Nice to Meet You, Governor Sununu!

For the past few weeks, we have been learning about the process of maple sugaring, and this week we had the opportunity to do something very special. Governor Sununu was visiting Remick Farm across the street to kick off Maple Season by tapping a century old maple tree on the farm, and we were able to come and be a part of this festive occasion, along with students from Madison Elementary School!

Governor Sununu even took the time to come and talk to our class about our own experiences with maple sugaring, and we gifted him with some of our own homemade maple syrup! The class was excited not only to meet our governor, but connect with him about something our class has been studying over the past few weeks!

Back at school, the class learned more about the process of finishing off syrup by using a thermometer to measure the temperature. We took some finished syrup off our stovetop to show the class how the red line on the thermometer goes up when put in the hot syrup to read the temperature. Then they saw how we strain the syrup through a cheesecloth as we pour it into a syrup bottle. We celebrated the completed process with a pancake party on Wednesday!

Other highlights this week included:

* Continuing to build our alphabet wall poster by drawing illustrations of the words we came up with for each letter sound

* Practicing our counting through counting bear games

* Mastering the rules of a cooperative game called "A walk in the Woods", which taught us which things are good & safe to collect from nature, which things should be only looked at, and how to protect ourself from any dangers (e.g. poison Ivy, biting bugs and hot sun). The class had so much fun with this game!

* Celebrating Evelyn's 5th birthday and enjoying a visit from her family at her birthday walk

* Making rainbow slime for St. Patrick's Day

* Enjoying Tuesday's snowstorm

* Spotting several cardinals at our backyard feeders and enjoying the poem "The Winter Bird" by Jones Very

* Reciting the poem "Mix a pancake, pour a pancake" as a class

We've had such a joyous week and look forward to another exciting week ahead! We also look forward to meeting with you all for conferences next Friday :)

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!