EPACS & EPAPA Bbq at the park

EPACS & EPAPA had our first joint event at the park this Saturday! We had so much fun enjoying the beautiful day in the park with great people, delicious food, frisbees, and bocce ball!

Student of the Month: August!!!

CONGRATULATIONS to our first two students of the month!!!

Candelaria and Esmeralda are both our Stanford Tree students of the month for August! They have earned their award for 100% effort and participation. They are amazingly hard workers!

Penguin Role-Playing and Fantastic Fun Friday!

We had so much fun role-playing as Emperor Father, Mother, and Chick Penguins on a giant iceberg on Friday! We role-played keeping emperor eggs safe on our feet, away from the ice and warm under our feathers with the penguins we made on Thursday. When Mother Penguins got tired of keeping their eggs safe, the Father Penguins let the Mothers take a break and go dive into the icy cold ocean for penguin food: krill, squid and fish!


Soon enough, the emperor eggs were ready to hatch! We were surprised to find baby chicks with fluffy downy feathers inside to keep them warm. Again, we protected them from the ice on our brood patch. We learned in our reading this week that chicks don't grow waterproof feathers until they are adults. Then, they are ready to jump into the ocean to find their own food.





After our fun of acting-out penguin life, we got to watch The March of the Penguins for Fantastic Fun Friday!!! We sat in wonder as we watched real-life penguins waddle, slide on their bellies, and march, just as we'd been reading about in our expository stories. It was incredible! We can't wait to continue our penguin reading this week, and finish the movie at Fantastic Fun Friday next week!

Penguin Facts

We have been working so hard to listen for facts in our expository stories, and have been collecting all our facts in our special penguin journals!

Tiger Buddies!

Last week, we met our Tiger Buddies from Mr. Crosby's class! We had so much fun adding vocabulary words to our penguin journals, and showing them all the fun facts we're learning!







We are so lucky to have such amazing fourth grade friends! We are excited to learn a lot from Mr. Crosby's Stanford class, and have so much fun together all year long!

Publishing party & more penguin fun!

We had a fantastic time sharing our pieces with a real-life audience at our first publishing party last week! The Stanford Trees and I were so thankful to have so many parents come join us in celebrating our hard work in Writer's Workshop!

We can't wait for our next writer's celebration!

After our celebration, we had more fun with penguins learning about why penguins have such thick coats of feathers. We tested out how we felt holding ice in our bare hands, versus ice in our hands covered with socks!



We all voted for a hand covered with feathers. :) We will be learning more about penguin bodies tomorrow during our science adventures!

How do YOU compare in size to an Emperor Penguin???

We had a blast today learning that an emperor penguin is just our size! 18 students predicted they would be taller than the emperor penguin, but it turns out that most of us are just a bit shorter than the emperor penguin, and only three of us are taller.



After we compared our size to a penguin's, we made our own life-size drawings of ourselves, and compared our features to a penguin's features. Tomorrow, we will learn more about why the penguin has those features.




Tomorrow is our Publishing Party!!! We hope to see you at 12:30 to celebrate your child's published piece and hard work!!

Penguin Homes!

This Friday, we learned all about what a penguin home is really like, by making our own! The Stanford Trees each made their own black and white penguin, and explored their penguin home by sliding around on icebergs we froze ourselves, gobbling up fish, and diving into their favorite place to play--icy cold water. We had so much fun waddling around class like penguins, and playing just like penguins do!

This week, we will be learning how to read for information this week, as we begin with The March of the Penguins book.

Please ask your child each night what fun facts they have been learning about in the stories we've read.

Antarctica!

Our penguin unit is well underway! As scientists, we explored ice and how it freezes, and read a story about Antarctica. We are learning more about the emperor penguin, as well as a seal.

We are focusing on making connections as we read. As we listened to our Antarctica story, we listened to connections we had to the animals in the story. We learned many new feelings words:

excitement
nervous
afraid
upset
surprised
content

Stay tuned for more adventures with penguins!

This week in room 2...8/9-8/13

This week in Room 2,

We will be starting an exciting unit on PENGUINS!!! Our vocabulary words for today are:

shelter

danger

nuzzle

Our letter of the day is P
PENGUIN! popcorn, presents, pop, pig, pear, peach
What P words do you know?

Welcome!

Welcome to the 2010-2011 school year in the Stanford Tree classroom--the most fun place to be. I am so excited to start this blog...a dream I've had for quite a while!!! This will be a great place to post the millions of photos I take of all the fun we're having in Room 2.