Getting Ready For Take Off

UPCOMING EVENTS
Fleet Week is fast approaching, and with it, the BLUE ANGELS! I will be presenting information to the children to help them understand what the Blue Angels are and why they are so LOUD. The biggest fear children have is not knowing where the noise is coming from. Feel free to click and print the photo to share with them. Demystifying them for students in past years has helped to quell fears and allow appreciation for this exciting spectacle. We will maintain the option of indoor activities for those anxious about the noise. We take special pleasure in having the children identify the "letters" they write in the sky (mostly "O","I" and "D", oddly enough). For better or worse, the practices usually occur during lunch, nap time, and mid-afternoon. Sleep schedules may be temporarily disrupted Thursday and Friday.

I can highly recommend the Red Bull Air Races as a fun event for the family. These planes are small, brightly colored and perform stunts with incredible precision between giant inflated "cones" over the bay. Truly astonishing, and not nearly as loud as the Blue Angels.

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES
Our class has already developed a penchant for paper airplanes. We will incorporate them into our week of activities. Wind and flight have been of keen interest to our students in the past week as we track the paths of paper airplanes and bubbles. This week we will be making thins that fly, from paper airplanes to whirlygigs and a classic Korean kite design with a high success rate (no pun intended). The big vocabulary word for the week will be symmetry, as this is evident in nearly all things that fly and our own bodies, as well.


TODAY'S STORY
Bunny Cakes, by Rosemary Wells. Max and Ruby are immensely popular with our class. In this installment, They both are intent on making a birthday cake for Grandma. Ruby endures setback after setback to produce an "Angel Cake with Raspberry Fluff Icing." Max delivers an "Earthworm Mud Cake with Red-Hot Marshmallow Squirters." Which will Grandma eat first? The real gem in this story is Max's pre-literate attempts to put "Red Hot Marshmallow Squirters on the shopping list. He finally succeeds by drawing what they look like instead of scrawling illegible writing to communicate his wishes.

I had originally intended to read Pet Show, by Ezra Jack Keats, thus completing a week of his wonderful stories. Due to a logistical error, the book didn't make it to school. No worry, for we'll revisit it (and Willie the dachshund) in a future unit on animals and pets.