Best ECO yet

This morning was a wonderful time in the forest. Our work time was focused on making our base camp even better. Children chose to help set up a fire pit, build a waterproof shelter for fire wood or set up an area for tool use. The work was fabulous. We also tried sitting in our sit spots and were very successful!

I've set up a photo sharing site that I will invite parents to view each Friday and that volunteers can add photos to as well.

iPads!

Another part of our daily 5 time is iPads. We have worked up to reading to Self for 9 minutes and today tried using iPads with Lexia while others were reading. So exciting. A letter is coming home about using Lexia at home. 

Read to self

Today we started Read to Self- one of the components of our Daily 5 reading block. Students chose books they wanted to read. I introduced 3 ways to read a book 

We made a chart to decide what the kids would do during Read to Self and what the teacher would be doing:

Then we got reading! Our goal today was to read for 3 minutes, with 20 minutes as our overall goal!

ECO day 1

We had our first ECO time today. We settled into the routines that will carry us through our ECO days. Amy and Eve, our ECO leaders met us. We began with a macro drawing in our journals. Then we grabbed our packs and headed outside to play some games and have a snack.

Then we headed up to our base camp.

We sat in a circle and talked about being safe in the forest. We played a really fun Fox and Rabbit game where kids had to hide:

Finally, children had time to play in the forest. It was a magical morning that left us all totally thrilled for next Friday when the theme will be STICKS!

Math!

Today was our second day of math. We played a game where kids got a chance to be a teacher and a student. We were practicing using number bonds and looking for groups within a set of dots!

A chair for the bear!

This afternoon Gina read Goldilocks to the two classes. Then we split the kids into groups of first and second graders and challenged them to build a chair that could hold the teddy bear with only paper and tape! It was amazing!!

First days

Phew! The first few days of school have been fast and fun! We played a fun game with the second graders where they had to see how few hoola hoops they could fit it! All 41 kids fit in 4!

We also investigated pattern blocks:

And so much more!