Sea Creatures!

Thank you for coming to our open house!  The children were so proud to share all of their hard work!  I look forward to celebrating more of their accomplishments when we meet for Parent Conferences in March.  If you have not signed up for a conference yet, please visit this link: Parent Conference Sign Up

In math, we have been working on problem solving.  Each day we have read several story problems about sea creatures and have used pictures, numbers, and equations to show our thinking.  We took it a step further and each child created their own sea creature story problem!  The children are doing a great job of solving these problems and explaining their thinking!  We also rounded out our geometry unit by making a paper quilt called the Shoo-Fly Quilt.  We used red and purple triangles to make our quilt squares and then made mathematical observations about the quilt!  We noticed an AB pattern in the colors; that the colors are the same when you look diagonally; that four triangles make a diamond; and that our quilt shape is a square made up of a lot of squares!.

On Wednesday, we had a visit from Puppets in Education.  Puppets in Education, a program of Vermont Family Network, teaches children to keep themselves safe and healthy and appreciate each other's differences, by using life-sized puppets in an interactive show.  This year, Kindergartners learned about anxiety.  Through the help of the puppets, the children learned to identify worries and the tools they can use to deal with worries.  The puppet show finished with a song; see if your child can sing you the chorus!





Lastly, we ended the week with a little celebration for all of our hard work on our sea creature study and for filling our Cat Coin Jar!  We watched a bit of Finding Nemo while enjoying some goldfish!  A nice way to end a busy month of February!  Enjoy the vacation...see you in March!

What a week...100th Day, Nearby Nature, Flynn Theatre, Valentine's Day!

Wow! We have made it to the 100th day of school!  What a milestone for our Kindergartners!  So much learning and growing has happened in these 100 days.  I can't wait to see what the rest of the school year brings!

We had a fun day celebrating the number 100! We began by making 100th day crowns.  The children colored in 100 stars on their crowns!!  We had a delicious Hiyaku (Japanese for 100) trail mix snack!  The children enjoyed finding their favorite treats in there: marshmallows, jellybeans, goldfish crackers,sunflower seeds, and pretzels.  We also had a visit from Zero the Hero!  Zero the Hero was here to talk about the importance of the number zero when making bigger numbers like 100.  Ask your child to tell you about our new friend Zero the Hero!  We finished our day by reading a few 100th day stories and playing a game called Race to $1.00.  This game involved counting pennies and making trades for dimes and then making a final trade for $1.00.  Ask your child how many pennies you need to make $1.00!

We also had Nearby Nature on Tuesday and learned about squirrels!  Through several activities and a puppet show, we learned about three types of squirrels (gray, red, and flying!), their habits, where they live,  how they hide their supplies of food in the winter, and how to look for signs of squirrels in the winter.  The children also had a chance to investigate and explore squirrel skulls and pelts!  Thanks to Christine and Jackson for bringing us this new learning!

We had a wonderful time at the Flynn Theatre on Thursday!  On Wednesday, we read the story The Rainbow Fish.  We also read a Scholastic Magazine and learned about real rainbow fish.  We compared the fictional story to the nonfiction facts in the magazine.  When we got back from the Flynn, we each made our own Rainbow Fish for the classroom.  They look beautiful!




We had a great day on Friday celebrating friendship and kindness!  The children had so much fun delivering their Valentines and opening their bags.  I was so impressed by all the "thank yous" I heard as the children were opening their Valentines...very sweet!  We continued our Valentine's Day fun with Valentine read alouds and a heart graphing activity. In math, they each got a box of candy hearts and had to sort their hearts by color and then graph the results.  Which color was found most in your child's box of candy hearts? Lastly, we read our Scholastic Let's Find Out Magazine about hearts, hugs, and love!

When we weren't busy celebrating...we also learned about more sea creatures from our classmates.  This week we heard about Giant Squid, Sea Turtles, Pacific Viperfish, Octopus, Dolphins, and Sharks.  It is amazing how much we have learned about these creatures!  Ask your children to tell you any "fun facts" about these creatures!

In Math, we continue to work with shapes and their attributes.  This week we learned a new game called Hungry Caterpillars. In this game, the children have to fill up all three sections of the caterpillar with pattern blocks.  During the game, we are practicing naming shapes: triangle, rhombus, and trapezoid.  We also started solving some story word problems about sea creatures.  When working on these problems we are practicing showing our thinking with pictures, numbers, and a number sentence (addition sentence).  The children did a great job of sharing their thinking!

It was a wonderful and busy week; however, we also have had a lot of illness in our classroom and many children absent from school.  Please take care over the weekend and we hope everyone feels healthy to start the week!

Stingrays and Shapes!

That was a quick week!  All the excitement about the Book Fair, Sea Creatures, and a snow day sure made the week sail by!

During theme, we continued to learn about many new sea creatures.  This week we learned about the clownfish, penguins, Yeti Crab, and dolphins.  These were some very interesting creatures! We continued our class study of sea creatures by researching and learning about stingrays.  We read a great nonfiction book with amazing photographs.  As we read, we listened for facts about what stingrays can do; what they need; what they look like; what they eat; and where they live. Then the children wrote down what they learned in their science journals and even completed a diagram of a stingray!  I am so impressed with how everyone's "best guess" spelling is coming along.  Everyone is working hard to really stretch out the sounds they hear in words!  What can your child teach you about stingrays?  Since we have done some extended research about stingrays and polar bears, each child chose an animal and is working on writing a report.  In Kindergarten, nonfiction report writing consists of sharing facts about the animal over multiple pages.  They are looking forward to sharing their reports with you at our Sea Creature Open House!

In math, we learned several new shape Work Places:  Pattern Block Designs, Geoboard Shapes, and Shapes and Spinners Graphing. Each of these new activities encouraged us to look at the attributes of shapes and gave us a chance to practice drawing shapes. Some of the shapes, like a hexagon and rhombus, were tricky to draw!  We also did a fun art project with some shapes and sea creatures!  We learned about penguins this week during one of our sea creature shares and then read a book about penguins.  We then had a create a penguin using shapes like circles, triangles, and ovals!  It was a fun challenge!