December Happenings

It's been way too long since our last classroom update!  We have had a fun and busy December.
Here are a few highlights from our month!

Gingerbread VIP Day
Thanks for taking time to help us build gingerbread houses!
Everyone did a spectacular job on their house.

We listened to the story The Polar Express and enjoyed pajama day.  We also boarded the Polar Express train and watched part of the movie.

SANTA visits Osgood!

 He's here!!

 Waiting patiently... :)

Singing songs as Santa walks around.

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And, from my crazy family to yours...

Merry Christmas and best wishes for the HAPPIEST NEW YEAR!

News from the Week

We were BUSY Little Learners this week!  We talked about our five senses and used The Gingerbread Man book to help us describe gingerbread cookies.  We used our sense of sight to notice the features of a gingerbread cookie such as arms, legs, head, buttons, eyes, and mouth.  

Our sense of smell told us that gingerbread cookies have a spicy scent.  

We did a fun activity using QR codes to use our sense of hearing to guess who quoted the Gingerbread Man when he said, "Run, run as fast as you can!  You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"  

Can you guess who said it?

When we used our sense of touch we noticed that a gingerbread cookie feels smooth, crispy, and bumpy.  Finally, we used our sense of taste and ate a gingerbread cookie!  Ask your child...

We also had our gingerbread house VIP day on Friday and had a great time!  Thank you so much for all of the candy donations!  The houses were beautiful and I'm sure quite tasty as well!  I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did!

Thanks for a great week!

Next Week:

Miss Guhlke is in charge!  She has some fun things planned!

Please remember that library books are due back to school on Thursday, Dec. 10.

Let me know if you have any questions.  :)  Have a great weekend!

December News

Here is a peek at what we will be working on this month!  Check out our December news here.  You can always find the December lunch menu on our district website, or click here!

Special Visitors

This past week we were so lucky to meet Linda Francis and Judy Kvaale, authors of The Gingerbread Cousins series.  They came to our classroom and read Skip, the Spacey Surfer which is a book about a gingerbread man who is in Florida trying to get away from different animals!

Linda and Judy talked about how they have to do research before they write a book and told us how they learn something new each time they write a new book.  They are currently researching North Dakota, and what they students don't know yet, is that they will be helping Linda and Judy with their research!  In the next few weeks, we will be learning about animals that live in North Dakota and we will send our research to the authors.  Maybe some of our ideas will be in their North Dakota book?!

You can read more about the authors here

Here is a video of Linda and Judy being interviewed on North Dakota Today

Thanks for coming, Linda & Judy! 

#celebsighting :)

News from the Week

Hello!  Here are a few highlights from our week!

We met Miss Guhlke, our student teacher!  

She will be in our classroom until Dec. 22nd. 

We also worked on the comprehension strategy of questioning.  When we don't understand something, or we want to know more, we MUSTACHE a question!

Our good friends in Mrs. Hawkinson's class wanted to learn how to use Seesaw so we taught them!

Peer-to-peer teaching.  

Doesn't get much better than this!

Don't forget to sign up to see your child's learning through this digital portfolio! You received a QR code specific to your child at conferences.  If you need the code again, please let me know!

We will be having another VIP day coming SOOOOON!!! 

If you'd be willing to help out with donations, please sign up through Volunteer Spot.  

1) Click this link to see our Sign-Up on VolunteerSpot: http://vols.pt/QCqRYi

2) Review the options listed and choose the spot(s) you like.

3) Sign up! It's Easy - you will NOT need to register an account or keep a password on VolunteerSpot.

Note: VolunteerSpot does not share your email address with anyone. If you prefer not to use your email address, please contact me and I can sign you up manually.

Thank you so much!

Hello November! How'd you get here so fast?

This week we learned about how asking questions can help us be a better reader.  By asking questions, our minds stay focused on the story while we look for evidence in the text.  This group read a story about desert animals and asked the question, "What is in a camel's humps?"  We didn't find any evidence in our text, but luckily, we were able to find a reliable source to get the answer to our question!  Guess what! It's NOT water!  It's fatty tissue! Learn something new every day, right?

We also practiced asking questions during our 10 Feather Celebration.  After a friend showed their toy, we took turns asking a question about the toy.  

In math this week, we talked about positional words.  

"My hand is beside his head."

"My hand is below the table."

"I am going over the chair."

"He went under my legs."

Each day during calendar time, we stay engaged by using our white boards.  Sometimes we get to write on the ActivBoard!  We practice writing numbers, making patterns, and showing numbers in different ways.  We call these name collections!

How many ways can we show '7'?

And, sometimes, this happens.

CAUTION! KIDS AT WORK!!

See that pile of coats, whiteboards, water bottles, etc?? Those things are LONGER than a whiteboard marker.

See that lonely little eraser? He's SHORTER than a whiteboard marker.  

See those whiteboards all over the floor?  We were way too busy and excited to find and compare longer and shorter objects that we made a mess in the process!  But it was fun, so it's all good! :)

Great job this week, Little Learners!

Feature Teacher: Mrs. Rensch

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing Mrs. Rensch, one of our PE teachers!  She even danced with us as we're getting ready for FAMILY DANCE NIGHT on Tuesday, Nov. 10th!

Check out our interview!

And here's a SNEAK PEEK at what 

FAMILY DANCE NIGHT is all about!

Hope to see you there!

Our PE teachers went SOCIAL!

If you're on Facebook, make sure to 'like' the Osgood Physical Education page!

Miss Richard and Mrs. Rensch are SUPER TEACHERS!

November News

Wow, we are saying hello to a new month already! 

Check out our November News and November Lunch Menu.

October was jam packed with Parent/Teacher conferences, Pumpkin Painting VIP day, and our Fall Celebration. Thank you so much for all of the donations of cookies, sprinkles, frosting, and apple cider!  The kids had a blast decorating cookies, making a pumpkin art project, playing games, and making a popcorn hand.  Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures---it was BUSY!

We are finishing up our non-fiction unit on bats and will be talking about weather next week.  We will also learn a new comprehension strategy called questioning by reading a book about a familiar character, Mrs. Wishy Washy!

In math, we will talk about measurement, positional words, shapes, and writing numbers. 

As always, please let me know if you have any questions!

Cowboys & Chickens

What do you do when you're dressed in Western Wear?? You play COWBOYS & CHICKENS!  Check out this fun sight word activity we did today! 

Keep practicing those sight words, Little Learners!

Pumpkin Investigation

I had the pleasure of working with the cutest scientists today as we investigated pumpkins!  We talked about how scientists are great thinkers because they are curious and they like to ask questions. They think about how things work and connect what they know to what they are finding out.  We also talked about the importance of collaboration ( a big word to say 'work together nicely'). 

Together, we learned about our class pumpkin by using our senses.  Each group was in charge of learning something about our pumpkin and sharing what they observed.

What does our pumpkin smell like??

-seeds

-peppers

-lettuce

-celery

How does our pumpkin look?

-scratches

-bumps

-orange

-brown stem

-lines

-round

What does our pumpkin sound like?

-seeds knocking around

-hollow

How does our pumpkin feel?

-cold

-bumpy

-smooth with rough scratches

-heavy

We also wanted to know how big our pumpkin was so we decided to measure it's height.  We brainstormed different ways to measure our pumpkin and worked together to gather our data.

The pumpkin is 12 inches tall!  We used a measuring tape.

The pumpkin is 16 connecting cubes tall!

The pumpkin is about 2 markers tall!

The pumpkin is 3 pumpkins tall, but 4 pumpkins tall when you include the stem! :)

We also asked the question, what would happen if my pumpkin fell in the lake?

We made our prediction and thought that it might get eaten by a shark, it might sink, a fisherman might catch it, or it might float away.  We completed our experiment by putting our pumpkin in water and found out......IT FLOATS!  One scientist asked the question, "But how does it float if it doesn't have air?" (CRITICAL THINKING!!!)  So, of course, we had to experiment further by opening the pumpkin to see what's inside!

Was it really that hard, Mrs. Lindbo? Yes, yes it was... :)

OOOOOOH!

So, after checking out the inside and seeing the empty space (filled with air), we can understand why the pumpkin floated.  But all those seeds!  We better count them!

After reading a book, we learned that it would be much easier to make groups of 10 seeds and then count the piles by ten.  This required some intense teamwork!

There were about 183 seeds in our pumpkin!

These little scientists worked HARD today and I am so proud of the collaboration that took place!  We had a fun time asking and answering questions and being a part of an investigation.  

Great work, Little Learners!