Cluck cluck and oink oink!

Thank you all for attending Open House on Thursday night!  The students have been working hard on their end-of-year projects and they even helped clean the classroom to get ready for the big night.  I love to see the excitement they have to share their accomplishments with you.  If you had a chance to look at their blue writing journal from the beginning of the year you will see how much progress they've made!  Check back on Monday to see pictures from Open House!

Last week we read the story The Little Red Hen about a hen who works hard but has lazy friends who aren't very helpful!  The little red hen asks, "Who will help me?" and by the end of the story the animals change their tune from "Not I!" to "I will, I will!" The animals learn that they need to be helpful and that laziness doesn't pay off.  This week we read the old tale of The Three Little Pigs.  The students found a connection between these two stories and were very eager to share why its so important to be a hard worker.  We discussed how we feel when we work hard and how we feel when we are lazy.  In addition to the classic story, we read a few different versions and had fun comparing and contrasting them.  We practiced retelling the story by acting it out and making a pop-up book!

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in!"

Making pop-up books

We will continue with The Three Little Pigs next week! 

We have also been exploring thee dimensional shapes: the cylinder, cone, sphere, and cube.  The students played with them, built structures, and experimented with them.  We tested each object to see if it would roll or slide.

All year long we've met with our third grade study buddies from Mrs. Klingerman's class.  Each Kindergartener has a "buddy" and as a final project we worked together to make this beautiful board to show that we've been able to do many things with their help including reading, writing, and art projects. Thank you, Study Buddies for helping us grow this year!

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." -Helen Keller

E-I-E-I-O

We worked in cooperative learning groups to brainstorm adjectives about farm animals.  Using these adjectives, they wrote poems and added art with one of their most useful tools...their hands!

Charley's cow is slow, spotted, and big.  He also likes to walk around!

We also made farm mobiles to hang in our classroom!  (You will have to wait until Open House to check them out!)  The students had partner discussions about different foods and items that come from cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep.  Then they searched for these pictures in advertisements and magazines.

One of the activities we work on with our Letter of the Week is our ABC Poetry Folders.  We search the poem for our Letter of the Week, sight words, and rhyming words.  The students have fun acting out the poem and illustrating a picture to go along with it.  

Write Around the Room

To practice reading and writing short vowel words (consonant-vowel-consonant), the students went on a "super secret reading adventure" around the classroom.  Beginning with the number 1, the students found a picture and wrote the word on a clipboard.  They had to search the room looking for the next number and picture to spell (also great number recognition practice)!  

To review sight words, we like to read them as a song (of course!).  Here's a fun video of us practicing some tricky words to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle".  Please keep practicing these at home!

Down on the Farm

The students learned so much about plants on the farm last week. We researched farm animals by watching videos, taking notes, and reading books.  They recorded their findings in their journals and shared their findings with their friends. 

These curious and eager learners were excited to draw pictures and write facts in their version of "Time for Kids".  We reviewed what titles, captions, and labels are and added them to the magazine.

 We read a story called, Down on the Farm.  We recreated our favorite pages and added adjectives to our writing to make it more interesting.  Check out some of the awesome art and STAR writing!

Zane's nice doggy...down on the farm!

Butterflies

Over the Spring Break, the Shen family took great care of our classroom butterflies!  They took some great pictures of all the action.  They released a few of the butterflies because they were ready to go!  When we returned from the break, we released two of them at school. 

Tops and Bottoms...

Last week we learned about what a plant needs and the parts of a plant.  This week we continued our unit on plants and focused on vegetables and fruits.  We read a story, Tops and Bottoms, about a clever hare and a lazy bear.  The story teaches about where different veggies grow: on the top of the soil or the bottom! To go along with our story,  we illustrated and labeled where veggies grow.

Look at these great veggies that grow on TOP and on the BOTTOM!

The students also made their own veggies for their produce bags and wrote what part of the plant it is and where it grows.  Check out our Trader MATES farm fresh produce!

Zane's farm fresh produce!

Our field trip to a Underwood Family Farms was quite the adventure!  The farmer discussed where plants grow and what part of the plant we eat.  It aligned perfectly with what we are learning in the classroom.  We all learned (parents and students) how much work it is to be a farmer.  We picked beets, lettuce, and celery!

We had fun identifying what parts of the plant we eat and gave our opinions of how they taste!  Carrots were definitely the favorite.