Fall Centers

What a gift to have a group of parents who are willing to come into the classroom, design fun activities and bring all the materials, and spent the morning with us. That's exactly what happened this morning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Readers-to-Leaders Celebration

Each year Mrs. Phillips kicks off Readers-to-Leaders, which is her challenge to read a million words, by doing something special. Today she got colored as a rainbow as an incentive and reminder to read.

Literacy Parade

Loved seeing all the Literacy characters today!

Thomas the Train

Our students will remember the student in our class earlier this year with a fascination for Thomas the Train.  He is no longer in our class.  He has moved to another school, but one of the parents at Chets Creek found out about his fascination for trains.  She heard of a friend that had a complete Thomas the Train collection of new items that she was willing to donate so she picked them up and brought them to Miss Julie, at the front desk, asking that they be given to the student who had so loved Thomas.  Miss Julie called the child's parents and they met us at the MARC today (an off-campus tutoring site) so that we could deliver the large bag of train supplies to the student!  He was so surprised and excited!  Isn't that a great story?!  Once a Creeker, always a Creeker!

Which is Heavier?

Our class has been studying matter in science. Today's essential question was,  "Which is heavier?" I showed the students various objects asking them which they thought was heavier and why. Some of these objects were two of the same pieces of paper one folded into fourths and one crumpled into a ball, a blown up balloon and a marble, a nerf ball and a foam ball of the same size. The reason for these particular objects was to show the children that size does not always mean an object will be light or heavy. 

Our final two objects to be weighed were a half cup of water and a half cup of cooking oil. I poured them into two plastic glasses and asked the students which they thought was heavier and why. Every student responded saying that the oil would be heavier because it's gooey and sticky. When I placed the water and oil on the balance, the room erupted when they saw that the water was heavier than the oil. We discussed that water has more mass and is therefore denser than oil. I then poured the oil into the water showing how the two separate. Visualizing density totally blew their minds. It was a great lesson!

Fall Pumpkins

One of our Chet's Creek traditions is for each of our classes to take a pumpkin and use it to illustrate a favorite book. Some years we have just picked something easy to illustrate and some years the parents have done most of the work and the children haven't been involved at all... but not this year!  This group of parents really wanted the display to represent the children.

 The tornado!

It was easy to choose a book because Mrs. Ruark has been reading The Wizard of Oz and it is a class favorite. The moms asked the kids to write a paragraph about their favorite part of the book and then took their inspiration from the students' writing. Can you tell that they loved the tornado, the trees throwing apples, and the characters falling asleep in the poppy field? I just LOVE that the parents made this all about the kids!

Author's Craft

One of the things that we study in writing is author's craft. Authors' craft is about looking at the things that published authors do and then seeing if we can use those same things in our own writing. On this day the teacher read books and invited the students to identify the craft and then invited students to try it in their own writing.

 Notice how the writer below makes the word "big" BIG. That is author's craft!