Happy Earth Day!!

Each year, our school celebrates EARTH DAY with fun rotations! Here's a peek at what we did today:

Paper Towel Rainstick

Recycled Relays

 Recycle Speaker

Story Time & Snack

Peel Crayons to Make New Crayons

Book Swap

 Pavers (each grade made one for our outdoor area)

Oogly - Clay Monster Creations

Each year, the Oogly Lady comes to visit our school. She is a wonderful artist who brings such unique creations from my students! I love to see what they make.

The students start with a ball of clay and create a pinch pot. This pinch pot becomes the mouth & body of their Oogly monster. Next, a nose and eyes are added. With a little bit of rolled clay, the monster has legs and arms. My students get very into the details of their monsters, adding teeth, hair, a spiky tail, etc.

The Oogly Lady takes our monsters with her to fire them in the kiln. Meanwhile, we write a fictional fantasy story about the creatures. The Ooglies are a prized possession and are kept for many, many years!

Leprechaun Madness - Lots of Pictures!

Today is an inservice/work time day for teachers and next week is Spring Break. That means any St. Patrick's Day celebrations had to be done this week instead of next!

We started out telling the students that last year a leprechaun reeked havoc on the third grade. He destroyed our classroom in his search for gold! This definitely got the students' attention. We designed traps to catch the leprechaun and had a STEM-related discussion about how they intended on catching the little rascal.

We set the traps on Wednesday evening, I locked our classroom door on the way out so that no one could mess with them. On Thursday morning, our classrooms were a disaster! We checked each trap, but the slippery little leprechaun escaped us again!

The clean up process begins...

Staff Fun: Olympic Predictions

As head of the Social Committee at work, I wanted to have a bit of fun with the Winter Olympics. I did a little research and created on questions for our staff to answer about the Olympics. This chart is posted in our teachers' lounge for teachers to write their names under which item they vote for.

As the Winter Olympics go on, I will tally who has the most right answers/points earned. That person will be named our School Olympian. I am trying to think of fun rewards for our top three "medalists". I think this would be a fun project to do with students as well.

100th Day of School

We celebrated the 100th Day of School with some 100 second challenges. The students estimated how many times they would be able to _______ in 100 seconds. Then they were timed to see if their estimates were close. The activities they participated in there: write your name, stand up and sit down, blink, jump up and down, say the alphabet, and count to ten. They were LOVING this celebration!