Our Thanksgiving Feast

Last Tuesday, November 23rd we had our annual Destiny Thanksgiving Feast. All three Destiny classrooms came together to put on a festive holiday party! We made sides and sweets for all to enjoy!

Check out all the holiday fun and special guests!

Dr. Wazny kicked off our holiday celebration!

We always love how she dresses as a pilgrim!

Lovely ladies Shirley and Ms. Miller joined us for the fun!

Waiting our turn to get in the buffet line!

Ms. Amy with Amaya and Lorenzo!



Ms. Christine, Amar, Nurse Mary and Diego visiting with each other! 

Happy Birthday Anthony and Ms. Kempke!!!

Happy Birthday Anthony!!! November 24th

Happy Birthday Ms. Kempke!!! November 29th

We had lots of fun celebrating their birthdays this afternoon!

Ms. Carol baked the most delicious cake!

Learning All About the Postal Service

Today we learned all about the postal service! We learned about mailboxes, mail, the post office, and what goes on an envelope. We also learned about how postal employees help the community.

After we read all about the postal service, we went to work on our post office centers!

Here is a picture and summary of what went on at each center:

Shannon is hard at work sorting index cards by whether they had letters/words or numbers/equations on them.

Lorenzo is at the passport center. Here you have to cut out all the different places in the community you have been on trips and paste them in your very own passport!

Here Anthony is sorting words by their beginning letter/sound!

Terrence and Diego were sorting mail by the different shapes on the outside of the envelope.

Here Amaya is designing her own stamp using stickers, dotters, glitter, and tissue paper!

Each student spent about ten-fifteen minutes at each center then rotated around the room. Everyone had lots of fun today!



Making Invitations!

Next Tuesday we will be having a Thanksgiving party for students and teachers. We all worked really hard together to make beautiful invitations!

Amaya and Terrence teamed up to cut out the information to put on the invite.

Shannon and Lorenzo worked together to glue the information onto the invite.

Diego and Anthony teamed up and stamped on different colored leaf designs!

The whole process hard at work!

Our finished products! WHEW!



Community Trip to The Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center

We had an awesome time exploring at the NEW nature center on the grounds of The Little Red Schoolhouse. There were lots of animals, artifacts, fossils, and exhibits with real stuffed animals.
Check out all the fun we had exploring!

Here we are looking inside a large replica of a wigwam.

Lorenzo and Amaya were taking a good hard look at the fossils on the limestone found on the grounds.

This exhibit was so cool! There were different kinds of skulls numbered and mounted on a turn table. Then there were clues under each number to help you guess which animal the skull belonged to. Once you made your guess you could flip over the clues to discover whether or not you were right!

Shannon loved this one!

A close up view of the animal skulls!

Here's Terrence trying to figure out "What's in the Tree?" Here you reach your hand inside and use your sense of touch to try and figure out what animal is living inside.

Here Shannon are Diego are getting up close to check out a snake! Ms. Carol made sure she stayed far away!

Lorenzo was mesmorized by this bullsnake slithering all over the tank.

                                                     Shannon and Anthony checking outhow they measure up to some of the area's birds!

Terrence and Amaya worked really hard at completing this puzzle on the life cycle of a butterfly!

Cracking the Case!

We have been learning all about policemen and why their job is so important to the community. With that, we discussed how police use fingerprints to solve crimes. We talked about how finger prints make a special pattern and no one has the same ones. To explore this we took finger prints of right hand. We looked at them under a magnifying glass and compared them with our friends'.

    At our trip to the police station we got to see how police officers collect finger prints nowadays. All the information is taken by a computer!

Police Department Community Trip

   Today we explored the Oak Forest Police Department. Officer Quinn gave us a great tour of the station! First we looked around the call station. We saw where the 911 calls come in and the women answering the calls. They showed us the many computers and cameras they use.

Lorenzo checking out what's on the police station cameras.

The 911 Dispatcher showing us how everything works!

     Next we went into the record room. We learned that back then, they used to keep all the records in big file cabinets. Nowadays, all the important records are kept on a computer system.

Taking a look around...

Officer Quinn showing us the records room.

Then we took the tour downstairs where we saw the booking station and cells. This is also where Officer Quinn showed us the different types of equipment police officers use to stay safe.

Afterwards, we had a nice relaxing lunch at McDonald's!

Thank you to the Oak Forest Police Department for giving us such a nice tour!

Danny Did...

" Please join the Danny Did Foundation in promoting and talking about Epilepsy Awareness throughout the month of November. You can help by raising epilepsy in a conversation with your friends, children, or doctor. Seizures impact 50 million people around the world, and result in the deaths of 50,000 Americans every year. We need your help. "

The Danny Did Foundation was founded in 2010 by Mike and Mariam Stanton after the Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) of their four year old son Danny. The Danny Did Foundation is on a mission to raise awareness of SUDEP and enhance and mainstream technology to prevent and detect seizures in order to help prevent seizure related deaths. 

" Danny did take his time in life. Danny did engage others in his life. Danny did enjoy his life. That’s the spirit of and the force behind the Danny Did Foundation. Carry Danny’s name with you. Carry Danny’s love with you. And help us as we find a way to accomplish our mission: to prevent deaths caused by seizures. "

For more information and to donate to the foundation, please visit http://www.dannydid.org/

Catching Up...

     The past week and a half has been quite the busy one!

     Our Halloween party was tons of fun! We had lots of visitors, including a former student from our classroom, Vivi! First we joined the school in the outdoor Halloween parade, then came in for games and treats!
     After Halloween the students had a long, long weekend while teachers were at work and available for conferences. If you were unable come out for parent-teacher conferences and would like to meet with me please write me a note or give me a call and I would be more than happy to accommodate your schedule!