Create a Country - part 2

Thank you to everyone for coming in and celebrating the work of our children. They were all so excited to share their completed maps. After the dust settled and we were sharing our thoughts about the open house many of the students commented that their favorite part was visiting the other classrooms and seeing their projects! Two months ago they were afraid to venture across the kiva into the "big kids" classrooms. Time to open up the doors and begin mixing and mingling a bit more. Hope the maps that went home via school bus made it in one piece.

Create a Country

I learned so many things today . . . how to successfully have 19 children mixing flour, salt, and water all at the same time and then use the mixture to have their 3-D thinking brought to life as well as how to enlist the help of 19 little people to clean up said mess! What a day. The children were incredibly cooperative and helped each other out happily and in ways that I wouldn't have thought possible. I was able to grab the Flip camera about 1/2 way through the morning and capture a few moments. Tomorrow we move on to part 2 of the project . . . paint! Wish us luck.

Evening Star Quilt Block Patterns

The children did an amazing job creating Evening Star Quilt Block patterns for our November calendar. After a lesson in rotating and flipping shapes they set out with squares, triangles, and very specific directions pertaining to color patterns. We were all amazed at how well everyone did and how fantastic our calendar looks as each day passes.

It's alive!!

We made our bread today for the annual ABS harvest celebration tomorrow. It was so much fun measuring ingredients and watching the bread machine mix them all together. At one point Isaac checked to see how everything was progressing and came back to exclaim that it looked like a brain! From that point on we called our bread "brain bread". We sure hope that more of our friends are back in school tomorrow to share our "brain bread" with us.

8 + 2 = 10 children in the class today!

We were happy to have Annabel and Maggie back in action today. After our Tuesday temperature, tally & time we created number sentences this morning for the number 8 using our odd and even pieces. We were quite surprised by all the various ways we could show 8. Here are some of our favorite number sentences:
5 + 3 = 8
4 + 4 = 8
8 + 0 = 8
3 + 2 + 3 = 8
2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8
3 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 8

Where is everyone?

Well we know where you are not . . . at school! We have a whopping 8 students in our classroom today. At first we were all very excited because everyone got on a computer without having to wait. But then we all sat down for morning meeting and what a tiny circle we had! We miss you all very much and look forward to your return to the classroom. Get better soon:)

Andy Newell visits ABS

Andy Newell, the top ranked U.S. Olympic Nordic skier came and spoke to the Allen Brook students on Monday afternoon in celebration of our P.E. departments year long study of the 2010 Olympics. He has been cross-country skiing since he was five years old, and went to the Winter Olympics four years ago in Italy. He is training to go the the next Olympics, which will be in Vancouver, British Columbia. Andy grew up in southern Vermont!

Here is a link to Andy's official website:

http://www.andrewnewell.com/