Open House 2016

It was so wonderful to see you all at Open House! The kiddos have been working so hard and they were so proud to share all of their projects with you! I’ve waited to blog so it would all be a surprise! Here are some pics of the classroom!

Room 18’s Farm!

After reading Click, Clack, Moo! the students wrote a letter to Farmer Brown from the farm animals’ perspective. Some asked him for surfboards, necklaces, a bigger barn! They also typed the letters themselves! They drew the animals and traced them with black paint-using a Q tip! Tempura paint was used for the background.

Tops and Bottoms was a funny story about a lazy bear and a hard working (and clever) hare! The students drew vegetables that grow on the “top” and “bottom” of the soil. They used oil pastels and then painted the rest of the project using watercolors.

Down on the Farm is another story we love!  Each student recreated a page from the book using oil pastels and watercolors. They wrote the words from the book to go along with their pictures.

After learning about cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens we made farm animals! They wrote facts about them in their “All About the Farm” brochures-did you know chickens sleep with one eye open?!

These farm landscapes tied in perfectly with our plant and farm unit. Using tempera paint, the students painted “patches” of farmland and used oil pastels to draw a pattern in each section. Our “Photo Booth” Kindergarten wall will be up until the end of the year. Grab one of our fun farm masks and take a pic!

This was one of their favorite projects. They took selfies and then shared facts about themselves! Easy questions to answer were: what is your favorite part of school, what do you want to be when you grow up. It was difficult for some to come up with words to describe themselves! They really had to think about it and it was so awesome to see their perspectives-of themselves!

After reading classic story, The Little Red Hen, we had to make some bread for ourselves! When I asked them “Who will help me make this bread?” Everyone shouted, “I will!” (In the story, the animals are too lazy to help! I’m glad we have so many eager helpers in Room 18!) Each student got a chance to knead the bread (in a bag!).

We couldn’t eat the delicious bread without some butter! (We made that too!)

It was a hit! 

Trader Mates

Plants in a Row! We learned where different fruits and veggies grow!

Wow, this week we had a blast learning about the importance of farms and we applied what we learned about plants last week to plants on a farm.  After reading a fabulous book called, How’d That Get in My Lunchbox?? the kids were AMAZED that every food in our lunches were from a farm! We had acting as farmers, delivery truck drivers, grocers, and mommies and daddies buying food from the store!

Of course we had to eat! The kiddos were given veggies and then they had to determine what part of the plant it was! Carrots were a hit, broccoli-not so much!

This carrot is a root that grows in the ground!

A sneak peek of what you’ll see at Open House! “Trader Mates” groceries!

Jaxon wrote that he likes to eat carrots and its a root!

Farm landscape art with oil pastels

We’ve been really working hard on sight words that begin with “wh” and “th”. There’s quite a few we’ve learned but they can be a little tricky! Here are some ways we practiced them this week. Please continue practicing them at home.

Reading and writing sight words on the playground

“I have _____, who has ______?” The kids had fun reading their
sight words with their finger flashlights as we played this game.
They had to read their cards and listen for their word to be called.

Our butterfly friends were ready to enter the big world today. Good-bye, friends!

Rockstar, thank you for letting us watch you grow!

So long!

Planting the seeds...

We learned about the parts of the plant and what plants need to grow! We planted our own beans that will hopefully become amazing beanstalks! (picture to come soon!)  Jack and the Beanstalk was the perfect book to go along with our unit.

We drew flowers...

and wrote the parts of the plant on the inside along with what each part does!
They also circled the plants’ needs!

Relling the Jack and the Beanstalk story!

Keep practicing those tricky sight words: where, was, want, what, that, this, they! Here are some ways we practiced this week.

Tic-Tac-Know! The students chose a sight word and made up a sentence using the word.
Then they got to place their word on the board trying to get three in a row!

Practicing keyboarding and sight words!

Beautiful butterflies...

In our final week of our insect unit, we studied butterflies! We’ve been observing our caterpillars in class every day and we’re so amazed at the incredible changes they’ve gone through! Check out some of the projects we worked so hard on this week!

We learned all about the butterfly life cycle!

Our butterflies are in the chrysalis stage right now.
Can’t wait for these beauties to emerge!

The students wrote a mini report on butterflies
with interesting butterfly facts!

Yes, they drew these by themselves! Incredible budding artists!

The final product! Wow!!

Doubles addition! The students rolled a die and placed that many beans on one of
the butterfly’s wings. They made the butterfly symmetrical by placing the
same number of beans on the other wing.  They counted and added them together!

Our little photographers went out to search for symmetry around MATES!
The photos and QR codes will be posted next week, you’ll be
able to scan the codes to hear more about the photos!

We were all excited to hunt for symmetry!

We read a narrative story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!
The kids recreated the entire book-cutting and
pasting pictures just like the author, Eric Carle.

They retold the story in their own words.
I loved the vocabulary they used-starving, humungous, etc!

All of the students are becoming quite the readers!!
These reading windows are perfect to keep the kids on track while reading!

Of course this week was extremely exciting because they performed the Friendly Neighborhood Helpers Play! Thank you helping out with the costumes and making it so special for them!

Thank you!

Insects

Our insect unit has been a very interesting one for the Kindergarteners! We’ve learned what makes an insect an insect. They have three body parts, six legs, and two antennas. Ask your child to sing you our song to remember all of their parts!

We read informational books about insects, specifically ants and ladybugs. They learned many facts about them and asked some excellent questions too! Some of our new favorite books were narrative stories, Hey Little Ant and The Grouchy Ladybug. Here are some of the insect themed projects we worked on!

Rockin’ around the clock! Reading clocks to the hour!
In the Grouchy Ladybug story, the grouchy ladybug meets a new character every hour.
We had a blast learning how to tell time!

Does it have capital letters, punctuation and spaces??
They had so much fun being “editors” correcting these sentences from The Grouchy Ladybug story!

Should the boy squish the ant?
The kinders wrote their opinions whether the character in the story should squish the ant!
They gave great reasons for their argument-they were quite convincing!

We used our sight words and insects we “caught” to build sentences. 

We also practiced adding using number lines!
These number line ziplock bags were perfect!

In reading groups, we practice building and reading words and sentences, reading strategies, and fluency and comprehension. After reading our books a few times, we echo read to practice reading more fluently.

Add caption

Using our new sight word “said” we made a few comic strip pictures in our journals!

Spring is just around the corner!

With Spring just around the corner, we learned about what spring brings! They wrote their ideas in their Spring books using adjectives about the season. Spring brings flowers, baby animals, and of course-eggs!  We learned what eggs are used for, besides eating, and also did some “egg” periments!

Is it raw or cooked?!

“Scrambled” eggs! The kiddos had to unscramble their sight words!

Ayli brought her chickens to school!

These oviparous animals are too cute!

Rainbow eggs, who knew?

We learned about what animals come from eggs and learned they are called, oviparous! After reading the book, Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones, we sorted oviparous and viviparous animals! Here are some fun activities we did this week!

Birds come from eggs!

Sting rays come from eggs!

A penguin is from an egg, but a raccoon is not!

Ee was our letter again this week and we focused on the long /e/ and vowel teams as in green, seal, seed. They learned about the “two vowels” rule. Here’s a fun poem we sang to remember the rule! (Notice our two new sight words highlighted!) We made a face on the 'talking' vowel that says its name and feet on the ‘walking’ vowel that is silent and read several long /e/ words!

I see two vowels,

I see two vowels,

I hear one, I hear one

The first one does the talking

The second keeps on walking

Yes, indeed! Yes indeed!

Two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking!

Check out these awesome finger flashlights!
The kids had so much fun reading their books and looking for long vowel words!

Of course we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, but unfortunately those leprechauns were too sneaky and hard to catch! Maybe next year!!  Thank you to those who brought in potatoes for our potato taste test! Our class favorite were the french fries!

Our favorite potato dish bar graph!