Baseball and Birds

The Whales have had a busy couple of weeks researching birds and getting ready for Celebration of Learning. The Whales are Ornithologists! They have each researched a Pacific Northwest Bird. For this project they read facts about their bird and had to find answers to questions. They researched about habitats, diets, beaks, feet, nests, and eggs. They talked in their research about why their birds beak and feet are special (helps it eat certain food, and stand in certain spaces/get food). They spent two weeks working on a scientific illustration of their bird. They had a picture of their bird to look at. When we were illustrating we were looking at the different shapes we saw in our birds to help us with our illustrations. The Whales used artists coloring pencils, water color, and tempra paints to color their illustrations. They are truly stunning. This week the Whales worked on creating riddles of their birds. The riddles will be up at Fernhill Wetlands for the field trip and the following weekend for community members to look at. The Whales spent a lot of time and worked extremely hard on this project. They are so excited for their field trip next week!

Last week the Whales took a trip to watch Pacific University’s baseball team play in the playoffs. We got to the stadium early and found seats. The Whales received rally towels and beads to wave around during the game. The Whales watched the baseball players practice and got to watch Pacific hit a home run! GO BOXERS!!! Our little Boxers had an amazing time supporting the big Boxers.

In numeracy this week, the Whales have been working on 2D and 3D shapes. They have been playing a shape game with more complex 2D shapes such as pentagon, hexagon, trapezoid, and octagon. We have also started looking at 3D shapes. So far we have looked at spheres, cylinders, and pyramids. The Whales have been having fun looking around our classroom for 3D shapes.

In literacy, the Whales have been learning about “sneaky e”. The sneaky e is found at the end of words, and will change the vowel to say its own name (long sound). We practiced spelling and reading words such as; time, name, made, line, and slate. The Whales are doing such a fantastic job applying this new rule during their reading and writing. All of the Whales have grown so much throughout the year and will continue to grow with the remainder of time we have left together.

Thank you for all coming to the Celebration of Learning! It was so joyful to see the Whales share all of their hard work from this year!