Stepping a Little Deeper into Writing

This week we read a book about Ruby Bridges, an African American girl who was chosen to attend a white school in the 1950s. We talked a lot about how brave she was. To help the kids connect to the text and this time period of history,we all thought of some times that we were brave. Each child drew a picture of a time that they were brave and wrote a sentence or two about it. This was a HUGE step for some kids! Almost everyone is excited to draw, but as soon as we talk about putting words with our pictures the excitement goes down and the stress level goes up!

We've spent a lot of time learning blends and other special sounds in words (sh, ch, th) the past few weeks, and I'm super proud to say that they did a fabulous job incorporating them into their writing today! It was like a total "aha!" moment for some of them when they realized they could spell words that used to be a mystery to them. Very freeing! (Lightbulbs were coming on all over the room!)

Here are some great samples of our work (with translation underneath - spelling is a work in progress!) We started with just the word "brave" on the board (since everyone would need that one to write about their picture!) I kid you not, I did NOT spell words for these kids! I believe I spelled the word "of" for one child and gave a few hints to a couple others, but they totally did these on their own! Check out their impressive work!

I had to be brave at Monster Jam.

I was brave to go under a car.

I was brave at show and tell.

I was brave when I got a snake.

I was brave when I was on the stage.

I was being brave when I was on the stage.

I am brave in class.

I was brave on the roller coaster.

I had to be brave when I did the national anthem.

Look out first grade! Here we come!

Ipads and Oceans

Our unit this week has been all about oceans. Good thing, too, because it's hard to learn about sh and ch without beach, fish and shells! We've enjoyed learning about shells, sounds, whales and a myriad of other facts about the ocean. For show and tell we enjoyed seeing some real starfish, coral, sea sponges and a tiny little seahorse. We sorted seashells by shape, size and color. In other words, we've been BUSY!

A couple months ago, the administration gave our classroom an iPad to use. So how do we use one iPad among 20 students? Good question. We've been slowly trying it out, incorporating it into our daily schedule. Here are a couple ways we've been using it:

We love how the noise meter app has been helping us control our voices during lunch time and indoor recess. A siren goes off when the noise gets a little loud and the kids bring the level right back down to where it should be.

Noise Meter on the Ipad

Today we went on a word hunt in the classroom and took pictures of all the ch and sh words we found. Here are just a couple of the things we took pictures of on our hunt:

chalkboard

shoelaces

We also let the iPad tell us who is going to have a turn next during class. This keeps everyone on their toes since no one knows who will be chosen next!

I've downloaded some really neat apps and I'm working on a system that will give everyone a turn to use the iPad on their level of learning. I think we'll need to come up with some classroom rules to keep the iPad safe first!

Our 100 Day Celebration!

After lots of snow days and postponing our 100 day celebration several times, we finally were able to go ahead and celebrate! The kids arrived to school so excited! Each child brought 100 items to school. We had 100 goldfish, M&M's, rubber bands, Teddy Grahams, paperclips, BoxTops, Smarties and more...such creative kids!

After dividing up into groups, the kids all rotated through six stations to work on different 100 day activities. We counted, stacked, weighed, stamped, colored, and more!

The "crowning" activity was making our celebration crowns! 

After our crowns were assembled, we ended our time with a "parade" for the office staff to wish them happy 100th day! Ugh...I forgot to get a group picture with the crowns. They were so cute!

Thanks so much to all the parents/grandparents who came in to help. I think they had just as much fun as the kids!

River, Lakes, and Water Cycles, Oh My!

This week we've been studying rivers and lakes as part of our study of America. We learned all about how the water cycle works and even made it rain! Here is what the kids wrote about our activity time today.

We put some water in the microwave. We called the microwave the sun. After the water was hot, we put a plate on top of the jar. We waited and talked about the water cycle. Mrs. Keppley lifted up the plate. It rained! This showed us the water cycle.

We ended our time eating some "fishy" snacks! We had blue jello with fish floating inside. They were certainly a hit!

Next week we'll finish up our study of rivers and lakes by talking about insects that live in and around water. I have a few students who are especially excited about this!

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!"

A Busy End to October

We've been so busy in kindergarten this week! Here are some of the things we've been working on...

We finished up our October calendar notebooks this week. The kids are loving these! I think the patterns are their favorite part, especially when I let them choose their own colors. Every child can make a three or four color pattern and label it now! A few of them even came up with some patterns today that we haven't worked on yet.

October Calender daily page

Coming to the whiteboard to work is a favorite!

We've been working on dot patterns during math time. One of our goals in kindergarten is to be able to recognize a number by looking at the dots (without counting them.) These Monster Roll and Color pages are so fun for the kids to work on this skill! This week we started using two dice at a time and working on bigger number dot patterns.

Of course, the highlight of our week had to be Teddy Bear Day! Everyone brought in and shared about their favorite teddy bear and we did lots of activities to go along with it! All the teddy bears were very well behaved and allowed to sit at our tables with us. The highlight of the day was making our how-to book for making a teddy bear paw print snack...and then making our snacks!

Teddy Bear Day Fun!

Watch for more fun news...kindergarten is a very fun place to be!

October Has Been Busy!

October has been so busy that I've barely had time to take pictures of our busy-ness! We were very excited to welcome our pastors to school this month for our Pastor Appreciation Breakfast. We've been working on the song Be Bold! during class and in chapel, so it was a great choice to sing it for our pastors. Our favorite part of the morning was having our pastors drop into class to visit! It was so exciting for the kids to see how much their pastors care about them by stopping by to see them. The day was topped off when Pastor Billy stopped by with his guitar to talk about music with us! We had been talking about music books and instruments this week, so the kids were really excited to watch him play his guitar.

The kids were so excited to sing with Pastor Billy as he played his guitar!

We were also visited by Mr. Spiker, who showed us how to play the drums and Mrs. Miller, who showed her flute. These visits produced the quietest, most mesmerized group that I've seen yet this year. We may have some musicians of the future in this class!

Hopefully I can remember to snap a few more pictures of what else we've been doing during our days! The kids were EXTREMELY excited when I announced that today would be our last day of resting on mats. There were absolutely NO arguments when I told them to carry their mats down to the dismissal line! We will fill our afternoons with crafts, review games and other exciting activities from now on! Yay for no naps! (Although I think I could use one this afternoon! These kiddos wear me out!)