Session 4 - The Olympics

We finally made it!  I cannot believe it either. For our last session today, we talked about the Winter Olympics.  We looked at books and pictures of Olympians, talked about the first Olympics, and shared what we have watched already on television.  We learned about the host county, Russia, and we finished with some Olympic trivia.

For our art project today, we made ourselves the "star" of our refrigerators by creating magnetic picture frames.  I know with all the snow cancellations that this was a unique class, but I still hope your kids enjoyed the time when we were together.
 

Week 3 - Pierre the Penguin

Hello everyone!  I almost feel that I need to reintroduce myself since it has been so long since we have had reading club.  I hope everyone's extended break was a good one.

Today we read a true story: Pierre the Penguin by Jean Marzollo.  Pierre is a penguin who lives at the California Academy of Sciences.  One day they noticed that Pierre was losing his feathers and going bald. Because of this, Pierre refused to swim, and the other penguins became afraid of him.  The doctors tried medicine and heaters to try and make Pierre better.  Unfortunately, nothing worked.  One scientist came up with the idea of making Pierre a wet suit to keep him warm.  They designed one especially for him, and it worked.  Pierre began to swim again.  A few weeks later when they took off his wet suit, they noticed that Pierre's feathers had grown back.

We talked about "all things penguin" after the story.  We discussed why they cannot fly, where they live, why they have oily feathers, and of course their poop (there are a lot of little boys in class).  I actually learned something - penguin poop is usually pink because they eat krill.  Sometimes it can be white when they are eating mostly fish, and if it is green, they are starving.  Go impress your coworkers with that knowledge at the water cooler today! For our art project we made our own penguins. 

Because of the snow day Tuesday Jan 21, we will have a make-up session next Tuesday, Feb 4.  That will be our last session. Enjoy the pictures!

Week 2 - Let it Snow!

In week two we read two timely books on snow. We read a book called Snow Day by Lester Laminack and The Snowball by Jennifer Armstrong.  The first book was about students watching a ton of snow fall outside their window while planning all the fun stuff they were going to do on their snow day.  They were going to go sledding, build a fort, make snow angels, and have a snowball fight.  When they woke up the next morning, they already heard kids outside their window.  Thinking the neighborhood kids got a jump on them, they looked out the window and realized the kids had on their backpacks, and all the snow from the night before had melted.  They stumbled around the house trying to get out the door and not be late, especially since their dad was the teacher. 

The second book was about a rogue snowball that picked up things and people in its path.  We talked about what would happen if we got snow this week, and I had them do their "happy snow day dance" if school is called off (see pic below). For our art project today, we made snowmen who were guaranteed to not melt.  Some of the pics are a little blurry.  My second grade photographer daughter took them, but she works cheap:)

We have a long break before I see all of your children again.  Our next session is January 21.  So, I hope everyone has a peaceful holiday season.

Snow Day Dancing

No School!

Snow Day Dancing

 

Welcome to the Concord Reading Club Tuesday session of Winter Wonderland. Today we read the book An Awesome Book of Thanks! by Dallas Clayton.  It talked about the importance of being thankful, even for the small things.  Some of the things that the author was thankful for were old boxes that you could use to build forts, toothbrushes, and indoor plumbing.  We talked about some of the things we were thankful for and why it is important to tell people thanks when they do things for us.

For our art project today we created our own "thankful trees."  On each leaf, we wrote some of the everyday things we were thankful for; then we glued them to our branches.  We also made door hangers of thankfulness to be given to people who make donations to Lindbergh.

Our next session will be in two weeks on December 3.  So, have a great Thanksgiving and remember to be thankful for the little things.