Last Day of School!!!

Wow! It's here! The last day. Today we had our last day of school assembly. The kindergarten gave journals to their 6th grade buddies, we said goodbye to some staff and learned about the summer reading program at the town library. And of course, we sang the 6th graders out with our congratulations.

We also had a visitor! Peter has been healing at home and he came to school today to participate in the assembly and to share about his accident last week. We were excited to see him and so glad that he is on the mend.

And a HUGE thank you goes out to Debbie Lee and Marcia Bernard, who put together our kindergarten DVD! It came out fabulous and we are so grateful that Ms. Lee and Mrs. Bernard took all the time to put it together! THANK YOU!!!!

Here are some shots from yesterday, when Julie came to help serve salad from our garden! Kids washed the lettuce, learned two ways to spin-dry salad, and got to try two kinds of dressing! Thanks Julie!

On a personal note, I, Katie, would like to say thank you for a fabulous year! It has touched my heart to work with such awesome kids, and great parents too! I will miss Shutesbury Elementary in a big way.

Well, that's all for the blog this year! We hope everyone has a great summer. See ya, first graders!

Mill River Field Trip

We had a great time today on our field trip to Mill River. Kindergartners and first graders got to play on the playground, search the stream for creatures, and go for a walk in the woods. Lots of fun, and great weather!

Have a wonderful weekend. One and a half more days!

Data Collection

In math today we continued our unit on data collection. Kids got to choose their own yes or no question (ie: do you like volcanoes?) and survey each child in the classroom. When they have asked each child in the class, they will count up all the yes and no answers.

Here is the table we created last week from kids' favorite foods:

We are thrilled with the progress of our garden. We couldn't have done it without Julie! We hope to be eating some garden food next week.

And the chicks are still a big hit. Every day kids have a chance to hold them.

Field Day!!!

We had a wonderful time at field day today. Kids tried out lots of games and activities, like parachute, volleyball, treasure hunting, face painting, water bucket brigade, and an awesome weaving project with BZ! A huge thank you to Mary Taylor for doing a fantastic job organizing!

Bucket brigade!

BZ's weaving project. Awesome!

Do you recognize these guys?

A parachute igloo!

In other news, yesterday we read Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar again, this time in Braille! Cool.

Also, a big thank you to Kristen, Jack's mom, for helping us finish our stars! Yay! The classroom looks great.

We Have Chicks!!!

We came in from the long weekend to discover that the chicks had already begun hatching! What a surprise. By now we've moved most of the chicks from the incubator to a large cardboard box with a heating lamp and sawdust. We will spend a few more days with the chicks, and when they're big enough we'll hand them off to Lisa DeWitt, a teacher in first grade.

Just hatching!

Still in the incubator.

Life in the box.

Kindergartners did a fabulous job on their body presentation and body songs on Friday! Our hope is for all parents to have a copy of the presentation by the end of the year. Would anyone be willing to donate 20 or so blank DVDs for this project?

Field Day is tomorrow, June 3rd. Please send in sneakers. Hats and sunscreen are a must. Water bottles would be nice, and bathing suits are optional. (Clothes are a must!)

Sadly we were not able to reschedule our Eric Carle Museum field trip. But the good news is, we've planned a different field trip in its place! On Friday June 11 we're planning a trip to the Mill River recreation area in Amherst. We welcome parent chaperones and snacks to share. Thank you!