Week of April 1-4

Last week was full of fun, exciting and awesome happenings at School #33, but I unfortunately fell behind on the blog writing. I was out on Friday to hang the district art show.  Celebrating Art is at the Erie County Central Library, located in downtown Buffalo.  The exhibit will be up for a month- please go check it out!  The work is amazing! We have such talent in Buffalo! 

One of the two piece I submitted- this is by Jada, one of our Kindergarteners

The top right is Jailyn's Tiger Habitat.

Below are some of the nocturnal animal scenes the kindergarten has been working on:

Here are some examples of the clay animals we've been sculpting in Mrs. Wagner's room:

"It's a daddy lion and baby lion!" 

We watched a video on how to create animals using one block of clay. 

I held a professional learning opportunity for educators on introducing the Reggio Emilia Approach in my room on Wednesday.  I gave an introduction to the approach, then had the teachers work in groups as Reggio students, so they could see the approach in action and how it can be applied to the standards. They had a great time and were even subjected to my Reggio documentation process, as I took photographs and recorded their dialogue. 

My room was a display of Reggio Emilia documentation.

The provocation was, "Can you make a home for woodland creatures?

The teachers worked collaboratively.

The hedge hog habitat.

"Who lives in this dwelling?" asked Mr. Sales, answering our provocation with a provocation.

The beaver dam.

Finished hedgehog dwelling with hedgehog couple. 

No one is safe from my documentation! 

I've been taking a group from 104 to work on posters about keeping our state clean.  This was meant to tie in with their studies about our community.

Mrs. Bennett and I took 103 outside to see what our senses could tell us as we experienced the outdoors.  We heard a train, airplanes, cars, birds and wind.  We saw the grate in the courtyard and thought it was pretty awesome.  We saw leaves and sticks and snow. We felt the cold air and then we felt the warmth of the squishy courtyard ground. 

So warm! 

 I let the kids practice using the camera for the first time.  I think it's important that we get photographs from our nature hikes from their point-of-view, as they see things differently than we do.

This is the grate that was so fascinating. They threw pebbles in to see what would happen. They heard the splash and squealed with delight.