Last Day Memories!

Happy Summer!  It is 3:56 on the last day of school and I'm already missing my little Buckaroos!  Time flew by but there are no regrets.  We made enough memories to feed our souls through the summer until we can see each other again.  I can't thank all of you enough for allowing me the privilege and honor to spend most of your child's waking moments with them.  They have brought me so much joy and I am immensely proud of each of them!  

I also want to say a huge thank you to all of you for the gift card to Oakland Nursery.  As your children may have told you, I love to garden and I'm a fan of heirloom tomatoes which I make into fresh salsa and sell at our local farmer's markets on Thursdays.  This gift card will go toward the purchase of something permanent that will come back each year to remind me of your precious little ones:).

Finally, the children were very sad to see the entire room come down and asked if I would put some pictures of our room, still decorated, on the blog.  Hopefully it gives them some peace as we were very uncomfortable in our undecorated environment for the past week or so.  Enjoy the montage of pictures of our last days together as a first grade family.  Please feel free to contact me through email if you'd like to come and visit me and my hens out in Plain City this  summer!

Chick update #1

Sunday Hatch update

Camp Buckaroo News for May 2nd-6th

Happy Mother's Day!  We are all so thankful for you and hope that you are all celebrated in a  BIG way this weekend!  I won't spoil the news here since you will see why the reason for all of the excitement below in the photos.

Highlights of our Learning This Week:
*Continued learning how to write "perfect paragraphs" including a topic sentence and three additional sentences with key details about topic sentence.
*Completed a how-to page in our chicken research about hatching chicks in the classroom.
*Learned about some of the 117 different breeds of chickens and recorded a few in our research booklets.
*Learned the purpose of a glossary and created one in our chicken research booklets.
*Finished our study of landforms and will begin geography/map skills next week
*Will begin our study of fractions next week

BOOK ORDERS WILL BE SENT IN THIS WEEKEND.  If you'd like to order, please do so by Sunday evening.  

HUGE EVENT  HUGE EVENT  HUGE EVENT  HUGE EVENT  HUGE EVENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have been practicing for a farm program that we'd like to perform for all of you on Friday, May 27th.  It will begin at 2:45 and then you will be invited to come back to our classroom for our Chicken Showcase.  Mark your calendars as you will NOT want to miss this precious performance!

Related Arts Next Week:
Monday - P.E.
Tuesday - Art
Wednesday - Music
Thursday - Library
Friday - P.E.

They were at second recess and they wrote down that people were playing so that if anyone was bored they could choose one of those places to go!

We are candling the eggs.  Candling means that we are putting them on a light so that we can see if they are fertilized or not.  So far what has developed are the eyes, nose, brain, tongue, wings, and the heart is beating.  They also have veins.  Tomorrow the embryos will be changing into a male or a female.  On day 6 the embryo will start moving.    

We are hatching chicks from these eggs. We put them in the incubator.  They will hatch in 21 days. An incubator is a pretend mother hen.   

These people picked a study and studied about it and shared it with the class on Flexible Friday.  Today was Flexible Friday.  

This is a quiz for you!!!  Read the label and then point to that part of the egg.  Do you know what the parts do?

These girls wrote what they thought their mothers would like for Mother's Day.

News from Camp Buckaroo for April 25th to 29th

I can't believe that Sunday is May 1st!  It just doesn't seem possible and shakes me up knowing I only have a few short weeks more with my little ones!  Even on our worst days, I can't imagine my life without them and I hope they will come and visit me over the summer or in the fall.

I will be setting up our incubator over the weekend to get the temperature regulated before picking up the fertilized eggs after school on Monday and then the most exciting part of the year will begin.  The campers and I are sooooo excited!

We have begun practicing the program that we will be performing for you towards the end of the year (date to be announced).  It will be performed on a real stage using real microphones and everything!  Because it is a farm program, I will be sporting a pair of overalls on that day.  I'm asking the children to dress in something farm/western related on that day (again, to be announced soon) but this is optional, of course.

End-of-year assessments will begin on Monday.  I will be sitting with each of the children to listen to them read and to assess if they are effectively and efficiently using the reading skills that we've learned throughout the year.  I will also be assessing their spelling and writing skills.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK (that the children might not mention:)

*Learning all we can about chickens to better care for our chicks when they hatch.
*Began a class research project on chickens using diagrams, labeling, and even attempted to write our first perfect paragraphs with a topic sentence and three detailed sentences on that topic.
*We are learning about natural and man-made landforms.
*We have finished up tens and ones by learning to add and subtract using ten-frames, hundreds charts and place-value blocks.

Book orders are due by May 6th if ordering.

No Tinkering Tuesday next week.

Related Arts:
Monday - Library 
Tuesday - P.E.
Wednesday - Art
Thursday - Music
Friday - Library again

These are two ladies that work at our school and it was a special day so we made them cards.

One boy and girl thanked them for helping them with their lunches when they left them at home.  

This girl made a card for Mrs. Steagmeier because one time she missed the bus and she called her mom to pick her up.

These children won Read Across America so they got room service brought to them.  It was chocolate milk and a doughnut and we got a coupon for the book fair.  

A group of kids did a RRRREEEEAAAALLLLYYY challenging math problem that took two days to finish.  They got a sticker for persevering through the problem.  We were adding the numbers on the tree and the answer was 256.

These are all of the kids that did the challenging number problem.  They did it because they showed Mrs. McNeal they understood adding with large numbers on the math test.  They all came up with different answers but then the total answer was 256.

These kids during Flexible Friday shared their projects.  The girl studied Noah's Ark and she wants you to know that Noah was 600 years old during the flood.  The boy in the middle studied spies and he used an iPad to show their tools for safety and spying.  The two boys on the end studied mosasaurus.

Buckaroo News for April 11th to 22nd

I apologize for the delay in getting this to you.  I didn't realize this until some of the children said that their parents couldn't see the blog.  We spent time on Friday filling in the captions for each picture so we were said to see that there was a technological glitch and they didn't save to last week's post.  However, the pictures will provide great conversation starters with your child.  ENJOY!!

Related Arts for the rest of the week:
Thursday - Art
Friday - Music
Monday of next week - Library