I hope everyone had a fantastic fall break! I feel so reenergized and ready for the second quarter! It was so good to see everyone's smiling faces Monday morning. They came in very quiet and kind of in a daze (probably in shock from being up that early again!) The quietness quickly wore off and was replaced with stories and adventures from fall break. It sounds like everyone had a great time! :)
We began our week back with fire safety. After a few days of fire safety, we moved on to bats, spiders, and Frankie. We learned a lot of cool facts about bats. We learned a new science vocabulary word: nocturnal. Since we were learning about bats, we read Lucille Colandro's book "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat". We sequenced the story using a flow map. We will be using flow maps again next week when we learn about the life cycle of a pumpkin.
We also spent a day learning about spiders. When learning about how spiders use their sticky webs to catch their prey, we wondered why spiders do not stick to their own webs. We did some research and found out that spiders have an oil on their bodies that keep them from sticking to the web. So we did an experiment to see if it was true. Everyone got a piece of doubled over masking tape which represented the sticky web. We tried to use our fingers and walk over the "web" but our fingers stick to it. So then we dipped our fingers in olive oil and tried again. This time our fingers didn't stick at all! It was so cool! :)
On Friday, we ended the week by talking about Frankie. Frankie is a monster, but he is a very friendly monster. We read a book about him and used a bubble map to describe him. We said that he had black hair and green skin. Then we said that he was happy, nice, cool, and (my favorite) handsome.
Then we made our own Frankie's and chose three words to describe him. They turned out so cute and will look great in the hallway!
We had a fantastic first week back! I am looking forward to learning about pumpkins next week! :)
