Valentine's Day Fun...

The Learning Garden was a busy place today!  We started our day with a fun waffle breakfast shared with our amazing parents.  I love the little craft we made together. Check it out in our slide show.

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Our families are simply amazing and I LOVED celebrating with each of you.  Thank you for your contributions to this event.  Happy Valentine's Day!  

Hearts and Flowers GALORE!

Our room is abloom with hearts and flowers as we head into Valentine's Day next week!  Check out some of the "Heart Art" that our thinkers created last week:

 In a recent conversation with a colleague I was told about a professor who is an "arts proponent" who suggested that no child should participate in arts if they are a struggling in reading or math.  I have to tell you, that makes my skin CRAWL!  Not that we have struggling readers and mathematicians in our room, but I see their work and I know the amazing critical thinking, spacial reasoning and creativity that goes into it.

Every single time we are given a task that deals with art, we talk about details, space and planning.  These are skills that will serve them well when they are one day faced with FCAT (or any other test that requires critical thinking and reasoning).  It's these moments that gets those brain juices flowing and the "right side" of creativity to "talk" to the "left side" that encompasses more logistics and planning.  And that's a VERY GOOD thing!

OK I will climb OFF my soapbox now.  :-)  Enjoy these next few pictures of the finished work.

Now that you've enjoyed the "Heart Art", check out our Mosaic hearts added to our Classroom Tree!  And how about those GORGEOUS flowers????  A great big thank you to the Moms who helped us decorate our tree and make it pretty for our classroom.  We have decided to try and do a thematic tree.  So this month's flowers are the reds, pinks and purples.  Coming NEXT month?  Dr. Seuss and whimsical blues, oranges, yellows and reds with LARGER flowers!  If you're out and about and you see any fun LARGER flowers at a great price, we'd love you to pick them up for us.  As you can see, it takes quite a bit to cover the tree.  

 I know it was being decorated today during Math and the kids could hardly keep their eyes off of it.  Now, I am sitting here alone long after the kids have left and I find I can't keep MY eyes off it either!  Thanks again, wonderful Moms, for all of your effort to bring our tree to life!!  

Groundhog Day

Today's Groundhog Day which really means little or nothing to us here in sunny Florida!  Still, we had a good time learning about this sweet little critter and its legend.  Look what we made:

We've been talking about the SETTING of a story this week.  So everyone had to choose TWO settings to create on their stage.  Then we created our very own groundhog puppet to pop up in our settings. We added our Groundhog poem to the back so we can practice reading.

 As usual, I am blown away by their amazing artwork!  ENJOY....