The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything

Today we did a special activity surrounding the book The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. As we read we worked on making predictions and inferences. Afterwards, we began to build our own scarecrows from the different items in the book. If you haven't heard the book you can listen to the story read aloud or listen to the song about the story below! 

Read aloud: http://youtu.be/LdrH2TqMeg4

Song:

http://youtu.be/5fvUFo-Y0ZM

Buell's Orchard

We had a wonderful time on our field trip today, and perfect fall weather! On our field trip to Buell's Orchard we got a tour of the orchard, picked our own apples, saw how apples are processed and stored before going to the grocery store, tried apple cider, and ate lunch outside at the orchard...all before recess! Thank you so much to our chaperones- Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Kravet, and Mr. Cartier - for helping us have a great trip.

Apple Seeds

To get ready for our field trip to the apple orchard we've studied seeds and how they grow. We started by looking at different types of seeds, and then we narrowed our focus to apple seeds. Over the last couple weeks we soaked apple seeds in water so that they expanded. After they soaked, we were able to peel away the layers to see the different parts of the seeds.

Junior Great Books

Last week we began our first unit in the Junior Great Books series. Junior Great Books is a reading program that combines high quality literature with art, drama, and discussion. The main focus is answering interpretive questions through discussion and using evidence from the text to support answers. To kick off our first unit we read a variety of stories and worked on asking and answering questions about the text. One story that we read was called "The Fox and the Stork." In the story, both characters play tricks on each other. The question that we answered after reading was "Who was meaner: the fox or the stork?" Students wrote their answer on a sticky note and then posted it. From their answers we had a discussion about why they chose one character over the other. We had a perfect opportunity to talk about how during discussion sometimes we change our minds when one student did just that. We will use Junior Great Books to support reading and discussion skills throughout the year.