Hands on Nature

We had Hands on Nature on Tuesday of this week.  We learned about the squirrels that can be found in Vermont.  They are the grey squirrel, red squirrel and the Northern/Southern flying squirrel.  We learned that the red squirrel likes to eat mushrooms and pine nuts.  They like to burrow and tunnel through the snow.  They stock pile their food into what are called a "midden".  The grey squirrel eats acorns, beech nuts, grubs and eggs.  They like to hide their food in lots of different places.  The flying squirrel is active at night (nocturnal).  They store their food in the trees that they live in.  We got to see a puppet show. We did a sort where we looked for patterns of similarities and differences in the characteristics and behaviors of three squirrel species.  We got to explore squirrel pelts, squirrel bones and explored tracks.  We saw a video showing how the flying squirrel glides from tree to tree.  It was a lot of fun learning about squirrels.  We would like to thank our Hand's on Nature Moms, Marcela and Janet for coming in and helping us learn about squirrels!

In math we learned about 2 types of penguins.  We learned about Rockhopper penguins and King penguins.  We measured a string to show how long each of these penguins is and compared it to ourselves to see if they were bigger or smaller than us.  We talked about how important it is to be precise when we measure and to always start at 0.  Next week we will be starting a unit on geometry.

In Writer's workshop we continue to learn about how to write teaching books and are getting lots of practice writing our own.  We have talked about how we need to think about who our audience is when we write and what questions they might have about our topics.  We also learned that we can teach with our pictures by adding arrows, words and zooming in.  Today we learned about ways that we can spell words.

I hope everyone has a nice long weekend!  I'll see your children on Tuesday:)
Nancy