Could Spring be here at last??

The temperature actually reached (almost) 10 degrees today!  To celebrate the late arrival of spring, we painted pussy willows.  We began by looking at photographs of pussy willows.  We noticed the shape of the buds, how the branches looked (like "y"s) and saw that the buds alternated on the branches.
We used pencil and brown crayons to draw the branches and painted the pussy willows using Q tips and tempera paint.  They look beautiful!

Using Q tips to paint the pussy willows

A few of the finished pictures



(Sorry about the orientation - I can't figure out how to turn pictures around on the blog!!)

We also began a new unit in Science this afternoon.  For the next several weeks, we will be studying Objects and Materials.  To introduce this hands-on unit, students were placed in groups and were asked to sort different kinds of materials (plastic spoon, metal spoon, fabric, ceramic mug, paper towel, piece of wood, transparency and plastic cup) into groups using their own sorting rules.

Sorting rule:  things that are plastic, things that are hard and things that come from plants.