Jammie Jam

On Friday we counted all the PJ's that vista 1st - 4th graders have donated throughout the month for the Jammie Jam. Our grand total was 51 cozy and comfy pairs of PJ's!! Mr. Terko spoke with all the children in the kiva and expressed how proud he was of their efforts not only with the Jammie Jam but the food donations for the Williston Food Shelf and the money for Pennies for Peace. Awesome work Vistonians!! The spirit of giving abounds in Vista!!

Creativity

Many hands make light work! We certainly were busy the day we created our new December calendar. The children learned the "trick" to creating fabulous paper snowflakes and within 15 minutes our room looked as if a storm had passed by. Many of the children continue to create these wonderful works of art every morning. The look on their faces as they open each snowflake to see the pattern they have made is priceless.
Our trip to the Flynn Theatre to see the Vermont Symphony Orchestra was a huge success. Many thanks to the parents who helped shepard the children from the bus to their seats in the 1st row of the balcony, yikes! Not quite sure which they enjoyed more, their seats or the show. Here are the pictures that Tammy Jadus shared.

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