Trip to the Post Office: Week of Sept 11-15
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Class photo From our trip to the post office
This week we continued our explorations of ourselves and our community. The highlight of our week was a trip to the Forest Grove post office. Postmaster Andre was kind enough to give us a behind-the-scenes tour. He showed us how the mail carriers sort the mail into slots by addresses to get them ready for delivery. We got to meet some mail carriers and we learned that some carriers deliver mail around the city while others have rural routes. One carrier even drives mails nearly to Tillamook each day! Students were fascinated by the fact that mail carriers carry special horns and pepper spray to protect themselves from aggressive dogs. Our Forest Grove mail carriers deliver about 35,000 pieces of mail each day! They deliver mail in rain, hail, sleet, snow, and heat. Andre described how mail gets from Forest Grove to places all around the world; even the North Pole! We learned that the mail goes on commercial airlines that leave out of the same Portland airport that some of us have visited. Postmaster Andre gave us a tour of some of the postal vehicles that they use to deliver mail. It was surprising that the steering wheels were on the opposite side as our normal cars. He also showed us some of the technology they use to help sort and deliver mail. After our field trip we wrote reflection pieces about what we had learned and also wrote a thank you card to our postal workers. We appreciate all their hard work for us and our community!
This week we continued learning more about ourselves and our classmates as well. We enjoyed a story called That’s Not My Name and discussed the stories/meanings behind our own names. We added an Otter friends sheet to our writing folders so that we know how to correctly spell each others’ names as we play Otter Guess Who and write warm fuzzies to classmates. This week we wrote about our families and created illustrations for our All About Me writing pieces. In addition, we designed illustrations for our classroom daily schedule.
Students worked diligently to learn new routines and practiced caring for materials independently. They received their own doodle notebooks and marker supply pouches. They also learned how to independently use tempera paint, watercolors, glue, scissors, and individual white board supplies. Outside students were hard at work in the engineering sandbox and examining insects in the meadow. We used a microscope to examine the head of a sunflower. Many students learned how to play a game called Tag In, Tag Out and others organized a pickup game of touch football. You can use the menu at the top of this webpage to view our Daily Schedule and learn more about each part of our day.
