Welcoming the New Year!

We started off the New Year with a treasure hunt - geocaching at the park with Leslie.  Leslie's i-phone ap (and a helpful hospital worker who happened to know what we were up to) helped us find our first ever treasure.  This one was just a log book for writing your name.  Ella and Leslie are hoping for some real loot next time :)

I found Leslie's old lap harp.  Ella immediately recognized that playing it was just like following a dot to dot!

Ella tried weaving for the first time.  She was so proud of herself!  I showed her how to do it once and she was off and running with it!  She said:  Oh, I get it!  A pattern!  I can do that!!!

This & That (also known as "what I had on my phone when I finally remembered to download it . . .")

Children's Museum

Outdoor Water Table and Hippity Hops on Astro-Turf :)

From farm to market . . .

A very cool diner (which we had to ourselves for about 10 minutes until it was filled with 3rd graders jostling for space!)

A Florida girl gets the hang of raking leaves :)

If fashion design doesn't pan out, she may want to consider a career in television!

. . . gathering flowers

Ella said her favorite thing today was the Pet Adoption Center.  She had fun taking care of all of the sick pets.  We decided that this dog had eaten a frog!!!

ocean/water unit

This week we started a unit on water and the ocean.  Ella has been a real "project" girl this year & was excited to make this collage using bubblewrap, sandpaper, and real shells.

Ella has been telling stories using ocean and beach magnets.  We used some sea life cut-outs to do a language arts lesson & we played a Rainbow Fish memory game.

We made up addition stories using some homemade wooden numerals and some plastic sea creatures.

It was fun to color on sandpaper!  I love Ella's sand castle :)

I Spy: At the Park

Happy Easter

bunnies and chicks in art . . . coloring eggs . . .

and an egg hunt, of course!

Easter Tree

Ella started by painting a trunk.  Then she put really wet blobs of paint on the trunk and blew them with a straw.  She added a few green leaves by dipping her finger in the wet watercolor paint.  Finally, she taped little Easter eggs all over her tree.