That's a LOT of Bananas!

Unbeknownst to us, what we thought was a bookshelf has turned into the control panel of a rocket ship. Flights went in and out of the room all morning.

Right about HERE, we went to Meeting for Worship in the music room with our 2nd grade friends. They will be partnering with us for a number of activities over the course of the school year. This Friday, they will be coming to our room to read stories to us!

After snack and clean up, we headed outside for another beautiful day.

During Morning Meeting, we introduced map mazes as one of the Choices for the morning. We also read a book about maps, and friends talked about their streets and towns. Next, we got out our tree cookies that have all of the Catbirds' faces on them and formed four groups by having friends take turns picking faces from the basket. Each group will go out on a map exploration of the Lower School. Group A went today, and we traced our progress through the building. We visited many friends along the way.

We found a room that was a bit smelly.

We stopped in the Music room and, after locating it on the map, we tried to figure out a good symbol to draw that would represent Music. Keisha gave us some ideas, too.

Next, we went to the Science room. We visited Rasheeda, as well as some animal friends. We drew them on our maps to represent Science.

We travelled next to the Art room, and drew clay and a paintbrush on our maps.

Our next stop was Tricia's office, where she showed us our location and we put "T"s on our maps.

Our final stop was the Spanish room. We checked it off and headed back.

At lunch, Carol came back with a Mystery Box, and the Catbirds had to ask yes and no questions to guess what was in it. After some clues, they guessed it - BANANAS!

The Catbirds had asked last week about making banana bread, so Carol had asked Nancy in the cafeteria to let her know when they had some really ripe bananas we could have. Today was the day, but we were surprised at how many bananas she gave us. It took a bunch of friends, working together to count them all.  

We have 52 bananas! We talked about what to do with all of those bananas, a friends decided we should make banana bread and share it with the whole school! 

Guess what we are doing tomorrow?

Maps

Yesterday afternoon, we continued our study of maps, using some treasure maps and maps of the United States.

Today began in our usual way.

After our morning check in, we headed for art, where Amanda showed us how to make stamps from clay (our favorite medium)

It took coordination to roll the clay and then smush it down so that we would have a flat side to work with.

We had many tools to create different patterns on our stamps.

Back at the room, we had snack and then cleaned up to head outside.

It was another beautiful autumn day.

At Morning Meeting, we challenged ourselves to stretch out our moment of silence to a full minute. Many friends were proud of their ability to do it.

We read a book about maps.

Friends worked together to put together our new map puzzle.