Introducing Jeff! Our new class pet!

It is official…we have a new class pet. This week we were discussing what living things are and their characteristics. I borrowed a few living things from around the school. A plant from the office, the stick bugs from our 3/4 buddies classroom, and the beta fish from the kindergarten room. At first the class was asking for some stick bugs…that wasn’t going to happen. 🙂 They quickly moved on to a fish. I had to go to the pet store after school for some dog food and ended up staring at the fish. My daughter quickly convinced me that I had to get one for my class. Of course she insisted on picking it out for the class and volunteered to look after it on holidays. Next thing I knew we had a fish! The class was very excited to welcome our new pet to our classroom. After several votes to narrow down our choices, we settled on Jeff. Never heard of the name Jeff for a fish? I hadn’t either. I was talking about it with my sister in law last night and it turns our my nephew named his beta fish Jeff too! Crazy! The class has fallen in love with Jeff. He has a paper home that his little tank can fit into thanks to a few creative girls at choice time today. They even read to him.

Today we created our own spooky halloween houses in art. We first talked about what a silhouette is and how blending watercolours creates spooky backgrounds. We looked a several examples of spooky houses for some ideas about shapes we could use. I also shared student examples of similar projects I found on the internet. I didn’t tell them that they were created by much older kids. To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure how this project was going to turn out. Wow! I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. They did a wonderful job. We have them hanging up on our bulletin board in our classroom, on our door windows, and on the wall by our classroom door.