To celebrate our state's birthday, we had a PIONEER DAY!

We dressed like Pioneers, and carried our books to school!

We used chalkboards (like early hornbooks) to do our work!

K, 1 and 2 grades rotated through classrooms, mapping out routes on trails (using corn kernels...)

panned for gold...

and sifted through rocks for gold!

Beware of "Fool's Gold" (gold tinsel)-it has no value!!!

Pastor Snow visited us and showed us what the gifts were that the Wise Men gave Jesus!

Gold,

Frankincense,

and Myrrh!

We Wise Men (Kings) rode our camels to see Jesus, too, and brought our gifts. The BETHLEHEM star led us!

We sang "O Come Let Us Adore Him...

...Christ the Lord!"

We had SO much fun at our Christmas party! Guess who joined us?!!!

It was a FUN afternoon! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Everyone!

We read lots of Gingerbread Man stories at Christmastime!

We made gingerbread glyphs that showed: if we liked a gingerbread boy or girl better, our favorite color, if we liked the taste...and we hung them in our hallway! The Nativities were made with graham crackers and gummy bears for Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus!

Most of us LOVED rolling, cutting, baking and EATiNG our gingerbread man cookies!

But the REAL message of Christmas is JESUS' BIRTHDAY! Here we are getting ready to sing in our program!

Merry Christmas, Everyone! Jesus is BORN!!!

We learned food is scarce in winter, so God made bears able to rest, so they eat less! Their "fat" keeps them warm! We used Crisco in our experiment! It kept us warm!

Our favorite bears from home spent the day with us! We sang "We're going on a Bear Hunt" and had a PARADE!

We crawled like them!

We gave our last hugs before they hibernated...

...and tucked them in their den!

They will sleep until the New Year! Real bears hibernate for months, and wake up at times to eat a little!

After our PUMPKIN unit we went to Applejack Pumpkin Patch!

Thanks to all our parents, grandparents and siblings who joined us!

Besides seeing firsthand the stages in a pumpkin's life cycle...

...we also had LOTS of fun!

We got to ride a wagon to the pumpkin patch and choose our favorite to decorate with our 8th grade chapel buddies!

Thank You, God, for PUMPKIN fun with our families!

We recently celebrated 50 Days of School with a Sock Hop!

Girls wore poodle skirts and boys wore their hair slicked back!

Music was playing and we did some dance moves with our large screen!

We swung our partners round and round!!!

Even our families joined in the fun!!!

Don't you wish you could have been there?!

Afterwards we "drove our cars" back to class and enjoyed fun snacks!

Thank you, God, for 50+ days of learning!

Recently we learned about PUMPKINS! Here we labeled: skin, stem, tendril, meat and seeds!

We used popsicle sticks, chenille stems, and links to measure ours. Then we drew them on our report.

Here is a playdoh pumpkin!

Our pumpkin foods we tasted were: seeds, bread, pie and cupcakes! Our class favorite? It was close...CUPCAKES!

We learned the life cycle of pumpkins: seed, vine, stem, flower, green, unripe pumpkin and ripe, orange pumpkin!

Pastor Snow told us how WE are like pumpkins. God chooses us, washes our sins away, (through Baptism)...

removes our sins (through Jesus' death on the cross) and saves us!

(Our pumpkin had 346 seeds!)

Because of Jesus' love for us, we ought to share that love with others!

Thank you, God, for creating PUMPKINS!

We learned about different kinds of birds. We made our favorite in a nest all it's own!

We labeled their: eyes, beak, wings, feet and tail. This is Clara's cardinal!

We used stencils to trace birds, then colored them like our favorites! Benjamin likes eagles!

It was a tricky center, but we used tongs to "eat" birdseed!

OUR birds with beaks!!!

We made owls with a feather AB pattern!

Cade is showing how he spread sun butter on a pinecone and added birdseed!

Lining up to take them outside!

We hung them on a tree for our feathered friends!

We also had fun sorting eggs and building nests at our sensory table!

September was the month we learned about APPLES! We stamped our favorite color of apples, and cut and wove our own basket!!!

One of our Science experiments had us cut an apple in half, to see the APPLE STAR!

We labeled the parts of an apple...

sequenced them 1-30...

peeled them...

...this came from ONE apple! The birds LOVED our peelings!

We tasted our homemade applesauce, slices with caramel, pie and cider. Our class favorite? Apple slices with caramel! A CLOSE contest!

We even shaped apples and their parts our of playdough!

Check our our kindergarten APPLE tree!

We celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday and did fun activities ALL day!