Session 5 - Winter Olympics

Hello everyone.  Well, we made it!  We managed to dodge snow day rescheduling.  For our last session, we talked about the upcoming Winter Olympics.  We talked about some of the events that will take place: figure skating, skiing, hockey, etc.  We also learned a little bit about the host country, Russia.  We learned that it is the largest country in the world, and it is located in Asia.  We looked at pictures in books of Russia and of different famous Winter Olympians from the past.

For our art project today, we made ourselves the star of our refrigerators and made Winter Olympic picture frames.  They could either color themselves in the frame or take it home and put in a photo.  I enjoyed meeting your children, and I hope they all enjoyed the class.  I do not have any new reading clubs scheduled at this time.  If that changes, I will let you all know.  Once again, I hope your children had fun, learned something, and gained the desire to explore more things through reading.

Amy Sears

I could not get him to stand still:)

 

Week 4 - Pierre the Penguin

Hello everyone!  I almost feel that I need to reintroduce myself since it has been so long since we have had reading club.  I hope everyone's extended break was a good one.

Today we read a true story: Pierre the Penguin by Jean Marzollo.  Pierre is a penguin who lives at the California Academy of Sciences.  One day they noticed that Pierre was losing his feathers and going bald. Because of this, Pierre refused to swim, and the other penguins became afraid of him.  The doctors tried medicine and heaters to try and make Pierre better.  Unfortunately, nothing worked.  One scientist came up with the idea of making Pierre a wet suit to keep him warm.  They designed one especially for him, and it worked.  Pierre began to swim again.  A few weeks later when they took off his wet suit, they noticed that Pierre's feathers had grown back.

We talked about "all things penguin" after the story.  We discussed why they cannot fly, where they live, why they have oily feathers, and of course their poop (there are a lot of little boys in class).  I actually learned something - penguin poop is usually pink because they eat krill.  Sometimes it can be white when they are eating mostly fish, and if it is green, they are starving.  Go impress your coworkers with that knowledge at the water cooler today!

For our art project we made our own penguins. We each named them, with the most creative name being "chocolate donut" (Ryan must have been hungry).

Each child brought a note home from the activities office.  It is to sign up for reminders for class or cancellations on your phone. You can imagine how nuts it was for them this past week with the school closures.  We only meet one more time, so it is up to you if you want to sign up.  If you do, just remember to unsubscribe after class is over (instructions on are the handout your child received yesterday).

We will not meet next Monday because it is MLK day, but we will meet for our last class the following week on the 27. Enjoy the pics!

Week 3 - Reindeer Dogs?

This week, we read a book called Olive: The Other Reindeer by Vivian Walsh.  Olive, who is a dog, thought she was a reindeer when she misheard kids singing "all of the other reindeer" in the Rudolph song. Olive thought they were singing "Olive the other reindeer,"  so she figured she was a reindeer and could do all the things that reindeer can do, like fly.  The other reindeer knew Olive was a dog, but they humored her and tied a rope to her to let her fly along beneath them.  When the sleigh got stuck on a tree, Olive chewed through the branches to free them and saved the day.  They also made this book into a cartoon.  You can watch it on YouTube by clicking this link.

Today for our art project we made hand-stamp reindeer.  Mrs. Sears wins the forgetful teacher award because I forgot both my camera and my cell phone that day, so unfortunately there are no pictures from our activities.  Hopefully, your child's reindeer made it home in one piece and you saw what we worked on.

Our next Winter Wonderland session is not until January 13, so I hope everyone has a peaceful holiday season!  See you next year.

Week 2 - Let it Snow!

First, if you did not see the district homepage, your kids are "famous"!  Someone sent our blog to the central office and they published an article and some pictures of our book club on the district site.  If you haven't checked it out, you can still view it on the district homepage. Just scroll down through the district news. Thanks to the parent who gave us press!

For week two we read two timely books on snow. We read a book called Snow Day by Lester Laminack and The Snowball by Jennifer Armstrong.  The first book was about students watching a ton of snow fall outside their window while planning all the fun stuff they were going to do on their snow day.  They were going to go sledding, build a fort, make snow angels, and have a snowball fight.  When they woke up the next morning, they already heard kids outside their window.  Thinking the neighborhood kids got a jump on them, they looked out the window and realized the kids had on their backpacks, and all the snow from the night before had melted.  They stumbled around the house trying to get out the door and not be late, especially since their dad was the teacher.

The second book was about a rogue snowball that picked up things and people in its path.  The students noticed that is was a rhyming book, and by the end, they were reading along with me.  For our art project today, we made snowmen who were guaranteed to not melt.  See you all next week.