News from the Peeping Pandas!

Wow! When Spring comes around we get so busy with projects, learning, having fun that time really does flies! With all the projects, planning and enjoying of your children, it has been hard to sit myself down to update the blog. So much has been happening and we have all been sharing and growing in so many ways!

I hope you all had a chance to stop by Traditions to see your children's beautiful artwork in window. We had fun using Eric Carle's style of painting tissue paper and cutting out pieces to create an image of our favorite endangered animals. If you missed out, the artwork will be up in our classroom soon.

As you know, we are getting into our new theme of Endangered Animals. We have all picked out a favorite endangered/threatened animal which may potentially be the topic of our Spring research project (more info. coming soon!). We have learned about the different status levels of animals and what they mean for a species. We discovered the precious Gray Wolf had been removed and in learning the process of how this occurred... let's just say we have some very passionate and outraged kiddos! We will learn more about the Endangered Species act and how a species officially becomes listed. This week we are learning about the classification system of living things. We learned a little history along the way about Aristotle (ask your children how Aristotle organized living things. We definitely found some flaws in the system!) and how he classified animals and then Linnaeus organized it a bit more for us and developed the system we use today. We began with an overview of all the Kingdoms and we will then focus our time in the Animal Kingdom.

In math this past month, we worked on division and making fair shares with sometimes remainders. Mistress Wonka made an appearance as apparently her customers are constantly squabbling over leftover pieces of candy. She had her Oompas make family guide books so families know exactly what size boxes will work for them with no leftovers. The kids were amazing me with how quickly they picked up division and some were ready for the really big numbers. We looked at division through the glasses of sharing things as well as grouping things. A few olders worked on dividing REALLY big numbers using the "forgiving" method which means taking chunks of groups out (I call it whittling it down to a reasonable number) and then adding all our chunks together.

We have just begun fractions - FUN! It was great to hear the examples kids have of when they use fractions or when they might find themselves saying a fraction...money, time, sharing food, measuring, miles traveled...This week we are looking at fractions as a way to describe a group of things. For example, I have 6 tiles...2 are green, 3 are blue, and 1 is red...so 2/6 are green, 3/6 or 1/2 are blue and 1/6 is red. Check out your children's "Goofy Groups" in their Thursday Packet.

In language, we continue working on our stories in Writer's Workshop. We have also been working in our reading groups. One group is working on reading short pieces of literature and doing deeper thinking around the theme of the pieces. We are focusing on the idea of change and how characters change in a story. It has been great for us to really stop and think more about what something means or why we think something and how we can prove it from quotes in story. The other group has been working on syllables and putting them into their bodies. We made up a fun game to play...ask your child if they are in this group and how to play the game!

We have taken a break from word sorts and our spelling words are all coming directly from out writing workshop stories or a list of high frequency words. I noticed several writers using contractions in their stories but a bit confused on how to spell them and what the apostrophe was doing in the word. We all also played with contractions and what they are and how to write them. We actually became "word surgeons" and brought out our scalpels and band-aids to change words into contractions! Such excellent doctors!

We are almost to our goal of 500 books! We read a little over 400! Our initial goal was 600 books though we decided that if we do get to 600 that will mean extra toppings for our ice cream!

For our read aloud, the kids chose The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We are all enjoying Edward so much! While we read we are tracking the things that happen to Edward and how he changes from the experiences he has with different people in his life. It has been a wonderful supportive text for our reading group who are focusing on the concept of change in literature.

On Earth Day we spent our afternoon helping out our tree friends in Watershed Park. We clipped, pulled and ripped ivy off the trees. We put in a lot of hard work and were very satisfied with our job well done!

April brought in the first round of book response and they were all absolutely amazing! Everyone worked so hard and did very careful and creative work. Here are just a few that I was able to capture....

With this book response the kids needed to work in groups of four (like the characters in the book) and create a club house using all the ideas. FUN!

K. sporting her t-shirt she designed from a Pixie Tricks book.

A scene in Z.'s book where a lot of action takes place!

We are almost to 600 cranes and the kids keep going and going and going...Thank you to all who have brought in origami paper! We hope to reach our goal by the end of this month or the beginning of next and send them with our wish to a school in Japan.