March!

Today was the first day of March, and there are a lot of changes in our room!

We've put out our new March books about kites, spring, the wind, St. Patrick's Day, leprechauns, and cowboys (because our NEW Reading Contest, "Reading Round-up" began today!)
We changed the page on our calendar. We will have two birthdays (Ian and Jacob), St. Patrick's Day, Sports Day, the Reading Celebration and.............SPRING BREAK!
Our reward in the Reading Celebration this month will be Mrs. O'Brien's General Store. (I'm asking parents to donate dollar store items to be "bought" with reading minutes at the end of the month.)
Look at our tree: it is "blooming" with three leaf clovers or Shamrocks!
There are new St. Patrick's items out to admire.
Our ceiling is sporting a kite. (The students will be adding kites made in centers this week.)
We talked about how the weather changes often in March. The old saying is "If March comes in like a lamb, it goes out like a lion" (or, "If March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb.") Today was a perfect example: it was raining early this morning, the sun came out, and rain returned just in time for recess! We predicted (made good guesses) if there would be more lion days or lamb days. (First, we made a list of words that described lamb days (sunny, clear, warm, cool, breezy, hot) and lion days (rainy, cold, windy, thunder, stormy, snowy, cloudy, cold front, lightening).

The verdict? 11 thought we'd have more lion days (Luca added his vote later) and 9 thought we'd have more lamb days.
Mrs. O'Brien gave everyone materials to make a lamb and a lion for our bulletin board.
(One of her favorite things about teaching is that you can give 19 students the same materials and come out with 19 different results!)
Everyone made a lion and a lamb.
Next, we decorated name tags that had our names on them.
Here is the final result of our bulletin board. Doesn't it look super?

We have 9 more school days until Spring Break, then 8 more days in March when we return...in time for our Good Friday holiday. Spring is going to fly by!