Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The class has met our Heartprint goal! Lots and lots of our kind gestures have been recognized. We decided that we’re not stopping now! Our new goal is to leave 200 heartprints by the 100th day of school!

We had an assembly called Dinosaurs Rock! today. A man came to talk to us about dinosaur fossils. He showed us a raptor’s claw with an ostrich’s egg. We also got to see part of a mastodon (it was a reproduction). It was originally found on part of a golf course. The leg was over 9 feet tall. After learning about different dinosaurs and fossils, we got to touch some of them. Darren got to come up and see how heavy a meteor was. He said it felt like a thousand tons! We learned that meteors can be as big as the distance from the ground to the highest cloud in the sky! One of the fossils that everyone touched was actual dinosaur poop! At the end, everyone got to choose 2 fossils from a bin. We can look on the website (www.dinosaursrock.com) to find out what we have. Zoe favorite part was when we picked the fossils. Mia liked when we touched the meteor.

We started sharing Flat Mia, back from her trip to the United Kingdom. We got to see different coins that they use, called pence. They look sort of like our coins that we use in the United States! There's lots more to learn.

In Gym, we got to choose whether we wanted to run through or run to the center of the jump rope and jump 3 times. After we did it with the coaches, the kids did it with partners. We worked in groups of 3 or 4 and sang different songs while people jumped.

We had our third birthday celebration of the week! Today is Darren’s 7th birthday. We ate doughnuts to celebrate. He got to hold the stick for limbo in P.E.

This afternoon we had our second writer’s celebration. We had special guests come in to listen to us read our stories. Ms. Eyer, Mrs. DiMaio, Mrs. Doran, and Ms. Carr all read our personal narratives in small groups. Mrs. McCahill was supposed to join us but she couldn’t make it. Lots of children felt nervous at first. Some people felt excited and eager, too. We all felt proud after we shared our work. Ms. Stern and Mrs. Barsanti thought that everyone did a beautiful job writing, listening, and sharing their work.

Remember: tomorrow is the Rockland Read In. We will be reading in our classroom from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. tomorrow. The children can bring a pillow and blanket, as well as some just right books from home. We will also be distributing our valentines and going to Technology. It’s going to be a busy day!

Some of you have already noticed the parent survey that I placed on our class blog. Thank you to those of you who have already responded! If you would kindly take a few minutes to fill it out, I would gladly appreciate it! The link is on the side bar as well as in the post titled "Parent Survey." Thanks so much!