Weather Hats!

Welcome back!  It's hard to believe we only have 29 days left of Kindergarten!  The last day for students in on Friday, June 14th.  We have a lot of learning left to do and a lot of fun activities! It will be a busy end of the year!

This week we finished our Weather unit with a culminating engineering project!  The children were challenged with designing a hat that protects them from a certain kind of weather.  We first looked at many examples of hats and talked about their features and then the children created their own!  They started with a paper plate base and then could use cotton balls, wax paper, aluminum foil, pipe cleaners, card stock, and construction paper in their design.  That hats turned out great!  Outside our classroom are pictures of our hats and how they protect from weather.  If you stop by the classroom, be sure to check out these engineers' work!  We will begin our last science unit next week: forces and motion.  We will be exploring the forces of push and pull!

In math, we continued to work on story problems and problem solving.  This week's problems focused on animals in a barn and counting their legs.  An example of a problem was "There are 3 sheep in the barn and 1 chicken.  How many legs in all?".  The children solved the problems using pictures, words, and number equations.  They had the chance to share their thinking with the class and we could talk about the different strategies that were used to solve the problem. We have some super math problem solvers in this classroom!




In Fundations, we learned about a new concept called digraphs.  Digraphs are two letters that make one sound.  Using our keyword cards (we practiced saying the sounds) and then worked to identify digraphs in our morning message.  See if your child can tell you the sound that each digraph makes and ask your child to find digraphs when you are reading books!

During Writer's Workshop, we started a poetry writing unit.  We began by talking about what poetry is and how it is different than the other types of writing we have been doing.  Then we had the chance to read and enjoy poems written by Kindergartners just like us!  We read them through several times, enjoying the beat and rhythm of the poems and noticing how they look different than stories.  We noticed that poems do not have to be long or written in full sentences and that many poems are short and are written about many topics!  Then we got to writing and....wow....we have some great Kindergarten poets!  I am hoping to schedule a poetry share at the end of the month so you can join us in the classroom and hear some great poems!

Have a wonderful weekend!