Cranbrook Field Trip

If you have not already returned your child's signed permission slip for our field trip to the Cranbrook science Center, please do so as soon as possible.  The trip will take place on May 15 and the cost is $10 per child.  We are able to take 6 chaperones on this field trip, which we currently have signed up.  If you are interested in becoming a chaperone, please let me know and I will contact you if a spot becomes available.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Pennies and Nickels and Dimes, Oh my!

We have been working very hard on our coin unit in math workshop.  Learning to identify and count coins can be very difficult for some children.  As an extra bit of practice, please go over identifying the 4 basic coins - penny, nickel, dime and quarter - at home with your child.

Some ways to practice at home include sorting a handful of coins into different piles, making name or value flash cards and have your child place the coins onto the correct card, playing "Find the Coin" from a small pile of coins while waiting somewhere, or having your child recite our coin poems.

Penny, penny,
Easily spent.
Copper brown
and worth one cent

Nickel, nickel,
Thick and fat.
Your're worth five cents.
I know that!

Dime, dime,
Little and thin.
I remember,
You're worth ten!

Quarter, quarter,
Big and bold.
You're worth twenty five
I'm told.

Thank you for your help with this at home.  Good luck!

Found Daisy Pin

A Daisy troop pin was found on the little playground today.  It is missing it's back.  If your child is missing their pin, please let me know.

Incoming Kindergarten Visitation

As many of you may remember form last year, our 2013-2014 kindergarteners will be coming to Harlan to visit their classrooms and meet their teachers soon.  As they will be spending the morning with us, this is a gentle reminder that there will be NO SCHOOL in the MORNING of WEDNESDAY, MAY 8.

School for our current kindergarteners will begin at 12:50 on May 8.  Please wait with your child at the front door of building and I will meet you there at 12:50 after lunch.  We will have a normal afternoon that day!

If you have any questions, please let me know.  Thank you!

Specials Schedule for the Week of 4/29 - 5/3

Monday (A) - Media Center (Please remember to bring your library books)
Tuesday (B) - Music
Wednesday (C) - PE (Please remember to bring your gym shoes)
Thursday (D) - Art & PE (Please remember to bring your gym shoes)
Friday (A) - Media Center (Please remember to bring your library books)

Delayed Start on Tuesday, April 30

This is a gentle reminder that there is a delayed start to our school day on Tuesday, April 30.  School will begin at 10:25 am. Our day will end at the normal time.

Morning bus service will run as usual, but with pick-up times being 90 minutes later than the normal schedule.

If you have any questions, please let me know.  Thank you!

Learning about Early People

Our latest social studies unit has been about early people.  We learned how they lived, what they ate and what tools they used.  We also learned about the scientists that study early people.  One of our favorite things we discussed was fossils!  The kindergarteners learned that fossils can be more than just dinosaur bones!  They loved learning how scientists carefully dig, or excavate, the fossils and put them together like a puzzle to be displayed in museums or to learn about plants, animals or people from the past!

Here we are practicing being archaeologists as we excavate chocolate chips from a cookie using toothpicks as our tools.  We even had a contest to see who could successfully excavate the most chocolate chips!

 

In addition to fossils, we learned about woolly mammoths!  We discussed how early people used woolly mammoths for food and clothing, as well as their bones and tusks as tools.  We made our own woolly mammoth art complete with woolly yarn to make it feel more like the real thing!

 

 

 

To complete our unit, we had an Early Man Feast!  We all tried a meal that early people would have eaten - full of nuts, berries, root vegetables, seeds, beans and mammoth meat (beef jerky)!  We all agreed that while we liked most of the food, we would miss some of our favorite food from today like pizza!

 

 

 



Teacher's Go Bananas!

For March is Reading Month, the teachers of Harlan went bananas!  Each teacher dressed as a character from a children's book and read that book to different classes throughout the day.  Here I am dressed as a character from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (copyright 2013 Birmingham Public Schools) and Mrs. Stayer as Ira from Ira Sleeps Over.

 



 

Each class also entered a door decorating contest.  We chose to decorate our door after reading Corduroy.  We called it, "Button up!  Reading is too cool!"  Each kindergartener decorated a button for Corduroy to borrow since he lost one of his!

They are Always After My Lucky Charms!

We had so much fun on St. Patrick's day!  Leading up to the actual day, we learned all about leprechauns and Ireland!  We decided to try to catch a leprechaun so he would give us his pot of gold!  The day before, we heard leprechauns love to wear hats!  But, if they try on a hat that is too big, the hat will magically shrink to fit his tiny head!  We decided this might be a great way to catch him!  Here we are decorating hats that we left on our desks over night:

The next morning, we were so surprised to see that a leprechaun had been in our room and tried on all our hats!

For our snack, we enjoyed green bagels before graphing Lucky Charms marshmallows.

After looking around our classroom and school, we were ready to give up on catching a leprechaun or finding his pot of gold.  Then we sat down for a story and something just didn't feel right under the Big Comfy Chair.  We we lifted up the cushion, we found the hidden gold and a tiny envelope addressed to room 100.  Inside there was an even tinier letter for us!

The letter was from Lucky the Leprechaun.  He told us that as a reward he was leaving us some of the gold to share. We each got to take home a bag of gold to show our families!

We decided that we would thank Lucky by writing about what makes us feel lucky! 

May the luck of the Irish always be with you!

Seuss Day!

To honor Dr. Seuss's birthday, we spent a week doing an author study to learn more about his style of writing.  We noticed that he loved to use made up words, and almost always rhymed!  At the end of the week, we celebrated Seuss Day!

To go with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, we graphed different colored fish.



We also practiced our subtraction from ten using fish manipulatives and and a fish bowl.

We played Memory using rhyming pictures.

To go with the Cat in the Hat, we created our own cat portraits!  We then hung our work in the hall!

We also created our own Wockets to go in our pockets!

Finally, we enjoyed a special snack of green eggs!  We even added a little "Seuss salt" for extra flavor!



We love Dr. Seuss!



Howell Nature Center Visit

Ms. Donna from the Howell Nature Center visited our school, and she brought some feathered friends with her!  We learned all about different birds of prey, and also learned how the Nature Center cares for their injured birds.

We saw a Great Horned Owl

A barn owl

A hawk

A raven

and a vulture!

We even got a chance to look at the difference between different types of bird feet!