Weekly Wrap Up... Spring Break Here I Come!

Spring Break, Day Two.

I'm finally sitting down at the computer desk, visiting BlogLand, ever-so-slightly overwhelmed by the seven~ hundred~plus posts I've found cached in NetNews. Pardon me while I hit the "clear-all-as-read" button (shh, don't tell!) so that I can bypass non-reader's guilt and get back into my blogging groove.

I fibbed. I read...some of them.

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Last week at school was a busy one, as any teacher struck with spring-break-fever will tell you. We made bunny baskets:



We learned about gravity with some help from our friend (and several of his relatives) Humpty Dumpty:





(Uh oh, one seems to suspect that something about this visit to our classroom is not-quite-right!)

Here I am, introducing the victim, er, main character:





*Cough* I may or may not have stood on furniture to vary the height for our multiple egg drops (Hey, kindergartners want to know: does gravity still work when you stand on a chair? How about when you stand on a table?). Never fear, we then discussed how gravity is still working no matter my height, because its invisible force is keeping me stuck to the table top, while the table is stuck to the floor, while the floor of the classroom is still stuck to the ground outside!



It was quite the Oh no, Mr. Bill moment (not that any of my Stars would understand the reference) when Humpty hit the floor, and true to form, two of my students then exclaimed "Oh! Now I know why they couldn't put him back together again!"

Eureka!

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We also colored eggs with the help of our teacher aide and Super Star Parent Volunteers, and enjoyed some crunchy snacks prepared by a creative mom (she says she used icing/frosting bags for the carrot shape, tissue paper for the tops):



...and of course, we prepared some April Showers Bring May Flowers handprint art for our bulletin board:







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What are your plans for Spring Break?

Egg-Ceptional Eggs

This morning my students enjoyed Reschenka's Eggs, by Patricia Polacco during storytime:



The beautiful psanky eggs captured their imagination, but several students expressed apprehension about their ability to make "pretty eggs" in our art center, or when journaling. I quickly cut out tagboard egg shapes, and showed my Stars how to trace them on paper, with some eggs "hiding" behind others:



Take a look at what they created:

















EGG-CEPTIONAL!

Not-Quite-Wordless Wednesday:Spring Classroom Decor

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"Not-quite wordless" because... I've either found the person who stole my truck, or a person who knows who did. On Facebook.

Remember how I said MY cd's were found in my truck by the police? They weren't my cd's. They belonged to someone else, and one was labeled with a name, while others had band names and "mix" titles scribbled on the fronts. A bag of salon fliers was also found in my truck, with contact info (phone numbers, addresses, and e-mail addresses) included, because apparently the driver/thief was going to distribute them.

So I looked up the e-mail address on Facebook. Found a salon employee. Checked out her "friends," and found a contact of hers whose name matches the name on the cd's found. I checked his profile (which is public...dumb, dumb, dumb), and under his "fave bands" category, *guess* which bands are listed?

Yep. The same bands that are on the cd's.

Will someone kindly tell me why I don't get to collect a day's salary equivalent to a police detective's? How difficult was this investigation, really?

Beautiful Words for April

My kindergarten students recite this poem each April, but also like to use it as a prompt for their journals, because of course, five and six year olds certainly have their own feelings about rain:

Let the rain kiss you

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops

Let the rain sing you a lullaby

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk

The rain makes running pools in the gutter

The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night

And I love the rain.

- Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, April Rain Song