Duck Eggs Map, Bikes, Author Visit & More

We had another busy week here in Kindergarten! We finished our poetry book and sent it off to be published through Student Treasures! Our publishing date is tomorrow and we will be getting our books in about 3 weeks, just in time for our poetry cafe! Here are a few pictures of the students finishing their poems and illustrations.

Like I mentioned in the last post, a duck laid eggs on our playground under our slide. The students are so obsessed and love to look at them! The momma has been sitting on her eggs and in order for us not to overwhelm her and not get too close, the students observed from the playground equipment. They all stayed like this to observe for a good 15 minutes! 

We were also able to get out our bikes this week! We had to learn the rules of the road and how to be safe. The students enjoyed riding them and waited in line over and over to have their turn.

We have continued to watch our caterpillars as well! They have mostly gone to the top of the cup and formed a J shape. I have a feeling that when we get back to school on Monday, they will all have formed their chrysalis! The kids can't wait to see what happens to them!

We spent some time this week reading books by the author Nancy Viau. We did a Skype visit through Skype in the Classroom in order to learn about her inspirations and ask her some questions.

The students enjoyed this visit! We have one more coming up in a couple of weeks that the students are excited about as well!

Since the students have been so obsessed with the duck eggs on our playground, we decided to go outside and draw a map of our playground from above. After we drew our playground map, we put an X to mark where the eggs were.

The students spread out around the playground in order to get different views.

After we were done with our maps, we looked up our playground on Google Earth to compare. We had a few volunteers come up and share their maps and then we looked at them next to our actual playground. They all did a great job documenting. 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant

Earth Day Field Trip to the MCELC

Wednesday was Earth Day and we celebrated by reading a book about Earth Day as well as going on a field trip to the Montgomery County Environmental Learning Center. Here are a few sample pages from our book that discussed ways that we could help keep our Earth clean!

The last page had us write "This is what I can do ________".  Braylon said that he can recycle and Brooklyn wrote that she can 'pick up after my cat". 

Another friend wrote that they can "throw trash away".

Like I mentioned, we went on our field trip to the Montgomery County Environmental Learning Center. We had such a great time and learned so much about trash and how important it is to recycle!

The students were excited to ride on a bus to get there!

Ms. Lorelei was a great tour guide and we learned so much from her! 

We started off the tour with a video showing us about trash and ways that we can help keep the Earth clean!

Ms. Lorelei told us about their mascot, Kerby the Cardinal. She told us that their were stickers with Kerby on them around the building to show that it was made with various recycled materials.

The students enjoyed hunting for the stickers!

This tornado showed the waste of one person! 

We learned a lot of interesting facts throughout our time here!

This is the "tipping floor". At first we took a few minutes to just look at what we noticed on the tipping floor. We saw everything from mattresses, furniture, trash bags, bottles, paper and glass.

The front loader driver noticed us watching and he decided to have a little fun and "wave" to us. The students thought that this was very exciting!

Seeing all this waste was very eye opening and the students are now very excited to recycle in order to help take care of our Earth!

We also watched a couple of videos about the process of the trash and what happens with it here as well as at the landfill. The other picture below is of the kilns that they used to use to burn trash. She talked about how it was putting too much smoke and waste in the environment and made it hard for people to breathe so they had to stop!

We also learned what happens in the landfill 

From the window we were able to see the landfill that they take all of the trash too. It's the white building on the hill past the semi.

There was a man from the Boonshoft Museum of discovery who talked about how to make different objects from recycled materials. He also showed us the different packing peanuts that are made of corn so that if they get wet, they disintegrate. 

He also showed us how to make air cannons using toilet paper rolls, balloons, and tape. 

We also played a recycling sorting game on a touch screen. Ms. Lorelei & I played a game against each other first and then the students got to play as well.

We learned that WE can make a difference!

We also ate lunch at the facility and the students were excited to put their new knowledge on recycling to good use with their waste!

Here is a group photo. (Minus Betsy because we forgot to take one before you left!)

Thank you so much to our parent volunteers for your help on our field trip! 

They also gave us this awesome book about recycling which we read as soon as we got back to school!

We had a great time on our field trip. Thank you to the Montgomery County Environmental Learning Center and their staff including our great tour guide Lorelei!

Happy Earth Day!!