This Year's Orca Class

It has been a great start to the new school year in the Orca class. We have 15 happy, eager children who are loving their time together. We have been learning the Circle Rules, as well as the Listening Rules:

Eyes are watching.

...ears are listening,

... voices quiet,

... bodies calm! We are learning how to be respectful of our friends, and our school.

We went on an outside treasure hunt on the playground.

We worked together to find each thing.

We marked them off with an "X," and put the form in our portfolios. The children are excited to do work to go in their portfolios.

We also drew our first self-portrait. 

We looked in the mirror and drew what we saw. Our moms and dads drew, too. We will do this several times throughout the year.

Teacher Ellen has been bringing fun books from the library. We love to listen to stories.

One day we observed the rat, Fern. We had many questions, such as, "Where is her poop?" and "Why does she have a climbing structure in her cage?" We will continue to observe and learn about our preschool pets, the rat, the turtles, and the walking sticks.

We have also been observing the birds and squirrels that come to the feeders outside. There is a bird book there to help us learn what kind of birds we are seeing.

On Friday we made chocolate chip cookies. Our math question of the day was, "Do you like cookies or cake better?" More people like cake, but we made cookies instead. We will bake cake for the Orca Reunion soon.

We had to work together to make the cookies.

There were a lot of helpers.

We read a story called, "The Doorbell Rang." In it the mama made cookies for her two children. They divided the cookies to eat, and then the doorbell rang, and more children arrived, so they had to keep dividing the cookies up. 

We looked at how many cookies we had made, and we guessed (estimated) how many we thought each of us would get. Then we divided them up, and we each got three and a half! We talked about who we would share them with. They were yummy!