Friday's snapshot

we had the privilege of having Miles' mom come and speak to us about dental health.

she works at a local dentist office and we were so happy to have her. 

for our final day of our water pipe mini-study, we went on a water pipe hunt at the school.

the students recorded what they saw on the hunt and labeled their drawings.

Ms. Kim's class raised the most spare change so they got to wrap Ms. Annie like a human pinata!

first, they chose their streamer colors...

then they got busy wrapping!

here's a video of the winners:

winners from Jaysa Smith on Vimeo.

they were nice enough to let us all have turns. here's a video of us wrapping Ms. Annie:

us from Jaysa Smith on Vimeo.

and what's a pinata without candy and prizes?!!?

I had one student ask me if they got to hit Ms. Annie with a stick. too funny!

I told the student nah. we get all the goodies without all the hard work. :)

out of the mouth of a babe!

here's a video of the prizes up for grabs: 

candy! from Jaysa Smith on Vimeo.

Ms. Annie was such a good sport!

since the Math Games went so well this week, we will be learning and mastering new games every Friday with the K5 class. click {here} to see what they are up to on their blog Kindly Kinders.

this afternoon we watched 3 versions of The Itsy Bitsy Spider on Youtube since we spotted a gutter and a rain spout on our water pipe hunt this morning.

click {here} for version #1

click {here} for version #2

click {here} for version #3

the students wrote about the Itsy Bitsy Spider in their journals during limited centers...

created water pipe systems for their buildings...

and explored Plumbing Pro on PBS Kids.

In this game, the students had to "assemble the pipes in order to move the water from faucet to spigot. This activity promotes adaptive thinking. The game has parameters that cannot be changed, but there are multiple, flexible ways to solve the problems presented. In our everyday lives, adaptive creativity is what allows us to innovate, solve problems, and employ flexible thinking skills." I gave them very little direction and let them explore.

these students never cease to amaze me!

we also Stepped Up and circle x's.

Wednesday's snapshot

we fingerpainted Xx today :)

and also finished learning how to play the Leprechaun Coin counting game.

we concluded our frozen pipe experiment today, as well.

the students found first-hand that once the water freezes, the pipe no longer works.

they also noticed that the cup began to burst because of the ice and then realized once it began to thaw out there would be a big mess! we will be observing our tanks and pipes to see how they work once the water has thawed.

we started a new chapter book during quiet time today.

"To the Gregg family, hunting is just plain fun. To the girl who lives next door, it's just plain horrible. She tries to be polite. She tries to talk them out of it, but the Greggs only laugh at her. Then one day the Greggs go too far, and the little girl turns her Magic Finger on them. When she's very, very angry, the little girl's Magic Finger takes over. She really can’t control it, and now it's turned the Greggs into birds! Before they know it, the Greggs are living in a nest, and that's just the beginning of their problems…."
@ Amazon

Mr. Luis visited us again today for our Spanish lesson. The students reviewed how to say My name is _________ and learned how to say animal names in Spanish and played Simon Says.

Kairi's birthday is tomorrow but she won't be here to celebrate it with us :( so we celebrated today!

in limited centers the students wrote in their journals about our science experiment...

and we worked on upper and lowercase recognition using fun, messy stamps :)