjoying learning about sports! In the science area, Braydon and Amir made bows to practice archery with sticks. Riley is exploring sports equipment in our "look closer" area and looking closer at the details of the different pieces of equipment. Along with the tennis ball and racquet, we also have a frisbee, volleyball, golf ball, wiffle ball, soccer ball, basketball, baseball, and football. The students enjoy observing and documenting these different objects.

Brooklyn is using a football drawing book to draw step by step a running back who is running with the football. This helps her practice following directions and drawing matching shapes to the picture.

We read a story called "Football Counting". We looked at the numbers on each page, counted the footballs, spelled and traced the number words. Then we sent them home for the students to practice reading them with you!

We also continued to watch videos on the different sports. We learned that there are a lot of different sports!! This week we watched videos about gymnastics, tennis, golf, ice dancing, lacrosse, and rugby. We still have a lot of videos to watch on various sports! This gives the students a visual of what each sport looks like in motion and it goes along with all of the pictures that we have been looking at from the stories we have read. Stay tuned to see what sports we learn about next.


The surprise in our art area for finishing our color mosaics was an easel! The students were very excited. My parents got it for me for Christmas and I was looking forward to sharing it with the students. We discussed how to treat the materials and clean up our mess before we used it. Unfortunately, after we had paint all over our classroom because the students did not clean up their mess, this area is closed for a little while. I hope we can open it again later next week and they can prove to us that they can respect our materials. 

In order to get ready for Valentine's Day, the students put their hand print inside this heart shaped poem. It says, "I made this valentine just for you, with my handprint too. On this Valentine's Day, I just have to say... I love you! 2015". These will go in their portfolios that you will get at the end of the year for you to treasure forever!

Friday was Jay'veon's last day with us. He is moving to a new school so we made him a card and had a going away party for him as well. All of the students signed their name on his card so he could remember his friends. We also had 4 birthdays this week! Happy birthday to Elleigh, Allysa, Riley & Soleil. 

We took a class picture (serious & silly one) for Jay'veon to remember us by as well!

Thanks for checking in! Stop by next week to see what we are working on! 

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant