Art Show

It was so nice to see so many students at the Art Show tonight!  The girls had so much fun seeing all the students and looking at the art work.  They also got some pretty awesome books from the book fair.  If you missed out on the book fair tonight, it will be open until Friday.  You may send money to school with your child for him/her to shop.  

I wish I could have snapped a photo of all the students there, but my girls were a little wound up.  :)  

It is not too late to donate to the awesome Umbrella's for Peace project.  I am so excited about this project and think it is going to be awesome come September.  If you would like to donate you can send cash in an envelope marked Umbrella's for Peace or you may make a check payable to Pecatonica Elementary School!  

"Egg"citing Progress!

Today we got to candle our seven duck eggs and they are doing great!  To candle the eggs we take a special light and shine it right on the shell of the egg. That illuminates the inside of the egg so we can see what is going on.  Our eggs looked PERFECT!  We were very excited. 

This is our candled egg at day six.  This was egg number seven, and if you look closely you can see the dark spot towards the top of the eggs and the veins  towards the front of the egg.  Candling the eggs is very neat and educational, but we have to be careful how often we handle the eggs.  We will candle them again two more times. 

Here is a website that shows you what the eggs should look like every day.  

Duck Egg Candling

We attended the book fair today.  Kids made wish lists with three books they would like to purchase.  If you decide you would like to purchase books from the book fair you can send in money with your child anytime this week, or you can visit the book fair on Wednesday night during the Art Show.



ICF Property

The kids had so much fun today at the ICF property.  We started the morning with a few presentations from Mr. Jacobsen and his coworker about the 3 R's and the water cycle.   Click on the link below to be taken to the animated video the kids viewed about the water cycle. 

VIDEO HERE!

After our presentation, Mr. Faller came to take the kids on a nature walk.  I stayed back and cleaned up the presentation area and stayed with a student who was unable to take the hike.  Mrs. Carlson got some great pictures and the kids were excited to tell me all about it. 

Needless to say, the kids had a fantastic day learning how to take care of our planet.  

When we got back from the ICF, the kids took part in our Earth week activity at lunch.  They were able to choose the design that we will create for the garden using the bottle caps.  I am not sure which design won, but no matter what, with Mrs. Vande Voorde in charge, it will be adorable!

DON'T FORGET TO SEND IN YOUR WATER BOTTLES THIS WEEK!  We really want to win that dessert picnic!

Earth Week!

Happy Earth Week!

We are going to be celebrating Earth Day all week, so instead of Earth Day, I am going to refer to it as Earth Week!  

Tomorrow morning we will be headed to the ICF property.  Please dress your child in play clothes and appropriate shoes as we WILL be taking a nature hike with Mr. Faller. 

Today we made bottle cap magnets with Mrs. VandeVoorde and many parent volunteers!  The kids were excited to create with the magnets instead of having to count them!

The students were VERY excited because we were able to put our duck eggs in the incubator this morning.  They take about 28 days to hatch, we will be keeping a close eye on them and candling them in the near future to see how they are growing and to check if they were all fertilized.  

We got this fancy new incubator that allows us to see the eggs from a distance at all times.  It is amazing and I am so thankful for it.  Unfortunately, it only holds seven eggs.  The rest of the first grade classrooms have 10 or 11 eggs, but they have Styrofoam incubators that you are unable to see in and have to carefully monitor.  Depending on the results of our hatch this year, we may be purchasing these fancy incubators for all first grade teachers in the near future.  Last year I was lucky enough to get a little video of one of the ducklings hatching.  Here it is below...

 

I hope you all had a great Easter weekend!  We sure did at the Laue house.  I love spending time with my extended family and watching my girls light up with excitement as they play with their cousins.  

Clock Egg Hunt

The kids were so excited when we told them they got to go on an egg hunt today!  Mrs. Carlson and I teamed up to fill eggs with clocks to the hour and half hour. The kids were given a bag and we told them to go and find 5 eggs.  When everyone found 5, there were 11 left over, we sent them back!  There was one egg that had a special treat in it and a little girl in Mrs. Carlson's class was the lucky winner!  After we came back inside, students emptied their eggs and glued their clocks onto a piece of paper and then wrote the digital form of the time next to the clock.  When their paper was finished, they all got a peanut butter cup.  We had so much fun and a few of them asked me if we can practice math that way again sometime!  :)

We have a future Olympian in our class!  Ms. Kianna went to state for gymnastics last weekend and she placed first in both tumbling and trampoline.  We are all very proud of her.  Keep up the great work! 

We have the incubator all ready to go!  The duck eggs will be placed in the incubator on Tuesday when we return from Easter break.  Enjoy the long weekend, I can't wait to hear about everyone's adventures.

Paul Bunyan Breakfast

We had so much fun this morning celebrating Tall Tales and eating a Paul Bunyan breakfast!  The pancakes and sausage were so yummy! Unfortunately, our pancakes were not as big as the ones in the Paul Bunyan Tall Tale!  Maybe next time.

We ordered duck eggs today and they should be here sometime next week.  I have our brand new incubator all ready to go!  I am so excited to start this unit.  It is such a neat learning experience for the students, although saying good-bye to the ducks is a little sad.  Unfortunately, we will not be sending ducks home nightly with students and any hatched ducks have already been spoken for in terms of a permanent home.  We will enjoy the ducks at school for a couple weeks after they hatch and then we will send them to the duck farm on Telegraph.  I will make sure to keep you posted though out the process of hatching!  It takes about 28 days for the ducklings to hatch once they are in the incubator.

Field Trip

First grade will be taking a field trip to Brookfield Zoo on May 14th.  We will leave school at 8:15am and return at 4:00pm.  We are so excited to be able to offer students the opportunity to see Brookfield Zoo.  It is an awesome experience! We will be able to take 4 chaperones per class on the buses.  More chaperones are welcome to come, they will just need to follow the bus in their car.  Parking at the zoo is $10.  The cost for students and chaperones riding the bus is $13.75.  More information is coming home in today's comunicator.

One thing I am super excited about is the baby gorilla that is at Brookfield right now.  I love jungle animals so much and baby ones are ever better!  A few years ago when we took Natalie, there were baby giraffes.

This is baby Nora.  

If you have any questions about the field trip please let me know.  Money is due back by May 1st.  If you are interested in chaperoning, please return the form by April 17th.  

You can check out more information about Brookfield Zoo at there website.  Click HERE! 

A Few Friendly Reminders:

Tomorrow we will be walking across the street to perform our concert songs at the church.  Please make sure that your student is wearing appropriate(no sweats) clothes and shoes for this occasion.

Yo-Yo's -  We will be selling yo-yo's all week.  There are three different yo-yo's your student can purchase.
The NED - $8
The Boomerang - $11
The Cosmic Spin 2 - $16
Replacement Strings - $4
Yo-Yo holster - $4

If your child is purchasing a yo-yo and you are unable to locate the order form please make sure you have clearly labeled with the money what s/he is purchasing and I will fill out an order form for them.  We also have some fourth graders that were trained to correctly fit the yo-yo string to your child's height.

Ducks - Thank you to those who have donated to the duck fund, we are still a little bit short.  We will be accepting donations until Friday, as we will hopefully be placing the order on Monday.

The NED Show

Today the kids got to experience an AWESOME assembly.  We got to see the NED show.  The NED Show is an assembly that teaches students (and adults) to think positive in school and in life.  Our presenter's name was Tony and he was fantastic.  He made sound effects with his mouth that I wish I could make and had yo-yo tricks that I did not know were even possible.  He was simply amazing.  I grabbed a short video of his warm up routine.  

He had the kids hooked before he even officially began his assembly.  Ned, Tony's friend, is a cartoon character who's name stands for Never give up, Encourage others, and Do your best.  These are three things I have tried to instill in my students all year.   What a fantastic and fun way to present it.  Tony told us a story about the bad things that happened when he picked up Ned for our assembly today.  Ned ran into aliens, saw a tight rope walker, the Eiffel Tower and even Sponge Bob!  

One of the neatest things about the Ned Show is that they come to our school for FREE!  I was amazed at how awesome this free assembly was!  We are selling yo-yo's throughout next week to support the Ned Show so hopefully they can spread the word to other schools at no cost to the school.  If you would like another order form please let me know!  

Lirpaloof Bird

We had so much fun this morning.  We learned about the Lirpaloof bird.  It only comes to our area around the beginning of April.  The Lirpaloof bird eats regular bird food but also LOVES to eat carrots.  The students read a passage about the Lirpaloof bird and then colored the picture of the bird according to what the passage said. 

After learning about the bird, I gave each student a carrot and we went outside to bird watch.  Lirpaloofs are easily scared so instead of holding up the carrot and yelling the birds name, they held up the carrot and sang the birds name.  They did so well.

After doing that for a couple minutes, Mrs. Carlson and I spelled Lirpaloof bird backwards on the blacktop for them.

(April Fool)

While I thought the joke was hysterical, the kids were not impressed. 

They could not believe that we pulled a fast one on them!