This week's "Pets" theme was so much fun.  We all love animals and talking about the animals we love and care for and the ones we want to love and care for is such a great way to get to know eachother even better.  Several of the children brought stuffed pets from home to show and take care of during school.  Natalie's pet unicorn was certainly original and the girls thought it was so pretty and Jackson's pet duck was obviously very very loved.  We talked a lot about our pets.  Rylee said "My pet likes candy and fruit treats and candy...gummy bears and fruit candies."  It is possible that Rylee may be actually talking about herself a bit.  It was nice to have Nolan's stuffed pet, Big Dog visit.  We have talked about Big Dog a lot this year.  Thanks Nolan for bringing him in to meet everybody.
     We also had a very special visitor for pet week.  Ellie B.'s puppy (who easily outweighs any of the children) Moose was able to come in and spend a little time with us on Thursday.  The kid's loved Moose and were so sweet and gentle with him.  He looked so festive in his green shirt for St. Patrick's day and the kids laughed and laughed to see a doggie in a t-shirt.  Olivia really could have spent all day giving Moose hugs and was a little disappointed that he could not stay all day.
     In art, we made kitty pictures with paint and used triangles and circles to make goldfish in bowls.  We made a big pet graph in math to see what kinds of pets we had the most of.  We also used a scale to predict which animals would weigh more and less. 
     Our letter of the week was a.  We are focusing on lower case letters now.  We looked for lowercase "a"s in our names.  We found that more kids have a little a in their name than don't.  We also listed to and sang "The ants go marching" and decorated "a"s with ants.  "The ants go marching" is one of our favorite songs and it is fun to sing and march and act out all of the motions in class.
     We had such a great St. Patrick's Day party.  We listened to The Best St. Patrick's Day! on CD.  It was funny and played great Irish music between pages.  We made wonderful shamrock necklaces.  Each Shamrock had a name on it and we had to read the names to know whose it was.  Henry did an amazing job and can recognize many of his friend's names.  We also put beads on the ribbons and Lauren and Aiden were both very proficient beaders.  We acted like Leprechauns and had a great time pretending to hide our gold, make fairy shoes and sleep like little leprechauns.  A HUMONGOUS thanks to Ms. Venus for all the help during the party.  We couldn't have done it without you.  It was also super fun to have Mr. Zach and little Ava there as well (that's the rest of Monica's family.)  Ava was kind of a superstar at the party.  The following potluck was awesome as well as delicious.  Monica and her family brought green grapes and a super cute shamrock, rainbow cupcake cake.  Kaden and his family brought yummy green sprinkley cupcakes and Natalie and her family brought delicious mini bagel pizza's.  They had the cutest little shamrocks on them.  We are so glad that Natalie's and Brodie's moms were able to hang out with us too.  What a fun party!

***Funny St. Patrick's Day Conversation***
Teacher  "Mac, are you Irish?
Mac  "Irish?"
Teacher  "Yeah, Irish"
Mac  "No.  I just had the flu."