Outdoor Classroom Explorations

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On Friday our student scientists went on a quest to discover what species of plants and animals could be found in our outdoor classroom. To begin we examined a chunk of soil that Mr. Mark dug out of our meadow area. We couldn’t believe how many plants and animals we discovered on that one piece of meadow area! Next students used their digital cameras to capture photos of other plants and animals they found. They used our Outdoor Classroom Bingo sheet to inspire ideas. Together we read parts of the plant field guide that last year’s Otter class created. Throughout our explorations we learned to identify the following plants: horsetail, sword fern, salal, big leaf lupine, large leaf maple, western red cedar, great camas, and Oregon grape. We used a digital microscope to examine milkweed and Kincaid’s lupine seeds. Then we planted those two types of plants in our meadow area. After our explorations, we enjoyed a picnic lunch together in our outdoor classroom. During our inside classroom centers students worked on their honeybee art projects, finished making mason bee houses, built woodworking projects, and engineered structures with Rigamajig and Magnatiles.

Bee Drawings

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In our outdoor classroom we discovered a mason bee in one of the tubes of our mason bee house- how exciting! We wonder if the mason bee was beginning to lay eggs. We did a guided drawing tutorial to learn how to draw realistic bees and continued our practice telling time. This morning some student artists were inspired to create a scene from a recent book we read called Ricky, the Rock that Couldn’t Roll. When Ms. Aja brought out sidewalk chalk during outside choice time, students were excited to create chalk art and it soon evolved into creating an epic hopscotch course.

Raccoon Skull

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Today Ms. Lisa was a guest teacher in Pod 1. Otters had the opportunity to do reading assessments with Ms. Aja today too. Ms. Aja helped match students up with new “just right” books. We love reading! Today we used the data we collected on our spring walk last week to create a bar graph showing the signs of spring we observed. We also practiced telling time to five minute increments. An Otter student brought in an interesting raccoon skull to share. We marveled at its sharp teeth! We also continued working on our honeybee art projects.

April Fun

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It’s hard to believe that it’s already a week into April. Our Otters have been busy learning and playing. We have been taking full advantage of the beautiful spring weather to examine insects, invent new ball games (including a game called Passout), and have picnic lunches. We finished up our mini unit on graphing and moved on to learning to tell time. We continue to observe our mason bee house daily. We are working on creating our own tin can mason bee houses using paper tubes. This week we are beginning to learn more about other bee species, including honeybees. We spend much of our days reading. Otter students spend half an hour each day reading books to themselves and to their teachers in reading group. In turn, teachers read several books to the class each day as well. We are creating a community of readers! We’ve also been learning to play some new board games including Leaps and Ledges, Clumsy Thief, and Knockout. Knockout is an excellent game for building number fluency in children. I’d highly recommend it if you are looking for a new family board game. Our student artists have enjoyed having time to paint and create three dimensional structures out of remeda materials.

Spring in Full Bloom

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We took advantage of this gorgeous spring day to go on a campus walk. We were searching for new signs of spring.  We were thrilled to discover hummingbirds, a bird nest, squirrels frolicking, cherry blossom trees in full bloom, daffodils, and many new buds. We also saw mason bees pollinating flowers. We used digital cameras and tally marks to record our findings. We will create graphs of the data we collected. Many students chose to spend outside choice time playing dodgeball. We are working on good sportsmanship, including being able to win and lose gracefully. Today we received a letter from Ms. Shannon. We miss her and were excited to hear from her. During writer’s workshop some students continued working on stories about their desk pets or their graphic novels. Others chose to write letters to Ms. Shannon or siblings in the Shark class. We are hoping to receive some letters back. We also wrote a thank you letter to Clayton’s mom to thank her for the adorable desk pets. Ms. Siera returned to our classroom today! She just finished student teaching in a fourth grade classroom and now she gets to be in the Otter classroom until the end of the year.

Parents- We need some tin cans for a mason bee house project that we are hoping to do. Please send in your clean tin cans (soup or chili size would be great). Thanks!