April News

April is poetry month...but the weather did NOT seem to follow our poem April Showers Bring May Flowers!

So...instead of rain we started April with snow! But no matter what the weather, we are continuing to study shadows and working on our shadow puppet show: The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We will show this in May to the K classes we have yet to visit this year. And speaking of visiting, we were guests to Ms. McCallister's 4th grade class on "Poem in Your Pocket Day" where we shared our poems in pairs. Here are a few kiddos caught up in the poem share about rainforest animals and their animals movements.

  


 

In between the crazy weather we have still made it out to measure our mystery trees. We have looked at bark samples and tried to match these with our tree. Working as partners we are measuring and waiting for some leaf buds! When the leaves finally arrive we will be ready to match them with our leaf samples to name that mystery tree. Here are a few of our budding* scientists at work:
*pun intended

And while we wait for the temperature to reach 75 degrees- we are busy studying the habitats of the rain forest, desert as well as

Writing fact postcards from Mexico

folktales/facts about Mexico. During our last Travel Day- thanks to many parent volunteers- we had our last cultural celebration of the year. Taking our passports we headed down the hall to the sounds of Mexican guitar music and the smell of frying tortillas. Students wrote postcards about what they saw and heard about Mexico, made their own version cascarones (Mexican confetti eggs), put together Spanish counting books with flags of Mexico and made paper poinsettia to accompany the Mexican Folktale about the origin of the poinsettia flower. Many thanks to all parent volunteers who helped with the materials, the set up and the clean up... as well as those who helped out on our big day!

 Counting in Spanish is the easy part! It is making the correct number of Mexican flags to match the number!

"Most Messy Award" went to our cascarones- we used birdseed instead of confetti and covered the eggs in paper mache so they turned out like small pinatas that we broke outside on our mystery trees. Bird food for the birds- while we fried up some corn tortillas and cheese for us. And... figs and hot chocolate too, as they are gifts of the rainforest!
After hearing a folktale from Mexico, everyone began to read more about other stories- both fact and fiction- about habitats in that country as well as fun facts- like the start of basketball or the use of chocolate! 









Both are contributions of our southern neighbors in Mexico. Happy reading and happy discovering to one and all!