Getting Ready

It's hard to believe that the long awaited summer break is coming to an end. We hope you've had a glorious, family-filled summer. We certainly have.

We plan on spending a few days during this last week of summer getting our classroom ready for the new pack of Happy Hounds. This time of year is always exciting for us. We look forward to sprucing up the room, planning for the new year, and meeting our new students.

Open House will be Wednesday, August 3rd from 3-5. Please come by and meet us. This is a great way to make your child feel more comfortable about the first day of school. We prefer that you bring your child's supplies at this time so you can help unpack and get settled in.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Mrs. Hood at khood@banks.k12.ga.us.

Leprechaun Fever

Boy what a crazy week!

On Wednesday, the Hounds worked on building their leprechaun traps. (Thanks for all the supplies you sent in.) That evening we apparently had a visit from some mischievous leprechauns. They messed up our room, left green footprints on the floor, and gold in each trap. No one was successful at capturing one though. For our science experiment Friday, we made leprechaun worms. You can find out about them by going to Steve Spangler's website. Our Funky Food activity on Friday was St. Patty's Day milkshakes. They sure were good. Let's hope the week ahead is a little less crazy!

Well shoot! Looks like the leprechauns messed up the captions on this slide show. I can't figure out how to edit it now that it's saved. Oh, well! They also made it really long, so sit back, enjoy, and figure out what part of the captions are missing.

Popcorn! Popcorn! Popcorn!

Our Funky Food for the week we studied the five senses was popcorn. What a great food to experience with all our senses!

Presidents' Day

The Happy Hounds enjoyed learning about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We made a portrait and wrote about George Washington. Our class book for the week was about Honest Abe. And the best part, our Funky Food. We made Never Tell a Lie Cherry Pies in honor of the story about George Washington and his father's cherry tree. Is it really true???

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

March 2nd was Dr. Seuss' birthday. We celebrated with lots of fun activities. First we made green eggs and ham. Then we went to the Spunky Monkey's room to make cat hats. In the Busy Bee's room, we read counted and graphed fish. Several Hounds were overheard saying: This is the best day ever!!!!

Working Hard!!

Parts of a Story

We recently completed a Leo Lionni author study. We worked in small groups to compete the matrix shown below. This was a review of the story elements we've been studying all year. Each day we read a Leo Lionni book and groups were assigned a specific part of a story to draw and write about. Each day the group had to work on a different story element. Below is a close up of the work each group did on the book Swimmy.

The main character is Swimmy. (Talia, Carley, Audrie, John Robert, and Marshall)

The setting is the ocean. (Logan, Harly, Bryson, Melanie)

The tuna fish ate the red fish. (Landis, Makayla, Jarred, Ashton, Delayne)

OOPS! I forgot to take a picture of the solution.


The tuna fish swam away. (Alanna, Tori, Shelby, Gabe)




Ground Hog Day Predictions

Below is some of the writing we did about Groundhog Day.

We have been sooooo impressed with the quality of writing our students are doing. Thanks for your help at home. They are excited about using their Picture Dictionaries.

Book Buddies

We are excited about having Book Buddies! We meet with Ms. Miller and Mr. Evans' first grade class on Friday afternoons to read the books we've been practicing all week. We also listen to our partner read to us. This has been a real motivator to get the Hounds to reread their books. We encourage them to reread to help improve their fluency (so they sound like good readers).