Our Rock Museum

Preparing for Valentine's Day

The MWF class worked very hard on their display of all of the rocks we studied and sorted!  As we prepared our museum display, we realized many rocks have more than one attribute for sorting, thus the arrows we made when a rock was both rough and smooth or rough and shiny.  The attribute descriptions were figured out by the children and, as we placed them on the display, they insisted on having the two-word descriptions, which exhibits their growing complexity in observation.

Colin exhibited some burgeoning photographic skills with his new camera!  He documented our museum with the following 4 pictures - thank you Colin!  

He took a picture of the Welcome sign he wrote. . . 

Noe wrote "Rock Museum" on the board in the hall. She and Colin are at a wonderful beginning- reading stage where they are able to sound out letters to write some words as they label drawings and, as below, for practical purposes as we made signs for the museum.

Jack and Hazel prepared a display as they sifted through the dirt we collected, found more rocks,

washed them, then sorted them.  This was part of our laboratory.

We were also able to open a real "geod," a seemingly plain rock until you break it open and find crystals inside.  My son and I used to collect these from around Colorado and had this extra one.  When I broke it open with a hammer and flathead screwdriver, Colin called me an "expert"!

Hazel and Noe wait with tickets for the "museum go-ers."

And thank you for coming!

The T/Th group had fun sorting hearts.

We enjoyed reading the repetitive story, The House That Jack Built.

Molly did a super job of sequencing copied pages of the story . . .

Crepe Day!

Lucas' mom, Laetitia, being from France, grew up with the beginning of February being "crepe day," where everyone makes and eats crepes that day.  She brought in all the cookware and ingredients to make crepes with us!

A little vanilla . . .

Some milk . . .

The flipping was the best part!

Other than the eating - yum!

We practiced with "fabric crepes" in our little kitchen later.

Nice technique, Lucas!

Hazel you did a great job of sorting hearts!

We did some heart pasting.

And began making a post office!  Colin made this sign by sounding out the consonants he heard all by himself - good job!  When children are just beginning to write and use sounds, it is OK for them to be "wrong," especially since our English language spelling rules can be challenging.  Colin very logically heard the "s" sound in place of the "c" for "office."

Writing letters to send . . .

I helped the T/Th class with letter-writing by offering them name labels that have each child's picture on them so that they can further learn how to recognize their names.

The T/Th class got VERY busy making letters and valentines and using the post office.

Sinh figured out how to fold the paper to fit it into the envelopes.

Welcome Violet!  She is taking part of Jack's place while he is gone during February.  Below she had fun hammering golf tees into styrofoam on Friday - great eye-hand practice!