Planting and growing...

We began a new unit of study this week: Plants!  We read non-fiction books about plants shared our experiences and prior knowledge.  We learned all about what plants need and wrote our facts in a book, Plants Have Needs.

We learned not only about the parts of a plant but the purpose of each part.  Of course we made up a song...ask your child to sing it to you!  "The roots suck up the water, it goes up to the stem..." (to the tune of the Itsy Bitsy Spider).  Their big "ah ha!" moment was when we discussed that seeds from the flowers go back into the soil to make new plants.  They literally shouted, "It's a LIFE CYCLE!"  They have become experts on "labeling" pictures as you can see in some of these fantastic examples!

We read a few different versions of Jack and the Beanstalk and discussed the similarities and differences between them. We planted our own bean plants so we can care for and observe the plants right in our own classroom.  You can see that we added the castle from Jack and the Beanstalk!  Hopefully the bean plants will begin to climb up and be "beanstalks".

We enjoyed making and retelling the story!

Soon to be "beanstalks"!

After learning about what plants need, what they have, and how they help us, I asked the students how they thought forests and jungles grow.  Who plants those seeds? Who cares for those plants?  They discussed among themselves and at first had more questions than answers.  Listening to their thought processes was fascinating...some thought they were planted by Indians, some thought they were planted by their great grandparents.   There were some kiddos who knew animals played a part!   I read them the story, The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and  watched a video about it.  Through the book, some acting, and discussion groups we learned that wind, animals, and birds carry seeds, drop them, and new plants can grow with the help of nature.  As an experiment, the students were given a handful of confetti or "magic seeds' to carry in their hand all day.  We became birds, animals, and wind and some "seeds" were dropped.  Then they worked through center time holding onto some "seeds".  We left them wherever they fell and at the end of the day, without even realizing it, we had dropped "seeds" all over the room. With a some rain and sun, those seeds would become plants!

"Seeds"

 Acting as wind...             



                                                             animals...



                                 and birds!

 Earth Day was April 22nd and we discussed ways we could help our planet.  They wrote down some ways they could give a helping hand and how they could love our Earth.

Inquiring minds want to know...

There are a lot of curious minds in our Kindergarten class!  They have been so excited to research insects and this week we studied butterflies.  We learned about metamorphosis and the life cycle of the butterfly.

We've enjoyed observing the caterpillars change in our classroom.  They are currently in their chrysalis stage and within a few days they will become beautiful butterflies!  Unfortunately, we will miss this transformation but Mrs. Shen will be taking them home over break.  Depending on when they become butterflies, we may release them when we return from school or they will be released over the break.

They have asked wonderful questions about not only butterflies, but about research!  We've learned that we can read non-fiction books, watch informational videos, and use the internet as research tools.  While I was reading a book about butterflies, one of the students asked, "Where did the author  get his research to put in this book?"  I loved his desire to know more about where the information came from!  I then asked the students what they thought.  Another student replied with, "The author researched and read a book about butterflies and then wrote his book about butterflies."  Great answer!  This response led to more questions.  "How did it the first researcher write a book if he didn't have a book to read?  Who wrote the first book?"  WOW! What amazing questions!!  I could see all the wheels turning in their minds.  I let these questions guide a new class discussion and we talked about learning by observing and doing experiments as research.  Their curiosity sparked amazing critical thinking and made for another wonderful teaching moment.

As we've been diving into more non-fiction books we've learned about some features of these books like the Table of Contents, captions, and labels (Yes, in Kindergarten)!  We did an activity where the students found labels all over our classroom and then we labeled one of our friends.

After this exercise, the students worked together to find an insect they wanted to research.  They used Post-it notes to mark pages and pictures in the book, illustrated and labeled their insect, and wrote a few facts.  I encouraged the students to research other things they want to learn about at home.  When I asked them what they wanted to learn more about, there was an overwhelming response, "Leprechauns!" Uh oh...what have I started?!

Marking facts and pictures with Post-it notes

Check out the details and labels!

Look at Grant's ladybug facts!

Kai did a great job labeling!

The students worked on a butterfly writing and art piece.  I encouraged them to write whatever they'd like: fact and/or opinions.  Here are a few examples!

"Butterflies are pretty! They have wings!"

"Butterflies are fast. They have color. They have wings."

The students really enjoyed our insect unit and I've seen some students continuing their research at home. We have "Fun Friday" time on Friday afternoons when the students can play with math tubs, dominos, puzzles, read, and draw.  I found a few of them using their free time to continue researching and drawing insects from books!

Just another Kindergarten day...

On a typical day, the students read independently and practice building and playing with words after they finish a center early.  We've added these "independent reading" and "word work" times into a new morning rotation called Daily Five.  These are Language Arts rotations that focus on skills we've learned during whole group and small group centers.  Here are a few pictures from our Daily Five rotations this week.

Leveled "just right" reading

Word work

Free writing

In math centers we continued practicing subtraction and composing and decomposing numbers.  

Building numbers on I pads

Subtracting insects

Loving ladybugs!

The students love being entomologists as we continued researching insects.  After catching a few ladybugs last week during our bug hunt, we quickly learned that they give off a pretty strong odor when they feel threatened!  We experienced this first hand in Room 18 and we've finally got rid of the stinky smell!  The students were very excited to hear we were learning about them this week.  We read several non-fiction books about ladybugs and watched a video about their life cycle The Life Cycle of a Ladybug.  The entomologists in Room 18 wrote down facts and drew pictures as they watched the video a few times.  They love to add their new facts to our classroom anchor chart.  

We also read Eric Carle's The Grouchy Ladybug.  It is a story about a grouchy ladybug who challenges a friendly ladybug to a fight over some aphids.  He decides the friendly ladybug isn't big enough to fight and flies around challenging other animals until he encounters a blue whale.  The whale accidentally slaps him with his tail and sends him back to where he started.  The friendly ladybug offers him some aphids and the exhausted grouchy ladybug accepts and thanks him. The kids were very curious to learn why the ladybug was so grouchy in the first place and they came up with some wonderful ideas.  "He didn't get enough sleep" and "he didn't feel loved" were some of their great answers.  We also predicted what we thought happened to the grouchy ladybug after the end of the story.  The overall consensus was that he learned his manners and became a nice ladybug.  We discussed what makes us grouchy and happy and made our own video about it!

We recreated a page from the book to make our own class book.  This story also reviews time and reading clocks to the hour.  Some students decided to make up new characters for our book.

Eden's cat is too friendly to fight the grouchy ladybug!

Will's rhino was too lazy to fight the grouchy ladybug! 

We also worked on a book called, Ladybugs.  We counted ladybugs in groups of 5 and added 1 ladybug at a time to make numbers 11-16.  We then used FaceTime to read our story to our "mystery guest", Mrs. Priske!  She enjoyed hearing the kids "sing" and read the story to her.  Ask your child to read it to you!  They are also very good at counting by 10's and 5's!  We are looking forward to reading to other mystery guests this year.

FaceTime with our mystery guest, Mrs. Priske!

We have also been working on building and memorizing combinations of 5 (i.e. 1+4, 2+3, 5+0).  We found a partner to match "ladybug wings" to make 5.  They had a fun time flying around to find their "best friend" number! Then we made the combinations of spots onto ladybugs for an art project.

Finding our partners to make "5"!