Finally Turtle Week!

This little guy has been telling me for months now that he can't wait until we get to the letter T so that we can learn about turtles! So when the week finally arrived I of course had to do a unit on turtles just for him. You should have seen how excited he was when I told him it was turtle day. We learned all about turtles and where they live, their babies, predators, and how they protect themselves. It of course wouldn't be turtle day without learning about the fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare". Afterwards we made our own turtles that had a string attached to them so that the kids could walk their turtle. They absolutely loved making them come to life.

Later in the week we continued to learn about our 5 senses with this week learning about different sounds that we hear. I found a great site that had all sorts of fun sounds. The kids had fun listening to them and trying to guess what each one was. For cooking we made Strawberry Banana Smoothies. A few kids said it would have tasted better with ice cream in it. But I told them it is good to have a healthy snack without lots of sugar. (Plus they got a cupcake for a birthday treat with it, so I figured they had plenty of sweets for the day :)

Olympic Week and the 5 senses

Wow what a great week! We had a blast. We have been learning about the olympics and the kids got to participate in their own olympics. It was a blast.

These are the olympic flags we made. They got to march in together and we sang "It's a Small World After All".

Balloon race, and yes a few popped but they just thought it was funny.


Carrying an egg race.
This was so funny they got their gold medallion but when I asked them to hold it up but still let me see their face they just didn't quite get it. O well. They were so proud of their medal.
Learning about Canada. We made the Maple Flag and for cooking made waffles and homemade maple syrup. My sister in law, who is from Canada, says they love maple syrup on pretty much everything.

For science the next few weeks we will be going over the 5 senses. Today we learned about the sense of smell. I had each cup covered with some holes to smell. They made some of the funniest guesses as to what they thought was in each one.

Guesses: Pickles and Olives. Pickles was the right choice!
Guesses: Top Ramen, Pepper Correct Answer: Onion
Guesses: Bananas Correct answer: Marshmallows
Guesses: Flowers, Ramen Noodles, Soap Correct Answer: Wax that smells like flowers
They all guessed this one right! Bananas
Everyone got this one right: Cinnamon

Valentine Party

The camera was charged and ready to go but unfortunately we were so busy that I only got one picture and it didn't turn out the best so I decided to not post it. We did have a great time though and I wanted to give a special thank you to the parents that were able to help. The best part was seeing how excited the kids got to pass out and receive their valentines. Sorry we ran a little over time, but I hope your child had a great time.

I like to add some of my favorite stories or quotes from the kids. This quote was a week ago by a cute little girl in our class. "Miss Julie, guess what? My dad got pulled over by a police man, but don't worry he didn't have to go to jail!"

Q is for Queen and dental health month!

Last week we learned about the letter Q. I am so proud at all the kids at how well they learning the sounds and recognizing their letters. We made some crowns to go along with Q being the beginning letter for Queen. They were so excited about them and loved playing pretend. On thursday last week we did a big unit on dental health. We talked about ways to take care of your teeth and foods you can eat that are good for your teeth and of course the favorite foods that are not so good. I had started a little experiment the night before to show what happens to your teeth when a lot of sugar is on them and you don't brush. It was done with hard boiled eggs. The first egg is normal and hard, just like your enamel on your teeth, when you take good care of them. The second one had mushy soft enamel that causes cavities. The kids faces looked so scared when they felt the soft egg and none of them wanted to have their teeth turn out like that egg. So hopefully they are brushing more at home. I sent home a little chart to help them brush better. If you complete it at home and send it back with your child I will have a special prize for them. For cooking we made fresh homemade juice! Our mixture had apples, oranges, bananas and I put some carrots in as well! Some of the kids were a little nervous to drink it since it had carrots but everyone loved the juice once they tried it. I'm looking forward to our Valentine party next week! If you would still like to help out let me know :)

Open Enrollment

I am happy to announce that people are already wanting to sign up for next year! I remember last year being so worried about getting enough students and now it looks as though it shouldn't be a worry at all. I will allow first priority to my families already enrolled and then will have open enrollment to the public on April 1. I will still be doing only one session and it will be the same schedule as I had this year. I am excited for all the new ideas I have planned for next year. This year was great but I see so many ways that I can make things even better. I will still base all of my curriculum off of the Utah State Core to prepare your child for Kindergarten. I look forward to a great year to come and want to publicly thank my parents from this year for all their help. It has been a great first year and went better than I could have expected.