Twister and some cute cows!

I work with the Kindergarten students at math time and we culminated our study of "left" and "right" with some rounds of Twister! We had a few kiddos with some EXCELLENT balance!

  That same day we also did some great work with the "ow" sound! The kids got two cows and had to sort their "ow" words. They are getting to be such great readers!

Colors all around

The week's before our Spring Break/Intersession we were working on being REAL scientists. We discussed how scientists come up with a question and then predict the outcome (or make a hypothesis), they then do an investigation and observe what they see happening, and record in their journals. We did a few investigations with colors and the kids thought it was great to make different colors just out of red, blue, and yellow.

While the students thought they knew what the outcome would be of mixing the colors they were really using the scientific part of their learning by observing the colors they made and then predicting what they could do to make a different shade of green, or purple. I heard lots of great scientific conversations as I was walking around!

The kids also had to share one plate of colors
per table so they had to work on their
cooperation skills!

Our very own Suessville

Happy Birthday Month Dr. Seuss!!
We have loved studying Dr. Seuss these past few weeks. He is SO.MUCH.FUN!

We started by reading The Cat in the Hat (of course) and then made a class hat and wrote different -at words on each of the stripes to help us study that word family. Then we read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. We created a Venn diagram comparing the two books.

This week we started with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. We made our own fishbowl full of antonyms (words that are opposite). The kids were pretty creative when making up their words.

(up, down)

After reading The Lorax we created our own Truffula tree with the parts of the book (title, author, setting, characters, problem, solution and author's message.) To go with that book the kids wrote their own posters on how to help the Earth and then we hung them up around the school. Doing this sort of purposeful writing shows kids how writing is important and can be used throughout their lives.

For Dr. Seuss's birthday (March 2nd) the kids got to wear their very own Dr. Seuss name tags. For some of his books Dr. Seuss used his last name (Geisel) and spelled it backwards (LeSieg) so we wrote our first names backwards. This is one of the tags, I forgot to take a picture at the beginning of the day so it's a little beat up. :)

On his birthday we also made our own Dr. Seuss hats- complete with rhyming words on the white stripes!

To end the week we made green eggs and ham! The kids signed up for if they thought they would like them before we made them, and then again after we made them.

While we were waiting for our green eggs and ham to cook the kids had to recreate their own recipe with a sequencing chart- they are getting really good at ordering steps for our cooking.

Goal Time Work

In February I met with all parents to set goals for kids to work on both at school and at home. We have started a 20-30 minute time block right after lunch for kids to work on their individual goals.

It has been so great to see the kids take ownership of their learning during this time. They are hard at work!

As I walk around I see kids:

Reading

(with our fancy new reading glasses) 

Doing Math

 Practicing sight words or spelling

Working with different materials (play-dough/boards/magnets etc)

 Learning new vocabulary

 Practicing their math facts

and working near each one another while still 

focusing on their OWN learning!

This has become my favorite time of the day because the kids are just so invested in their learning, it is a great feeling for a teacher!

Perfectly Poetic

     We have been working on writing our own poetry through the month of February! We started by reading poetry by many authors, the kids really loved hearing the silly poems and wanted to jump right into writing their own.

     We started with Acrostic poetry. Kids chose to use their names or to use other words that they thought would be fun.

Terrifying

Roooar

Ear

X-tinct

Really big

Eat meat

Pushing

Terrifying

It's really big

Lizards

Eat rats

So many creatures

     Once we mastered acrostic poetry the kids began working on riddles. We started by using this great book by Tana Hoban:

      It is a wordless book so I peeked at the pictures and gave the kids a riddle to guess what it was. Being 5, 6, and 7 these guys are used to riddling their teacher to guess what they are thinking of (ha!) so they had so much fun writing their own riddles to trick their peers. '

I am brown.

I am little.

You drink me.

You put me in the microwave.

I am hot.

      After riddles we wrote our own "If I Were" poems. Most kids wrote 2 poems for this type. Their first poem was what they wanted to be when they grew up (yes, we are going to have quite a few mermaids!) and their second poem was what they would do if they were a grown-up, Mom, Dad or the teacher. Coffee drinking will abound when these guys grow up!

If I were a mermaid

I'd swim and

I'd play and

I'd have manners.

I'd be kind!

If I were a grown-up

I'd get married and

I'd drink coke and

I'd draw all day.

I'd be artistic

If I were a mom

I'd go shopping with my kids

I'd have a Chihuahua and

I'd go to work.

I'd be the boss

      Poetry was supposed to last for just the month of February, but the kids are having so much fun with it I think we will continue writing different kinds of poetry! When we are done kids will have their OWN poetry anthology (thanks Fancy Nancy for teaching us that word!)