In which we get very excited about fungus

Last week we began an integrated science and language arts unit abut mushrooms, fungus and decomposition. While learning about the structure, the life cycle, and the function of mushrooms, we are also learning about non-fiction writing. Children are observing closely and doing their best to write and draw what they see and know in their new science journals. As part of this unit, we've read non-fiction books about mushrooms to serve as mentor texts. We've watched several videos, including this artistic (but accurate) representation of the life cycle of a mushroom:

and this video of mushrooms growing

This week, we'll begin watching mushrooms grow in our own classroom, as we adopt a new "class pet" - an oyster mushroom log. They will take quite a bit longer than those in the video, but on the bright side, we can eat them when they are done.

The highlight of our unit so far was our trip to Arcadia, where we discovered a dozen varieties of fungus doing their important work of recycling the forest floor. I, for one, loved hearing children run though the woods, shouting gleefully "I FOUND A FUNGUS!"

What else? We've nearly finished our alphabet books, and continued working on number formation, graphing, and comparing lengths of objects in our classroom. I hope we'll be able to use our measurement skills to keep track of the growth of our mushrooms. In Torah, we continued our study of the story of Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, and learned about Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil. And in Hebrew, we are continuing to study the names of body parts and colors. Here's a video to help learn the Hebrew names for parts of the body for those of you who are interested. We're learned most, but not all, of the parts in the video.

Friday ended with a Kabbalat Shabbat concert with Lior Ben Hur. Alas, I had to leave school with a sick daughter, so I'm afraid I missed it. This week we will finally begin to have Kabbalat Shabbat in the classroom again, and soon we'll be ready to invite you to join us.

Have a great week!