The first graders have started a short unit on wolves. They began by exploring the image of wolves in traditional literature. First they recalled the wolf in The Three Little Pigs (We read several versions last fall.) The students decided the wolf was a “bad guy.” Mrs. Miliano introduced the word villain as a literary term for a bad guy. Next Mrs. M. read two other folktales with wolves as characters: The Seven Little Kids and Red Riding Hood. The children determined that the wolves in both new tales were also portrayed as villains.
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
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Sixth graders cite web pages
Mrs. David’s class had another lesson on ethical research. They reviewed the parts of a web page citation and where to locate the needed information before citing an article about the dice game “Yahtzee.” If you are interested in learning how the game got its name or how many possible outcomes there are for the five dice, check out the web page http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Yahtzee.html.
Colorful fun
After hearing Eric Carle’s story The Mixed-Up Chameleon, Mrs. McCall’s students had fun mixing up some animals, too. Each student selected an animal cut-out and the head of a different animal. They combined the two on a page and dictated a sentence about the colors and make-up of the new creature. The pages were collected and stapled to make a class book.of
Kindergarten storytimes
Spring has sprung! To celebrate the occasion, the kindergartners have started a unit on eggs. The kick-off was the book Hurry! Hurry! by Eve Bunting. In the story, the farm animals hurry to the barn to watch the hen’s egg hatch. Using the illustrations of Ruth Heller’s colorful book Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones , Mrs. Miliano introduced other animals that lay eggs. The children were amazed at all the birds, fish, insects, reptiles, and amphibians that follow in that category. Afterwards, everyone selected one egg-laying animal to illustrate. The pictures will be used in a future lesson.
All our kindergartners visited Goodall Hospital on Tuesday. Since that’s library day for the Green, Red, and Orange Rooms, the children in those rooms had a different storytime. The featured story was 
Jessica’s X-Ray by Pat Zonta. After the story, the children traced one of their hands with white crayon on black paper. Then they added “bones” to make the tracings look like an X-ray of a hand.
April praise
Kudos for prompt book returns go to three classes.
- Mrs. Dillane’s Yellow Room friends filled their third chart of 100 stickers on Friday.
- Mrs. Bemis’ first graders completed their fifth book return chart.
- Mrs. Sturtevant’s second graders also filled their fifth book return chart.
Each student received stickers and a bookmark for their commendable efforts to return their library books on time. Hooray!