Dear Families,

We have not seen much sun for a while and we are all suffering a bit from cabin fever. I told the children we will be holding a sun dance ceremony next week to bring out the sun and its cozy warmth. The children all agreed and cheered with joy at the idea! This update will focus on our unit on birds.

We have begun to study birds and it is very exciting for all of us to learn about such beautiful creatures. We generated questions and learned about the general characteristics of birds. The children were especially excited to learn about song birds, and we gathered facts on the robin and the cardinal. Some facts made more of an impression than others such as the size of eggs, “a robin’s egg can fit on a quarter,” the colors of birds; the children love the bright red cardinal, and everyone loved to discover that cowbirds like to steal an egg from a cardinal’s nest and replaced it with one of their own. The children were surprised to learn that mama cardinal raises the baby cowbird as one of her own.

This fun unit is fully integrated in other areas of the curriculum. In Art class with Susie the children are making bird puppets. In Science class with Emily they are learning about different types of bird beaks and how they are used for different kinds of food. The children were excited to discover that a cardinal’s beak can crack and peel sunflower seeds.

In Language Arts the children have been writing facts about birds and enjoying making drawings of different kinds of birds. Also we took some time to “search our brains” and brainstorm what we have learned so far. The children cheered with joy to find out that they were able to remember almost everything we read and discussed about birds.

We ended the week Friday with some special guests – the tiger finches from the pre-K room. The children enjoyed learning about them from Michelle and we got to keep the beautiful finches for the morning. Also on Friday we celebrated Caroline’s birthday. Happy birthday Caroline! Monday is Brian’s birthday. Happy birthday Brian and have fun in Main!

Some of the photos I’m forwarding show the first graders working on geoboards. We began a unit on geometry -more about this in the future.

I wish everyone a peaceful week,
Liliana