Today began with a guest speaker from Middle School. Junior G. (Floyd Garner) is my neighbor and sometimes riding buddy so I was thrilled he was allowed to speak to my class! Junior began with, "Mother Nature is sick and needs our help to get well." He had the children's attention from that moment. They listened carefully as he explained how the Middle School had been weighing the school trash and would now like help in reducing our waste by recycling. He brought in a plastic bin and a paper bin. After answering numerous questions the children wanted him to come with them for their FIRST dumping of compost. Our leader and caboose are now in charge of dumping the compost and stirring (with small rakes) it in the dirt Gene Lurker provided. Who knew entertainment could be found in rotting food and wet paper?
Next we had an Art Day exchange with Tulie's class. Playdough was provided in each room. Tulie also had watercolor painting on coffee filters and leaf rubbings while we used watercolor sets for painting.
After fruit break play Titus did his "Show and Share". The children didn't recognize the dried sunflower he brought in but once I pulled out a few seeds they knew what they were seeing. I cracked open the shell so they could see the difference between the shell and the seed. There were many offers to eat the seed but I told them the birds needed it. Next Titus showed us Blazemon (sp?) from the Pokemon collection. I am ignorant in this area so he had to explain the good guys and bad guys to me and some of their names. I sure hope there won't be a quiz later.
Today I introduced the letter F for Fall. Our letter box contained a flower, Freddy the Fish, a feather, the numeral 4, a paper bag frog puppet and my velcro glove with "The Farmer in the Dell" set. Several students quickly realized the letter was F so I then showed them the difference between an uppercase and lowercase F. We "analyzed" their shapes and figured out which of our letter shapes would make both letters. Next we cut lily pad leaves for a frog project.
Before rest time we finished reading "Babar the King". The Old Lady friend of Babar sums up the moral of the story by telling them that while some misfortune may arise in life, they must remember there was more happiness than not and be lighthearted. Funny, I don't remember this part of the book from my childhood but perhaps I was more focused on an elephant in a green suit.
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