BRANCHING OUT

We are branching out in all directions with our tree unit. The children loved our investigation on, “Who lives in trees?” I think our favorite creature that lives in a tree was a squirrel. One of our math activities had us scampering like squirrels for nuts. I love to use nature items for our math projects. We gathered acorns and counted them. I put out number cards and the children had to place the correct amount of acorns on the number card. Children learn to count more accurately if they can touch and move objects as they count. We are working on connecting numerals to quantities, and having fun while leaning!

Expressive language is flowing in this room. Our unit had us moving to the beat with, I’m a Sturdy Oak Tree, which was the title of a movement activity that had our class hooting like a owl, flying like a bird, slithering like a snake, and buzzing like a bee.

This class used their imaginations by pretending to be creatures that live in trees. This lesson helps your child learn about the characteristics of living things.

Everyday we learn about letters and numbers. Children love to learn when we have hands on activities. During the tree unit we collected sticks from trees on our playground.  We used the sticks to form letters. Our Handwriting Without Tears curriculum begins letter recognition with the straight line family - E, F, H, I , L , T; these letters are easy to form with sticks and we had a blast making them! The curriculum begins letter writing with the straight line family because it requires the fewest amount of strokes and these letters are easiest to write.

One of our highlights was going to the Williams Memorial United Methodist Church pumpkin patch. It was very exciting to see all of the pumpkins! We learned that not all pumpkins are orange, as we walked through the pumpkin patch the children noticed yellow, grey and white pumpkins. The boys and girls enjoyed a story as they ate their pumpkin muffin. The field trip was a hoot!

Each year St. James picks a community service project. This year we picked Harvest Regional Food Bank of Texarkana.  Our community service project was a big hit! Harvest Texarkana came to our school and picked up our donations of food for our community.  We love to help others and give something back to our community.

Check back with us in a couple of weeks to find out what this class is investigating!