Whitcomb Farm Field Trip

Our field trip to the Whitcomb Farm on Thursday was a huge success.  Mary Whitcomb, our farmer friend, did a terrific job showing us around the farm.  We have been corresponding with Mary for several months.  It was exciting to see many of the things she had been writing to us about.  A few of our favorites included the robotic milking machines, the newborn calves, the "red cow", the chicken who lays "Easter eggs" (eggs that are a variety of colors), the cow food, and the barn.  Mary was quite informative and we all learned a great deal about how to take of newborn calves and cows.  She was able to weave in our Five Senses and Organisms science units throughout the trip.  We want to thank NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont) for funding our field trip to the farm and coordinating our connection to a local farmer.  We also want to thank Mary Whitcomb for her willingness to communicate with us and have us visit her farm.  Thank you parent chaperones for volunteering on our trip.  It was fun having you share this learning experience with us.

Cooperative Spring Flowers

We are working on a cooperative project with our fourth grade buddies.  Partner teams are designing a flower that will be as tall as the kindergarten partner.  Fourth graders measured their kindergarten buddies and now the challenge is on for each team to create a flower that is the same height as the kindergartner.  We will meet again next week to finish our flowers.  Thank you fourth graders.  We love working with you!

Pajama Day, Crazy Hair Day and Stuffed Animal Day

We had a wonderful day!  What a great way to celebrate positive behavior.  You can tell from our pictures that we enjoyed our special day.

April Poetry

April is poetry month.  Our class is reading and writing poetry this week.  We created this poem together this morning.  We hope you enjoy it!

Spring

S unny and warm

P lants are budding.

R oses bloom.

I  am playing in the mud.

N ow it's time to cut grass.

G reen grass growing. 

Signs of Spring that students brought in today:

tadpoles, worms, branches budding, leaves from plants & chives.

Spring at RES

Our class had a great time looking for signs of spring at RES.  We began our on site spring discovery by looking at and discussing different bird feathers and bird calls.  Then Audubon naturalists guided us through the trails and woods behind our school.  We found many signs of spring including a few snails, lots of mud, small plants growing and buds on bushes.  We even heard a bird call or two, which we were able to identify.  Our on site field trip was funded through a Four Winds professional development project that all three RES kindergarten teachers are taking part in.  In addition, students in our class were able to take pictures of signs of spring using s camera purchased with funds raised from Donorschoose.org and a gift certificate from Horace Mann.  Students enjoyed using the camera to record their spring observations.  We plan to use some of these photographs during writing and science time next week. 

Shape Mural

As part of our Shape unit in math students created a beautiful Shape Mural.  Using many of the shapes we are learning about students built a Spring scene complete with grass, birds, trampolines, bikes, playground equipment, ponds, a basketball court and much more.

Tapping Maple Trees

Spring must be right around the corner!  We were outside tapping maple trees today.  Doug Brown and Autumn from Slopeside Syrup came into our classroom.  They explained about tapping trees, collecting sap, and boiling sap into maple syrup.  Students loved going outside to tap three trees.  Kindergarten students drilled holes, hammered taps in and hung buckets and lids.  They even took pictures of the process.  What a fun experience!  Now when the weather finally warms up we are ready to collect sap for Slopeside to boil down into syrup for our school.  (We are so excited about sugaring that we are making pancakes and having pancakes with maple syrup in class this week.)