Town Forest Walk

Today we had a fantastic town forest walk! Though it is winter, the weather was mild and many kids found themselves soon overheating in their snowpants and gear enough to tie their jackets around their waists for a bit! It was wonderful to see them enjoying their time in our "nature playground" - exploring thickets, shinnying along fallen trees, "skating" on pools of ice, crossing streams on stepping stones, and imagining living as long ago pioneers!

This week in our outdoor classroom we have been working on a little risk assessment. As kids do not often get the same opportunities or time to play outside as we may have had as children at their ages, many have undue or disproportionate anxiety about outdoor activities. They may be uneasy about walking on a path that feels uneven, or climbing a hillside that seems steep, yet they wonder if it would be safe to jump off the roof of our school building. We worked with them on weighing whether some physical challenges were, in fact, manageable - like jumping off a low wall, or scaling the hill behind the Lilja school trail, and which were unsafe - like jumping off a building! Watching kids take on some fun challenges in the woods today, we feel that our efforts this week really paid off!

Our explorations also uncovered scat evidence of our forest friends - deer, fox, and fisher. One group spotted owl pellets. We wondered if these were from one the great horned owls that we know inhabit the town forest. Also, in our ongoing endeavor to preserve the beauty of our outdoor spaces, we cleaned out some bottles and cans left by careless visitors to recycle appropriately.

Enjoy the pictures below from our walk today!

Landform Study

Over the past few weeks, the 1-2 kids have been learning about landforms: canyons, mountains, rivers, caves, caverns, valleys, lakes, glaciers, plains, oceans, islands, peninsulas, archipelagos, beaches, straits, isthmus, and coasts. Part of our research has come from watching Bill Nye exploring some of these landforms in his science videos. We have also been reading about them in an excellent book recommended to us by Ms. Moss. In addition, we have been looking around in our outdoor space for landmarks (or landmark lookalikes) to photograph and compile in a class lexicon of landforms. And we have been crafting and creating our own landform books. (pictured below)

The students have also been learning how landforms shift and change due to erosion - the effects of wind and water over time. Next week, we will be conducting mini erosion models to look more closely at the effects that the elements can have on landforms. For example, kids were surprised to learn that water can break apart rocks by seeping in through cracks and then expanding as it freezes. We are looking forward to taking our search for landforms and erosion to the Town Forest next week, now that the class has become expert identifiers! Now if we can just design ways to prevent or at least slow down the effects of erosion...

Check out the pictures below of pages from our landform books:

Discovering Characters in Our Favorite Book Series

This first week back, we have been diving headlong into reading book series. Reading multiple books from a series helps us get to know the characters much more deeply. One way we learn about our characters is by what they say. We have been looking closely at dialogue and dialogue tags in our books to glean information about both the kinds of things the characters say as well as how they say them. Part of our work has been rereading sections of dialogue to ourselves (into a cupped hand "seashell") or to a reading buddy, so we can practice making it sound just right.

Thanks to your generous gifts, there have been lots of new series books to choose from in the classrooms. Here are some of our new favorites: Magic Tree House, Owl Diaries, Narwhal, Princess Black, Dog Man, Franny K.Stein, Fly Guy, Biscuit, Mittens, Danny, Land of Fake Believe, Notebook of Doom, Bad Guys, Dragon Masters, Amelia Bedelia, Heroes in Training, Geronimo Stilton, Katie Woo, Piggy and Gerald, Mercy Watson, The Doodles of Sam Dibble, Princess Black, The Kingdom of Wrenly, Sofia Martinez, and Poppleton.

Next week, we will start writing reviews of our favorite books. Our goal will be to persuade other readers to try out our series recommendations. Be sure to ask your child about the series he/she is reading and about their favorite character from that series.

The pictures below are from our reading workshop time today and show our busy readers happily engaging with books from their chosen series.