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Story Time at DeWitt Library

Our kindergarten students look forward to Tuesdays. That’s the day they walk to the library for story time. They join several other children to listen to stories, and sing and move to songs and verses. One week the librarian brought out the parachute for a new way to sing “The Wheels On the Bus.” There Read More >>

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Crocodile Lyle

This winter, our Kindergarten students explored the fun of Bernard Waber’s lovable crocodile, Lyle. Each Thursday we read a Lyle book and then drew and wrote about one part of the book. Students enjoy predicting what will happen in the story from the pictures, discussing vocabulary and drawing their own pictures for each story.  They Read More >>

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Layers of the Earth

This spring, students in grades 2-4 participated in a unit on the layers of the Earth.  We read The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth, by Joanna & Bruce Cole to gather baseline information about layers within the Earth. We began this unit by creating clay model representations of the different layers found within the Read More >>

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Silly Sentences

Once a week during journal time, the youngest students are part of a class called Silly Sentences. Here they play with puzzle pieces to make sentences that are bound to make them laugh. After making two or three sentences, the children copy and illustrate their sentences in their journals. In the process there is a Read More >>

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Math Centers for Kindergarteners

Over the last few months the Kindergarten students explored counting, coins (pennies, nickels and dimes), measurement using standard units, and adding and subtracting using games and their workbooks. Students compared lengths of object using a ruler. They used a balance where they compared the weight of various objects using non standard and standard units. For Read More >>

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Read-Aloud at Reading Time

Once a week our youngest students gather together for their own read-aloud during the school-wide reading time. Some of them are just beginning to learn to read. Others have developed some reading skills and are just beginning to read independently. They all enjoy listening to a good story together, sharing their thoughts and questions about Read More >>

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Cooking Class

Cooking is a favorite Investigations activity. Students work together to make a food that they share with the whole school. In the process, they see practical applications for math and science. In their read-aloud group, the younger students listened to some of the Little House On the Prairie books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. So, over Read More >>

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The Water Cycle

We began our study of the water cycle by identifying where we can find water throughout the earth. Did you know that about 97% of the earth’s water is salt water? And that most of the fresh water is frozen in glaciers and the polar ice caps? As we continued learning about evaporation, condensation, and Read More >>

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Cycles of Change

  This winter, students in Kindergarten through Second Grade participated in a class on growing cycles.  We started this class out by talking about our cycles in our own lives. We discussed the months of the year and did an activity where we did all the cycles in a year from the month we were Read More >>

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Native American Tribes

In our westward expansion class, we moved from learning about Americans traveling west to find a new life and settle in uncharted (to them) territory, to who was already living in these western lands.  We started by reading aloud and discussing such books as The Warrior Maiden (A Hopi Legend) and Children of the Wind Read More >>