Paperwork

Thank you for stopping by to fill out my forms online!  There is so much paperwork at the start of the school year so doing it digitally will help us both out!  If you have any questions about the information, please let me know.

Please click here to fill out helpful information for me to have.

A Place Called Kindergarten

Welcome to Kindergarten!  The school year brings nervous excitement for parents, children and even teachers!  Here is a list of great books to act as an introduction or conversation starter for you and child.

The Kissing Hand....Audrey Penn
Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come....Nancy Carlson
A Place Called Kindergarten...Jessica Harper
Countdown to Kindergarten...Allison McGhee
Froggy Goes to School...Jonathan London
The Night Before Kindergarten...Natasha Wing

Click here for more ideas!

And don't forget everyone's favorite cat, Pete!
Pete the Cat, Rocking In My School Shoes...Eric Litwin

To the Moon!

Jack and Annie's latest adventure has brought us into the future and onto the moon! I think the scenery came out great!  I love having our full moon in the classroom right now.

This week for our literacy stations we painted a moon and stamped craters into it, and wrote an opinion of whether we'd like to live on the Moon or on Earth.

 We learned that the moon is made of rock, and while I couldn't find any Moon rocks laying around, the fourth grade lent us plenty of different sandstones to observe.  The children made a scientific drawing and labeled three things they noticed.

The tricky station this week was reordering a scrambled sentence that was a fact about space!  The children were up for the challenge and did great with this task.  

Exploring in 3D

One of my favorite math units and an important geometry standard is learning about 3D shapes!  Students should be able to describe the faces, vertices and edges of each shape.

I gave the students 3D shapes and real world pictures to sort into cubes, cylinders, spheres or cones.  They also replicated 3D shapes using cubes and made cubes or pyramids with marshmallows and toothpicks.

They looked at geoblocks and matched ones that had the same face.

They were also given the challenging task of making 3D shapes with clay.  This was interesting because some students still made flat shapes and had a hard time understanding what it meant to be a 3D shape.  

Thanks to Harry Kindergarten, we rocked out to this tune this week!

The Amazon

It's been a jungle around here as Jack and Annie took us into the Amazon rain forest! 

The children worked hard on our rainforest!  We've added snakes, sloths, parrots, frogs and monkeys.  It is such a great mural to make.

This is the first year I've embarked on making rain forest dioramas!  I love this project so much and I **think** the kids are sharing my enthusiasm!

In math I gave the children two different shapes with the task of making a rain forest animal.  Their creativity is amazing!

Walk Like an Egyptian

Recently Jack and Annie brought us to the Egyptian Pyramids. The children learned facts about Ancient Egypt and worked on scenery and props to decorate the classroom.  

We have been doing slideshows to learn about Ancient Egypt.  After the slideshows the kids pick a "fact" that they learned.  Slowly the children are adding one or more sounds to their words.  I love scaffolded writing because every child can feel like a successful writer!

The Egyptians made mud to make houses.

Cats hunt mice.

Pyramids have tricky tunnels.

Egyptians used pottery.

The children learned about amulets.  Amulets offered protection for the living against things Egyptians considered evil forces (sickness, floods etc.)  The gemstone, image and shape were all significant to whomever made or wore it. 

After Thanksgiving we will be acting out Mummies in the Morning while other stations pretended to be "Life in Times" of Ancient Egypt.  They will pretend to build pyramids: the children will communicate their ideas and have some trial and error with different shaped blocks.  

The children also painted beautiful, Egyptian inspired sunsets!

Ta-Da!

The children have been actively engaged as we explored castles and "knight life" the past few weeks!  Last week the children worked on a shield of armor.  We talked about how knights used these in battle to tell each other apart, but they also represented them.  The children decorated their shields with their favorite color, first initial and a favorite animal.  Many children then pointed out shields they saw in our non-fiction castle books!

In math the children used squares, rectangles and triangles to design their own castle.

For our main literacy stations, the children have been dramatizing and pretending to be Jack and Annie from the Magic Tree House.  The Tools of the Mind program has taught us that "Vygotskians identify ‘leading activities’––activities that have the most potential to impact children’s cognitive and social development at different ages.  The leading activity for preschool- and kindergarten-aged children is intentional, mature make-believe play. Self-regulation and executive functions develop through engagement in this kind of play, creating a strong foundation for later learning.  The children engaged in make believe play as they acted out a feast, a medieval market and Marshall's taking care of the horses.  

Setting the scene...

As we prepared for our imaginary journey, the children learned about medieval times and wrote a daily facts.

Knights wore armor.

Horses wore armor for protection.