Thursday, November 03, 2005

Just Another Day in Paradise

If the days keep being this wonderful, I’m going to have to PAY to be a teacher!

Today we did leaf paintings in our Open Court time. You’ll see an example of one above. It was an activity which helped them really observe nature closely -- an important Science skill, too – and connect all this “City Lots” stuff to their own urban environment. We will be putting up the paintings next to the actual leaf, so stop by the classroom next week for a look!

After recess, we discussed Forest ecosystems, discussing the similarities and differences among the four major types of forests:  deciduous forests, tropical rain forests, temperate rain forests, and coniferous forests. After that, we continued with the music machine project. Today, we took a really had step and started to notate our rhythms. We used both the traditional note values and the Kodaly syllables here. Again, you can see an example above.

In the afternoon, we did another Second Step lesson. This one was done in small rotating groups. I worked with each group discussing a picture situation, while Mr. Benitez worked with each group doing role plays. It went really, really well! We’ll be doing this again next week, and we give you some pictures of the role plays in action. Mr. Benitez did an awesome job!

Homework:  Light night tonight. Study spelling for the test tomorrow, and if you know anything is not completed, work on that, too.

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