Counting Rhymes

This week our theme has been nursery rhymes! We've learned about nursery rhyme children (Little Jack Horner, Little Boy Blue), animal rhymes, and today we worked on counting rhymes. All the kids really enjoyed playing "One potato, Two potato" (did anyone else play that at recess in elementary school??)

One potato, two potato, three potato four...

We also wrote our very own class counting rhyme. Here it is!

One, one, who has one?
Ava has one pink Lego car.
Two, two, who has two?
Caroline has 2 arms.
Three, Three, who has three?
Isabella has three dogs.
Four, four, who has four?
Caleigh has four toy cats.
Five, five, who has five?
Amelie has five pizzas!

It is always amazing to me to see the difference from the first week of kindergarten to the end of the first quarter. We've learned so many things! It's such a blessing to see these children growing during Bible time, learning their letters and reading words, and working with numbers. It's hard to believe the first quarter is almost over already!

AaaARgh! Pirate Day and More!

This is our second week back to school since spring break, and we are right back to work, full speed ahead! Besides kicking off our next unit with purple day, we also started last week with Pirate Day on Tuesday! What better way is there to learn the AR sound than to be pirates for the day?

There were pirate words hidden all over the school!

Our day started when we received a special message in a bottle that had washed up into the kindergarten classroom. (There was also a rare sighting of Mrs. Keppley dressed in pirate garb...I bet you're sorry you missed that! Unfortunately there were no pictures.) Our message was from Pirate Mark who lives on an ark and loves to eat candy bars for breakfast! Throughout the day we searched the school for AR words and added them to our map.

We also made little pirates and wrote down some of the AR words we learned. We started a list on the board, but the kids caught onto the AR sound so quickly that they were able to add lots of words to their lists that we didn't put on the board! The pirates turned out so cute!

Aaaargh! What a cute bunch of pirates!

We added the pirates to our bulletin board (and some in the hall) and we were all set to find our treasure!

The kids searched the room high and low and finally found a treasure chest - full of candy bars! We enjoyed our special treat before we went home. I sent some very tired and excited pirates home that day!

This week we've been talking all about gardens and plants. Unfortunately, God is watering our gardens quite a bit this week, so we are back to indoor recess. I caught this gem during recess this morning:

Mrs. Moore even got in on the action today!

Hopefully the sun will return soon!

We've finally gotten back into a routine after the holidays and all our snow days! This week we started a new unit on America. We started by talking about mountains. On Tuesday we learned all about volcanoes and even set up a model volcano and watched "lava" come out. The kids were so excited when it started bubbling over the top. We wrote this story together to tell about our experience:

The Volcano

The volcano looks like a mountain. Mrs. Keppley put powder in the volcano. It exploded! Red lava came out. It was so cool! It looked dangerous.

The second highlight of our week was panning for gold! Everyone got to pan for a little gold (corn kernels) and decide what they would do if they had real gold. There were some pretty creative responses! Some kids decided they would spend their gold - a Playstation 3, a Rainbow Loom, an art box, a tutu (that one mad me smile!), and a car were some of the purchases to be made. A couple decided they would sell their gold, and one precious kiddo decided he would share it with others. What a crew! 

Stay tuned - we're talking about prairies next week and we will end our week with a "Prairie Picnic!"