Gingerbread House

The Holiday Festival and Tree Lighting is happening this Sunday (Dec. 2nd) at the Orange Town Green. There will be a Gingerbread display and contest between 3 and 5 at The Clark Building. We are entering the gingerbread house we decorated in the Gingerbread House Making Contest. The students had so much fun decorating the house and there was a lot of fine motor skills being used as students unwrapped all the colorful candy!

Mystery Reader Wall of Fame

Our Mystery Reader Wall of Fame is growing. We appreciate all our visitors taking the time out of their day to share their reading powers with us. Today Orange's Chief Elected Official visited and re-read us the story "Duck for President". Thank you Mr. Zeoli!

We Met Mr.Clint

We had a great day to end our busy week.  The day started with the boys and girls helping Mrs. Murray do the morning announcements  from our classroom.   Then we went to the gym to meet an old  friend of Mary L. Tracy School, Clint.

He brought a lot of really cool things with him.

We all got to touch the soft animal furs, and he showed us his 3 beautiful headdresses.

He showed us buffalo skin and a picture of a buffalo.

We were all really good listeners!  Thanks for visiting Mr. Clint!

We are getting ready for Thanksgiving!

Colors and letters and feathers - Oh my!  As you can see we've been very busy using all sorts of different materials to say "Happy Thanksgiving".   We are planning a little feast of our own on Tuesday, more details to follow!

I Voted Today!

There was a lot going on when students came to school on Election Day.  Since our school was a polling place the students noticed quickly that this was not a typical day.    We peeked in through the gym windows and saw the voters casting their ballots.  

Then we casted our votes.  Yes, our 3 year olds voted on Election Day!  Not for Romney or Obama.  The students voted for Farmer Brown  or Duck after listening to the story Duck for President by Doreen Cronin.  In the story, Duck gets tired of doing his daily chores on the farm and decides to hold and election to replace the man in charge, Farmer Brown.    When he wins the election, Duck quickly realizes that running a farm requires too much hard work, and sets out to run for governor and then eventually ends up running the country. 

Our former "Haunted House" was revamped into a polling place and the students took turns going in one by one (because voting is private) and voted for either Farmer Brown or for Duck.  It was a close race, but in room 101 Duck won!

Aww Sandy!

I hope that everyone has recovered from Hurricane Sandy and that your loved ones are safe and sound. We didn't let the week off get us down.   Even though it was already November we carved our pumpkin after the students voted on the shape of the jack o'lantern's eyes and nose.   Next, while the students were outside on the playground I made a "Haunted House" for them.  Using our freshly carved jack o'lantern, and all of the ghosts they made earlier, our work cubby in the classroom was now a spooky space.  I left the lights off and played some Halloween music on the ipad and said, "BOO!".   Happy (belated) Halloween!

October Fun

 As promised, October sure was a busy month!  Early in the month we teamed up with the PTA's Beautification Committee and helped Amy Burns plant some bulbs outside our courtyard door.  We uncovered a number of earthworms when we were planting.  It was fun to get dirty digging in the dirt.  We can't wait to see how beautiful our courtyard will be when the colorful flowers bloom this spring.

Later in the month our room moms helped us learn about the artist Georges Seurat during an Art Goes to School lesson when we made our own "dot" painting.   I hope you enjoyed the children's pumpkin dot paintings and look forward to more Art Goes to School activities.

It's just not fall without warm apple crisp and the boys and girls were excellent cooks during our very first baking activity.   We used an allergy friendly recipe to make apple crisp from scratch!   The students enjoyed the process more than the product, but everyone seemed to like the ice cream that went on top.  Thanks to all the adults that participated, we could not have done it without your support!