The House Is Up! and Our Eighth Grade Visitors

Today the Turtles were abuzz! First we brought in some more wood from Carol's van, and so when Shawn arrived, we were ready to get to work! We made two more walls, drilling holes and hammering nails. Shawn and Tamara added the roof, and it was all done!

We finished the house just in time to get ready for our 8th grade visitors. It turns out that there was some meanness in the 8th grade, too, and so they decided to come and talk to our kids about the problem of meanness. They paired up with a Turtle for an interview, and recorded their notes on their note pads. It turns out that the meanness is pretty simliar for the big kids, and they were interested in our ideas on how to get the meanness out of the school.

Other goings-on:

Fran reads The Giving Tree

Once Upon A Time, There Was Meanness

At Morning Meeting, Tamara and the Turtles created a story book about meanness.  Tamara introduced the two characters, which included a boy and girl, but it was up to the Turtles to create the entire plot of the story. The trick of it was, we started in the middle of the book. In the middle of the book, a meanness happened. The Turtles had to figure out what happened before the meanness happened. Here is what they figured out: The story starts out with two friends playing a game together, but the boy takes all of the books!  The girl, being very upset, tells the boy he could no longer play with her anymore.  Hearing such "mean" words, the boy begins to cry.  The two friends finally say sorry to each other and celebrate her birthday together!
We are now starting to think about why there is meanness and how we can get it out of the classroom.  We had a great discussion about kicking out on to the playground (only we don't want meanness on the playground), about putting it in the trees (only birds don't want meannes) and finally about shooting it up into the clouds so the giants can be mean to each other (since giants like being mean to each other).  Our Meanness List is continuing to grow and as we work together as a team, we hope that our list of ways to stop the meanness will grow just as long!

For snack, the Turtles were given crackers with cream cheese and raisins, to make different kinds of faces.  Some of our friends made mean faces to represent the way they feel when mean things are done to them.  Others made happy faces to show the way they feel when people are kind to them.

After eating snack, the Turtles suited up in their snow pants, boots, gloves, and hats to play in the snow! We made snow angels, ate snow, slid down snowy slide, and went through the snowy forrest!

Excited to learn new songs, dance, and sing, the then went to go see Jenny!

Before we began, the Turtles made sure to warm up our voices, lips, and even our toes!

Jenny taught us a new song where each of our friends went fishing (notice our fishing rods?)

We got to dance around with beautifully colored ribbon.

Jenny also read us a book called What a Wonderful World, that was paired with the lovely Louis Armstrong tune. 

After finding out that the Turtles have been doing a big project about meanness, she even taught us a song about meanness!

When I say stop, I mean stop

When I say no, I mean no

I want you to hear

Listen to my words

Then off we went for Choice Time, which included making snowflakes, experimenting with more moon sand, painting with water colors, using tools, and reading books.

We even brought in more wood to add to our house!