Building our stamina

We began building our stamina to reading this week. We discussed how when we build our stamina we build our brains. We learned how to read the pictures of a book along with the words.  

Reading

We also learned all about the African penguin and how they are endangered from over fishing, oil spills and garbage that we throw in the water. We decided we would earn money to adopt a penguin from Africa. The way we will adopt one is to work for our parents for spare change and to donate some of our Fall Festival money that we earn. We also had a group of 4th graders come and teach us about other endangered animals around the world. 

Keeping track of how much money we are earning. 

Our class did so wonderful in enrichment classes earning eagle feathers that we filled up our warm fuzzy jar. Because we filled up our jar we got an afternoon on free time.

Fun times building

Art time

Dress up fun

School Bus Safety

This week we did not come to school on Monday due to Labor Day. :) The rest of the week we reviewed our classroom rules that we made and sealed them with our signature and hand print. 

We learned what "Ubuntu"means and that it is like our class family and how we should treat each other as family. Mrs. Ketchum learned this in South Africa and thought it was a wonderful thing to share. 

Ubuntu means class family. We made ourselves and learned
 how we can be a class family. 

We learned all about school bus safety and how we are lucky to have the opportunity to ride the school bus to school if we want to. The students at Emafini Primary in South Africa do not have the opportunity to ride the school bus. They have to walk to school a long way for their education and education is very important to them. 

We also on Friday went on our own safari and brainstormed what we think we would see if we went on a real safari. We also discussed how the animals in South Africa are different than our animals we have here in the North Carolina.

First Week

Our staggered days were wonderful. We chased Pete the Cat and his rocking school shoes all around the school while learning where the Art room, PE room, Music room, Library, Office, Cafeteria and most importantly the playground was. We then decorated our rockin' school shoes with where we went this summer. Mrs. Ketchum talked with us all about South Africa and we found where we visited on the map.
After meeting our new friends in our classroom and having fun, we made a Pete the Cat cookie to eat for snack. 

Rockin with our school shoes

Rockin with our school shoes

Making our rockin school shoe

Icing our Pete the Cat cookie

Icing our Pete the Cat cookie

Pete the Cat cookie

Pete the Cat cookie

On Thursday, we had our whole class join us. We learned all about each other including where our names came from. Mrs. Ketchum's name is French. We also went to our first music and library classes. When we got to school on Friday we learned we had an early release day and go to leave school at 1:00. We went to Computer Lab and loved it. We also read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and compared our classroom with Emafini Primary School which is the school Mrs. Ketchum worked at in South Africa. We had such an awesome week for our very first one. 

Working hard

Working hard

Look at that concentration

Working hard