Thank you and Farewell

Thank you to all the parents who made our End of Year celebration such a fun and relaxing time together.  Many many thanks to our fantastic room parent, Andreea, for organizing the party, and for all her hard work making our celebrations so wonderful all year.

Thank you for helping your children organize the surprise birthday celebration for me as well. That was such a nice treat and I've never had anything quite like that in my thirteen years in the classroom!

Many thanks for all your kind words, beautiful cards, thoughtful gifts, and constant support throughout the entire year.

Angell is truly a magical place, and our parent community is a huge part of that magic.

THANK YOU for sharing your children with me this year 

and 

Happy Summer Vacation!

~Heather

Battle of the Books

During the last month of school, we change Reading Groups to something called "Battle of the Books" ... it is a new, fun way to keep things interesting during these last weeks of school. If you haven't heard about it yet, ask your child to tell you how it works!

Author's Chair

This week, we had our final Author's Chair of the year. The children love this time, to read to one another, give each other feedback and answer questions. It's amazing to see how much your children have grown as writers this year!

Counting Seeds

Yesterday we made some predictions about how many seeds we think there are in various fruits. Next, we cut open and counted the seeds in teams! Many of our seed counts needed to be estimates, for such small tiny seeds such as bananas and strawberries. We also did a little research on the internet to find out how many seeds are in the average strawberry, for example.

We also had an interesting discussion about "drupes"... and why is a cocoNUT called that if it's not a nut!  There's some interesting information on the links below, some of which I shared with the children today.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/what-are-the-differences-between-nuts-and-drupes.html

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coconut.html

http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/12/22/difference-between-nuts-legumes-and-drupes/