Early Days of our Garden

These videos (all put into one here) were taken way back in August. I managed to completely forget about them. Back then we were simply exploring in our garden with our fourth grade buddies. Soon I'll post some new pictures and video of the garden. A lot has happened there this year, by our class, our buddies, and a fifth grade class.

Watching these videos now I'm so impressed with the enthusiasm, excitement, and energy. These students noticed everything as they were digging!

Our Knuffle Bunny Field Trip

As you can see we had fabulous seats in the first few rows. We were up close and personal for the entire show.

This picture is Mo Willems, the author of Knuffle Bunny, with the large Knuffle Bunny puppet from the show.

These pictures from the show were taken from others' reviews and information sites about the show (information about them is at the bottom if you want to find more).


After the show we were lucky enough to get to go to the terrace outside of the grand foyer. The students loved the fountain and checked out the Potomac River.








































Information from Mo Willems' blog
PBS Newshour review with video
PBS Parents Booklights review
Publishers Weekly review
Washington Post review
DC Theatre Scene interview with Stephanie D'Abruzzo (Trixie in the show)
Studio 360 (NPR show) with audio interview of Mo Willems

Volunteer Breakfast

Our annual volunteer breakfast was a week ago. It is always a lovely event and only a very small token of our appreciation for all our volunteers do for us.

Our class decided to sing a song they learned in music, We Are From Pluto. (Pardon the very loud whispers you hear from me. It's hard to hold the camera to record and whisper stage directions.)

Knuffle Bunny Portraits

After our fabulously wonderful field trip to the Kennedy Center to see the Knuffle Bunny musical we managed to each get a picture with Knuffle Bunny. Thoughts, pictures, and video from the field trip is coming soon.

The Bowling Truck

These pictures are shockingly overdue. Several weeks ago the bowling truck visited our school. We had two chances to go and bowl a frame. While waiting for our turn there was some fabulous music playing and many folks couldn't stand still. It was great fun.

More Book Talks!

Thanks to the bravery of our first book talker, we've had lots of students ready to share the books they love. Here are a few with more to come next week. The presenters wrote their book talks, practiced them, and made their presentation. That's impressive enough but I'm thrilled with their taste in books!

Field Trip #1 - Hidden Oaks Nature Center

Our first field trip of the year was wonderful! We began in the nature center's classroom. There we talked about metamorphosis, the life cycle of insects, and lots of other things having to do with animals. We got to see tadpoles, a toad, a butterfly, and bunches of other small critters.

After the classroom time we split into two groups. One group headed off on a nature walk. During the nature walk each child got one ladybug to set free in the forest. The ladybugs loved the kids and many didn't want to head off onto leaves. The feeling was mutual. The ladybugs were quite popular and everyone was sad to send them off and move on to the next step in our field trip.

The final piece was planting a seed. To begin each child got a lima bean and had the opportunity to take it apart to look inside with a magnifying glass. Students found the seed coat and the brand new plant growing inside the seed. They looked really closely at their lima beans. After inspecting their lima beans the students were given a brand new one and a yogurt cup to plant it in. They took these cups with their seed ready to grow home last week and I hope they are getting ready to sprout!