What a wonderful past few weeks it has been. Before the short break we shared a stone soup with friends and families. The soup was prepared, (minus the stones), on Monday and placed in a slow cooker to be ready for Tuesday's luncheon. The classroom smelled fantastic on Tuesday morning. Before serving up soup we sang a few songs to all who came.
As you can see in the attached photos, Ms. Rachel helped us to finish planting our garden boxes in the school garden. The green beans are already popping up and we were excited to see pigeon peas almost ready along the fence area. In addition to the green beans we have planted two different kinds of tomatoes, lettuce, sunflowers, strawberries, cucumbers, and cilantro. We will continue to keep the gardens watered and maintained until the plants are ready for harvest.
This week we continued reading stories from people native to the areas of North America. We saw that many of these stories have strong references to native birds of this continent. I asked the children what are characteristics of a bird and they said that a bird:
1. Has feathers
2. Is warm blooded
3. Has a beak.
4. Lays eggs.
5. Has wings.
Although not all birds can fly, most of the birds of North America can. I hope that everyone takes a chance to visit the Everglades or Biscayne National Park during the dry season to see some of the magnificent birds that stop by these areas at this time of year. You can help your child to identify the different species or sign up for Biscayne Bay's annual Christmas bird count: http://www.tropicalaudubon.org/events.html
This week we had a keyboard performance one of our students and a new puppy visit the classroom. After seeing the music and the puppy many children asked if they may also share their music or animals. If you would like to share your pet or musical talent with the classroom, please see me to arrange a date.
In the last few weeks of school we will be preparing for the Winter Poetry festival. The theme this year is called, "Making A Difference". Today each child was given a copy of the poem that we are going to recite as a class. You are welcome to practice it home. We also assigned parts to help us act out the lyrics to the song that we will perform. We hope that you may all come to the festival, which will be Friday December 21st.
Have a great weekend,
Ms. Joanna Boone