Number Corner

Number Corner is a time each day to practice counting and computation, to look at data and to find patterns.  There are 5 activities that we work on each month: calendar grid, calendar collector, days in school, computational fluency and number line.  The following pictures show the children reading our graph where we keep track of the days in school and writing equations for this number.  Ask your child, "What did you do in number corner today?"

Our UVM intern, Liz, was helping out during number corner on this 45th day of school.

Mix-It Up Day

Mix-It Up Day is an event at SCS for older and younger classes to join together for fun activities.  We joined up with our 5th grade buddies in the Wonder Team.  Fifth and first grade students used the sticks that we collected on our hike, a couple of weeks ago, to make letters of the alphabet.  We will be displaying their work in our shared kiva.  As partners finished up, the 5th grade students read Halloween books to their 1st grade partners.  We had so much fun with our older buddies on this Halloween afternoon.

Celebrating Authors!

In writing, students have been working hard to publish their first book of the year! They have focused on starting sentences with a capital letter, using end punctuation and proper letter formation. Once the books were complete, we celebrated with an Author's Chair. Everyone had a chance to sit on our special chair, read their story to the class and then sign their name on the chair. After reading their story, classmates gave them compliments and suggestions....ways to make their story even better. We will continue book writing this week, incorporating these ideas into our new writing pieces. 

Hands On Nature

Last week we explored worms and dirt with our Hands On Nature volunteers. We learned that worms are decomposers that help make soil. Students identified the parts of a worm and even got to see some up close under a microscope.

Later, we went outside to find worms in the gardens and got messy creating mud paintings!

Fifth Grade Friends

We paired up with our 5th grade buddies and walked to the end of School Street to begin our hike.  As the partners walked together, they tried to find out 5 new things about each other.

Once we got on the trail we started a nature scavenger hunt.

Then it was time to run across the field to enter the woods.

After many interesting findings, we crossed back over the field and went into a completely different type of forest.

Everyone had fun running in this forest (and all of the pictures of this are blurry!).

It was heartwarming to watch the students interacting.  The younger students brought out the best in their older partners.  The 5th grade students were attentive, caring and helpful.  The 1st grade students enjoyed the attention and friendship of an older child.  And, the 1st grade students brought out a playful side of their partners.

Finally we had a challenging hill to climb and then we returned to school.

We wrote about our experiences.

And, then we published this writing with an app called Book Creator.