Petting Zoo and Planting

We had so much fun at the FFA petting zoo yesterday!  The high school students did an amazing job setting up an awesome experience for us.   We rode down to the middle school field on a wagon pulled by a tractor.  When we got there, we got to play games, plant flowers, climb and sit on a tractor, and of course pet all kinds of animals.

Riding the wagon

Planting Flowers

Playing Games

Climbing on the Tractor

Sorry it isn't Green and Yellow Ava!

Petting Animals

When we got back from the Petting Zoo, we got to plant bean seeds in the school's garden.  Thank you so much Mrs. Vande Voorde for doing this for us and the community!

Rockin' Around the Clock

Today we started working on learning how to tell time.  First made a clock on the floor and we practiced moving the hands and telling time.

Then we learned a song about about the clock.

Lastly, Mrs. Wanke showed us a game called STOP THE CLOCK!  It was so much fun.  You have to try and match the correct digital clock with the analog clock quickly to beat the best time.  We went down to the computer lab in the after noon to play it some more.

Click on the picture to play the game!

We found another other versions as well!  All are great for helping us practice telling time.  

If you are looking for some FREE iPad apps for home that will help your child practice telling time, check out the link below.  There are some great FREE options for you to choose from.  

http://iteach1to1.blogspot.com/2015/11/free-telling-time-apps-for-ipad.html

I'm a Cloud Watcher

We can learn a lot about what the weather might do just by looking at the clouds.  Yesterday, we made our own puffy paint and created the 4 main types of clouds.

Coming home today will be a weather prediction chart.  We are to look at the clouds, predict the weather in the morning, then record what the actual weather was for the day.

We are super excited to see what the clouds have to say!

Lots to show.....

Thunder Cake

This week we read the story Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco.  We noticed all the clues that author and illustrator left us to show that this story happened a long time ago.  We also listened or onomatopoeia's.  Every time Mrs. Wanke read one, we yelled ONOMATOPOEIA!  On Wednesday, we MADE Thunder Cake.

The secrete ingredient in Thunder Cake is tomatoes…yes I said tomatoes.  Tomatoes make the cake very moist.  You can't taste them, even though some first graders, who shall remain nameless, said they could taste them. If you are curious about Thunder Cake, check out the recipe below.  

Here we are enjoying our delicious...chocolate...not tomato taste here Thunder Cake!

Attributes

This week we have been talking about different attributes of shapes.  Such as sides, angles, open and closed shapes.  We listened to the story Frog and Toad, Lost Button.  In this story Toad lost his button. Frog and Toad walked around finding buttons.  Toad would describe his button using different attributes such as, big, 2 holes, white, thick, and smooth.  

After the story, we played a game called Guess My Button.  We projected several buttons onto the SMART board. One person would describe their button with different attributes and we had to guess.  

Then, we got into small groups.  Each group got a pile of buttons. Together we decided which attributes to sort the buttons.  We sorted by size, color, texture, and number of holes.

The Elusive Lirpaloof Bird 2016

Today, we read the following article about the Lirpaloof bird.

We studied this fascinating creature.  We went back into the text to learn about it's beautiful color so that we could spot this bird.  We went back and learned that bird ate seeds, small insects and carrots. In fact it is the carrots that gives the bird it's orange color.  In our extensive reading, we learned that this bird is easily frightened, so we must not make sudden movements and must sing it's name.

Here is the video of us trying to attract the Lirpaloof bird.

We called and called the bird.  We looked high in the tree, since that is where they like to live.  We looked in three high trees.  

When we got back to the classroom, Mrs. Wanke said she was going to explain how the Lirpaloof bird got it's name.  She wrote the name Lirpaloof.  She showed use that lirpa is APRIL spelled backward and loof is FOOL spelled backward!

We were not impressed!  She sure got us good!