Today we had our first K-1 spelling bee.  It was the final activity for "Bee Week."  This week we wrote a bee mad lib, made beehive mobiles, fashioned beeswax bees, studied the workers, drones and queens, practiced all the yoga postures we know that begin with b, and observed bees in our herb garden.

We baked honey sweet baklava cookie cups with local honey on Tuesday.

 For our independent study project, each student brought 4 or 5 objects that represent things they like to do with Mommy. 
For poetry month, we have been writing poems like this....

We happily met our visiting billy goat, Chevre, sadly said good bye to 3 hens who were eaten by raccoons, and experienced a day without electricity after the early morning storms on Wednesday (a bit grumpily).  The owls also got to take the maiden voyage in our new school bus.

The Owls are preparing small group science projects.  The motion group is making a short video.

The magnet group has a slide presentation.

The electricity group has an electric circuit game board and the Human Body group is working on a play.

We have worked on our independent study projects as well.  Each student is studying their mother as a Force that is with them.  Above, a student shares objects that represent things she and her mother do together.  The students each completed a book about their mom's favorite things this week.

We will celebrate "Poem in my Pocket," day next week.  Today we wrote poems for Earth Day.  It was our first experience with using a rhyming dictionary.  We worked on odds and evens, telling time and also wrote a book about cats. We planted our pizza garden last week.  We have garlic chives, basil, tomatoes, and green peppers.   We have had more than the usual number of upsets, so we are working with mindfulness daily.  There are other ways to handle an upset than stomping off screaming (thank goodness.)  Our current read aloud is Miss Piggle Wiggle's Magic.

We made these little apple pies last week.  Here are some pictures of our process.

We have a new outside abacus in our spider porch outside classroom.  Here are a few shots of outside math time.

We had a field trip this week to the Science Mill.  Here are a few pictures from our trip. 

We made new plans for our small group study projects and began our independent study projects ("My Mother Is A Force,") with our first research assignment...Mommy's favorite things.  W e finished The BFG ,  and  learned some new sight word games, but we spent a lot of time writing and illustrating pages for our school book.  Our class did a mad lib about the Inside Outside School.