Worms, Worms and more Worms

Monday was a great day. The sun is shining, everyone is in a wonderful mood and folks are motivated to do nice work!

We began talking about antonyms today. Talk with your child about antonyms. It is SO much fun to find sets of words that are opposite. I could not believe how many the kids came up with! They covered nearly two pages of easel paper with unique pairs of antonyms.

Work continued on the people posters. We have about half the class with complete posters and we will start presenting them on Wednesday. Students will be assessed on the accuracy of their work, whether they figured out the BIG reason their person was important and the quality of their presentation. It's a big year end project for us.

After library we did Weekend News, and it's fun to catch up with what your families did over the time off. We started a new unit in math, but it continues the data collection theme. Look for the unit letter on Tuesday. We also began talking about the Great Barrier Reef today. Ask your child about the zones of the ocean.

Worm News: I wrote a grant to begin a vermicomposting program at Bethany. We have received four worm bins and our worms will arrive this week. Vermicomposting uses red worms to break down organic materials into materials that can be used for compost. It's a great way for us to reduce the amount of waste we put into the trash cycle and to study the life cycle of a critter. The students are so EXCITED. We put together one of the bins today to prepare it for the worms. The money came from METRO, and our bins and worms are coming from Happy D Ranch. For more info on vermicomposting (it doesn't smell and can even be done in a house, condo or garage) you can look here or here.