Kindergarten Dog Show!!

What an amazing conclusion to our dog study!  Our Kindergarten Dog Show was a huge and exciting success!  We were thrilled to have Raji's kindergarten cheering us on, and to our delight, several family members as well!  And, a testament to our community, we had the most phenomenal judging panel showing their support for all of our work. There was so much talent, it was tough to make decisions.  But they did a wonderful job, and every entrant won a first prize ribbon for their dog and a gold medal for their expert training!  It was a dreary, rainy day outside, but in our classroom it was pure radiant, sunshine!!

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Spring projects

Devin engaged the children in two spring projects that captured the joy and beauty of the season.  First they each designed their own kites, which they were thrilled to send soaring on two different occasions.  Afterward, the children wrote a poem to share their feelings about the experience.  The second project, nature sun catchers, gave the children an opportunity to work creatively with blossoms, grasses, sprigs of green and twigs.  Some children incorporated patterns or symmetry into their sun catcher, some were free form in style, and one was a nature peace sign.  They are gracing our classroom windows with the beauty of spring.

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Morris Arboretum

Our trip to the Morris Arboretum was wonderful! The weather was not too cold.  It was actually perfect to be out exploring on this beautiful spring day!  Before our lesson began, we had time to visit Out on a Limb, and expend some energy.

After a food web game that helped us understand the connections between the sun, plants and animals, and the way energy is exchanged between them, we spent the morning discovering the many aspects of the arboretum.  Enjoy our visit!

Ensemble 7/4 Concert

This news comes in a little late but it seems worth trying. An group called Ensemble 7/4 will debut in Philadelphia with a medley of traditional music from the Americas: tango, bossa nova, chachachá, among others. For more information click here.

More dogs to love!

Last week Christina invited dog trainer, Camille, to join us with her Sheltie, Duncan, to demonstrate how you teach a dog to do tricks.  Duncan was adorable and quite amazing.  He not only followed verbal commands but hand commands as well.  Our favorite was Duncan jumping into the air and barking at the same time.  Several passerbys had to stop in and see what was going on!!

After Duncan showed us how easy it is to learn tricks, the children each 'taught' their dog a trick and then performed it for us.  Afterward, they wrote a journal entry about the trick their dog had learned.  We also created a dog park in our meeting area where there were some dog tricks going on as well!

This week, Rosanne brought in her sweet dog, Sadie.  Sadie is also a well trained canine!  She sits, shakes, rolls over, and...jumps over a bamboo stick!!  It was fun to give Sadie treats.  We hope she wasn't too full after our visit.

Enjoy all the wonderful dog tricks as much as we have!!

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Pocoyó and Music

Queridos padres,

Since the beginning of 2014, Second Graders have been occasionally watching a cartoon called Pocoyó (the Spanish version). I have also been watching some of the episodes over the weekends. The show is great and wanted to recommend it to families.

Pocoyó involves a lot of body movement, music, colors and little dialogue. The dialogue targets specific language. There is only a narrator that provides context to the stories, which would be for more advance language learners like in Middle School.

However, Second Graders have been able to pick up key words when directed during class. It would be great idea to continue watching the show at home. They may resist a bit a the beginning under the excuse that they do not understand (they did the first time we watched it in class). But the show is too much fun to resist! They will certainly not understand the entire story, only a few words. But as they grow, it will become easier to understand whole sentences and learn new words. In the future, this will help them with speaking skills and phonetics.

You can watch the show on Univision. The channel number depends on your channel lineup and provider, but it is normally shown on Saturday mornings. You can also find some of the episodes on YouTube.

I also wanted to pass along information about an interactive concert tailored for children. The Chamber Orchestra from ArCoNet will be performing next week in Philadelphia. The title of concert is "Dances From Around the World", which will include music from Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

Last day with the chicks...

The chicks were exhausted after Science Night!  They had a record number of visitors from all grades and were held and photographed and passed around all evening.  It was great!!  But that meant that Friday would be our last hurrah.  We were all so surprised how much they had grown in just a few days.  They were still so fluffy and sounded so sweet, peeping when they were awake.  It would be hard to see them go.  Fortunately, Farmer Pete brought us a beautiful brown ribbon for our perfect hatch and we were beaming.  We took it to Art and Spanish and showed Aedin when she visited.  We did a super job and were proud of it!! Somehow it made saying good-bye not so difficult.  And next year, it will be simply amazing all over again!!

A little bit of magic to end the week!!