Mrs. Hennessey's Kids: Saying Good-bye to September and the Learnings of The Last Week

September has quickly come and gone! We took down our student-made calendar for September but we saved the memory with a picture.

This past week, we celebrated Autumn coming to Toronto but the weather was more like summer. We spent everyday outside enjoying the playground and noticed the changes in the leaves on our trees in the park.

We have chosen to watch this tree for changes over the school year.

Speaking of nature, lots has happened since we found the spider and put it in a jar! The students have been visiting the nature table and writing about what they see. They are interested in doing research on all things creepy crawly. I noticed the clipboard was full of writing!

The students are busy looking around for creatures in the park and they keep busy collecting leaves and pinecones to add to our nature table. On Friday, Aliyah brought a snail to the classroom so we put it in a jar for the kids to explore. Before we knew it, we had 3 more to add to the collection!

The children found one on the way in from the park so Ms. Switzer out it on a towel that we used to dry the slide. By the time we got inside, the snail had moved across the towel; it left a trail of slime!!

This of course led to questions about snails and what they eat, do and their habitat! I've ordered books from the library to help us care for snails and learn more. Somewhere I have an old aquarium and some soil...gotta dig it out!

I also purchased some mealworms from Petsmart for us to observe as well. Mealworms make great classroom pets as they are cheap, simple to care for and they have a fast life cycle. They turn into black beetles! We'll see how the children react on Monday...

Below, I've included random pictures of our learning this past week.

The students practiced their fine motor and scissor skills cutting up paper scraps and sticking them to contact paper to make Fall window cling decorations.