Welcome to Ms. Berry’s Class Page

We have some new friends coming soon!  We have prepared a BUG BARN, in which we will raise and watch the amazing transformation of meal worms.  In addition, we also have or very own ant farm complete with a mountain in which they will tunnel.  We will investigate how to care for our harvester ants and identify the parts of an ant’s anatomy.  I will be posting pictures and Internet links as we progress through this adventure.

You may have heard your child talking about our in-class garden.  We have planted radishes, onions, and carrots.  These are similiar because we actually eat the roots of these vegetables.  We are tracking the growth of these plants and we will harvest them soon.  Take a look at what we have so far…

In preparing for the Winter Holiday we read several Christmas books and completed some special crafts.  We also spent a lot of time learning about Kwanzaa.  But the biggest surprise of all was in hiding in the multipurpose room.  Look who we found in there…………….

We have a really fun way of remembering even and odd numbers. We learned a cute song to the tune of B-I-N-G-O. Ask your child to sing you a line. Here’s a fall activity we did with pumpkin seeds and even and odd numbers. We circled the number in the ones place and then it was easy to see if the number was even or odd!

Several teachers participated in the annual Race for the Cure 5K. Our student teacher, from the Uiversity of Memphis, Ms. T, got up bright and early to run with me! Here are a few pictures from the big day:

We have spent the past month or so reading books by Robert Munsch.  He is a wonderful author from Canada.  He writes very funny children’s books.  To learn more about Robert Munsch go to: http://www.robertmunsch.com/  We created several projects to go along with many of his books.  Here are just a few:

Want to know anything about what animals do in the winter?  Just ask us!  We spent a week exploring the unique things some animals do to survive the cold weather.  Did you know that freshwater turtles bury themselves under mud, in the bottom of ponds during the winter?  We created a pond habitat, take a look….

After reading “Ten Black Dots” we put on our thinking caps and went to work creating our own book about numbers.  Here’s what we came up with:

One of our favorite things, is to create class books.  We make about one per week and incorporate the words and skills we are studying.  This book is based on the series by Laura Numeroff.  Here is our over page and a few excerpts:

Several Oak Forest teachers participated in a week long training last year, to learn Responsive Classroom teaching techniques.  One of the most important tools is allowing students to express their hopes for the school year and their dreams for the future. These are currently being displayed in the hallway and will then, be moved inside the classroom after the first six weeks.  Take a look at our first grade hallway…..