FAIRHOPE, Ala. - Mrs. Sheri Turner’s 1st grade class is learning all about Helen Keller and Famous Americans! We read about Helen Keller, watched a video about her life, and will learn sign language throughout this week, as well as use our senses to listen to soft and loud sounds in our environment. We are also discovering Arctic Animals and the Arctic Tundra from our Discovery Education Board Builder. We’ve included games, videos, Arctic Animal Adjectives, and many other fun activities on our class board! Check it out under 2nd Grade!

First Grade students at FES had a special visitor this week. Mr. Brad DePriest came to talk to them about the Ronald McDonald House in Mobile. Students were able to see why we collect coke tabs and how they benefit the Ronald McDonald House. Pull those coke tabs off and become a part of this community project!

We are being inspired in the art room by the colorful fabric panels created by the women of the Kuna culture. The Kuna Indians live on the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. Their unique reverse appliqué panels feature animals, fish, and flowers and are filled with beautiful patterns. We love color and patterns!!!

Mrs. Madson’s Kinders celebrated the New Year by practicing counting down to 0. We also made Math Glyphs with party hats, blowers, and brightly colored outfits. Come by to see if you can figure out who stayed up until midnight by looking at our glyphs!

Mrs. Tynes’ FROZEN Kinders have enjoyed learning about seasonal changes in winter, locating the polar regions of the earth, and studying arctic animals. They are looking forward to the Winter Wonderland activities on Friday where they will rotate and complete four cold, wintry experiments. Brrrrrrr! It was fun building hibernation caves using resting towels, chairs, and tables. The class created cute winter art currently displayed on the hall wall. As always, the children loved learning new themed songs and poems.

Mrs. LoPresti's preschoolers are discussing winter weather, the book The Mitten, and the letter M.

During the month of January Mrs. Whatley’s music room is filled with the sounds of the orchestra. The element of music studied is Tone Color- the sound of music from voices and instruments. Each grade level learns about a family of instruments from the iPad. Through music we also connect with science as we study sound. The sound effects of the thunder tube and the slide whistle are especially interesting. Following a discussion of the orchestra the students are involved in an interactive game using the smart board. And they are so SMART!

For more information regarding the orchestra, music games and activities look at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s website DSOKids.com. Another terrific site is the San Francisco Symphony Kids sfskids.org.

Mrs. Erdossy’s 2nd graders learned about the life cycle of a snowman! We had a little snowman made of ice visit our class on a day when the temperatures were at or below freezing for most of the day. Students learned about states of matter and the water cycle. Students also made predictions about whether the snowman would “survive” the night based on data they gathered using weather forecasts and observations.