Marybeth & Elijah’s Class Notes

Our Class book is complete and off to the printing press! The Mouse House; A Treasury of Stories will be submitted to The Hampton Library as part of their 2024 Budding Authors program. We will also mail a copy to the Mouse Mansion Museum in Amsterdam which inspired this wonderful project. Now that the work is complete, the children have been joyfully playing with their mice and the rooms they built for them. Once our book arrives we will schedule a “publishing party” to which parents will be invited. Please look for a separate email with the details.

With our mouse project complete we’ve shifted our focus from fantasy to the origins of life on our planet. The children have been using sharpies, watercolors and oil pastels to illuminate the many new vocabulary words we’ve been encountering in our reading. So far our book list includes: Many;The Diversity of Life On Earth (Nicole Davies), Life On Earth;The Story of Evolution (Steve Jenkins);The Extinct Alphabet Book (Jerry Pallotta), Life Story (Virginia Lee Burton), Fossils Tell of Long Ago (Aliki) and Charles Darwin (Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara), with many more wonderful titles to follow.

Hannah, our scientist in residence, has begun a series of visits to our classroom where we are exploring fossils. We launched this series with a reading of Fossils Tell of Long Ago, by Aliki, and an exciting look at fossils.

Moving forward we will explore the various causes of animal extinction, and sooner than later the children will select an animal that has survived extinction for independent research. Some them have already been gathering ideas about which animal they would like to study.