The First Thanksgiving!

We began the unit by learning a bit about life in England. This meant a look at the globe and out position on the planet in relation to England. It can be very difficult for young children to have a real sense of the magnitude of our planet, but many understand that you can't see across the ocean like you can Lake Champlain and that's a beginning!

After studying the Pilgrims and their long voyage and their reasons for making it, the class had the opportunity to try some food that was similar to what the Pilgrims ate on board. Saltines and beef jerky are not quite the same as the "hard tack" and dried meat that the Pilgrims ate day in and day out, but it gave them an idea of the types of food the Pilgrims ate. They quickly learned how very difficult life is when you don't have any stores for ANYthing you might otherwise buy here now. We read many books and visited the Plimoth Plantation website to take some virtual tours. It was almost like taking a field trip! Each child made a paper Pilgrim house and a Wampanoag (the Native Americans of the area) home called a Wetu. Then we recreated the Pilgrim village and neighboring Native American village. You'll see in the slide show, some very proud children...they wanted to keep the villages intact, but instead they each made a smaller replica to bring home! I hope you asked all about the project!

Saying Goodbye to Miss Knox

Today we said goodbye to Miss Knox, our student intern from UVM. Although she was only with us two days each week, we grew fond of her and will miss her! She was here for our study of Dr. Seuss so we gave her a copy of Yertle the Turtle! She read to us one last time! Good luck, Miss Knox!

Fantastic Friday!

The weather was so beautiful on Friday that we celebrated with "Fantastic Friday" extra recess! It was warm enough that jackets were not needed! As you'll see in the pictures, the kids had fun running around, playing soccer, practicing cartwheels and playing on the playground. All in the warm sunshine! What a great way to end a busy week!


Thinking about this warm weather it reminds me that it won't last! We'll be getting snow soon and for recess children need to be prepared for snow with boots and snow pants as well as jackets, hats and mittens. They leave their boots out in the hall so please try to remember to include shoes for the day. If you'd like to have your child leave a pair of shoes at school, that might be a good way to make sure your child has inside shoes every day!

Our current math unit has math "games" that reinforce the memorization of math facts. One of the games is similar to the one you played this weekend for homework. The following pictures show some children playing a few of the games they've learned in this unit!


On Wednesday there will be another Fundations unit test. This time the unit will assess words with the welded sounds -all, -an, and -am. Just like I shared at our parent/teacher conferences, the assessment also includes sentence dictations. I think they're nearly ready and should do well on this assessment, too!

Spririt Week and Fun-O-Ween!

Whew! I have to admit that our week seemed much longer than usual! Although I really tried to keep things as "normal" as possible, spirit week added some excitement to our week! Monday was shades day and this was the coolest group of kids ever!

Hat day was a huge success and lots of fun hats made their way to school!

Halloween finally arrived and our classroom was invaded by a chimney sweep, a princess or two, a skeleton, a goddess, a gymnast and even Santa! Here they are before Fun-O-Ween begins!

Despite the excitement that Halloween normally brings, they were incredibly well-behaved and we had a lot of fun at Fun-O-Ween! The following slide show is from Fun-O-Ween and shows a number of the activities. You'll see kids tossing bean bags, playing Ghost in the Graveyard, pinning a nose on the Jack-o-lantern, trying to limbo under the stick, coloring, bowling and playing musical chairs! Through it all...lots of smiles!



All day long, we were on the lookout for Waldo, from the book Where's Waldo.

We even saw a girl with a "bad case of stripes"!!!

All in all, it was a busy, but fun week!