Marybeth & Elijah’s Class Notes

Spring is in full swing and before we know it we’ll be packing our bags for beach day! Until then, we are busily working on the final phase of our class project, which we look forward to sharing with you at our end-of-year celebration on May 30th—details to follow.

Research on our animals is complete and we’ve been busy constructing mini shadow boxes which will display clay sculptures of our animals. A highlight for the children was sawing through the yardsticks we used to construct the frames. Each child practiced skip counting by six in order to measure the segments of the frame. We are in the process of embellishing them with paint, collage and select information we discovered in our research. With the help of Sabra and Perry we have also completed construction of our paper-mache goblin shark, which we will paint this week.

The children have been bringing in moss samples with the hope of finding tardigrades—a.k.a. “water bears,” which are one of earths oldest, toughest, and oddly adorable animals. We haven’t found any specimens yet, but have not given up hope! Hannah will be back with her microscope again this Thursday afternoon. Our project work is interrupted only by our reading and writing practice, heated games of gaga, and visits from Cooper, the therapy dog. We are also looking forward to our music session with Hudson Music, which has been postponed until May 16th.