Thursday, February 13, 2014

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.
 














Wednesday, January 29, 2014

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!