Guest Speakers Galore!

      We have had multiple people come in and speak with our class these past couple of weeks. With the zoo unit there are a lot of free resources we can use for speakers to come in and use real-life examples with the students. 

      A couple of months ago all our K/1 teachers went to a zoo training so that we could get 2 free presentations (one in school, one at the zoo). We had a zoo volunteer come in to share a few animals with the students. She told us about their coverings, their habitats and how the zoo takes care of them.

She had a python to share with us.

Getting all the animals out of their cages.

A possum! She made her seem very cute and cuddly. :)

Small alligator. We talked about how big they really get.

Everyone got a chance to touch the alligator!!

      The 2nd guest speaker we had was from Polk County Conservation. She was amazing and worked really well with the kids! We learned about animals in Iowa, where they live and why. The kids got really good at figuring out habitats based on animal coverings and adaptations.

       Our final guest speaker was not zoo related, but she does write about dogs! We had the grandma of one of our students come in and speak to us about how she has published 3 books about rescue dogs. All the proceeds from her books go to animal shelters.

Reading Harley, the Throwaway Puppy

      Harley is a true story about a puppy found at the rescue league who is adopted by a family, even though he is funny looking and scrawny. Through training Harley becomes a champion agility dog!

In the book Harley had silly ears, one up and one down, so the kids
acted out that part each time it was read.

     If you want to check out the books and help animal shelters the link to her website is http://grizzliebooks.com/  

Getting Zoo-y

      First off, some math! I didn't get any pictures of what the 1st graders are doing this week (working with place value) but I will try to remember to get some for next week.

      Kindergarten students have started their measurement unit. We use nonstandard measurement (block, bears, paper clips etc) in Kindergarten. Our focus this week was starting at the edge of an object and making sure that what we were using to measure was placed with no spaces so that we could be accurate!

Using blocks to measure lines.

Using bears AND blocks to measure lines. We discussed
how important it is to label our measurement
since different objects measure differently.

     We started our final project study this week! THE ZOO! The kids are very excited to learn about the zoo. We will be using this project to cover animal needs, coverings, habitats, animal babies and maps. It is amazing what the kids learn through our projects.

      We started out with our zoo memories. The students did an amazing job working hard an doing their best on the words and pictures.

     I added in some graphing skills (a review from earlier in the year) and we polled 10 friends for their favorite zoo animal, used tallies to record and then turned our tally marks into a graph of our friends favorite zoo animal.

They absolutely love using clip boards :)

      We spent the week focusing on learning all about zebras. We learned about their habitat, diet and how they adapt in order to live. On Thursday all the kids wrote in their zoo animal book (we will study a different zoo animal every week).

Zebra stripes confuse the predators (Kindergarten writing! They have come so far!)

A picture of our zoo memory wall. These will come home in student
portfolios at the end of the year.

Our zebra chart. The kids each made their own zebra on Friday.

      This week we made "April Fool's Day" snacks. They looked JUST like eggs. Every kid ate all their yogurt (dairy group) and everyone but 1 student ate their peach (fruit). It is fun to see them try foods they are sure they don't like, and to hear how good they are getting at knowing all the foods in the food pyramid!

April already!?!

Where did March go??? Sorry I slacked on posting anything, especially since March had both Dr. Seuss' birthday and St. Patrick's Day!

This will be a bit of a photo dump, so please bear with me and enjoy seeing a little of what we did in March!

The firs page of our One Fish, Two Fish graphing

They have been gaining such great math skills!

My camera has been acting up with the date stamp so I can't find
any other pictures from our Dr. Seuss study. Here is our class all
dressed up as Things!

We did a mini-unit on manners, here is a picture of a manners crown.

I love when they are all concentration. :)

 We did a manners obstacle course. The kids had to practice being patient and polite in line. We also worked on not invading personal space.
 

I had to do the course first, the kids thought it was too funny
when I had to army crawl under the table

 We discussed how covering your mouth is not only part of manners but also keeps us healthy. I love how their writing has been progressing. They are doing wonderful at using invented spelling.

"Some ways that I stay germ free are wash our hands and sanitizer"

Some ways I stay germ free are: wash hands, stay in bed, sneeze with tissues.

Green "gern" glitter

Trying to use hand sanitizer to get all the "germs" off.

Washing our hands worked the best! This class really struggled
with keeping the glitter on their hands very long. I guess that means they
are a pretty clean group!

Our class prediction graph of what way will work the best to
get our hands germ free.

Saint Patrick's Day Celebrations!

Making little leprechauns

This is the leprechaun beard (upside down). One sweetheart
said, "Mrs. Cox, our leprechauns look like an orange octopus!"
They did do a writing piece to go along with it. "I feel lucky when..."

When we got back from lunch a sneaky leprechaun had stolen our gold
and left a mess and sparkles in place.
Luckily he had some clues for us to search and get our gold back.

Pencils and some more leprechaun dust.

Tip-toeing down the hallway in search of the leprechaun

They loved looking around the school for all of the clues.

Mrs. Fees was a great sport!

Thank you for sticking through the picture post! I will try my best to stay more on top of April. :)

It is getting very busy as the year winds down, but it is also amazing to see the growth of the kids who are almost First and almost Second graders!