Thursday, March 28, 2019

States of Matter

What a great week! Despite some rain-like snow, we were able to get outside and play every day, as well as explore and play with science experiments and watercolors inside. We finished our unit on states of matter. All the students should be able to say that matter comes in three states: Solids, liquids, and gases. We explored liquids with water on wax paper and straws. Students practiced blowing the water across the wax paper, separating it out with toothpicks, and one student was even able to blow a bubble in the water using the straw.

With air, we used the other half of bendy straws to blow air and try and keep a ping pong ball suspended above the straw. Some students were able to do it for a few seconds; it's a tough challenge! We also made whirlygigs, and students learned that we are able to experience air not because we can see it, like with solids and liquids, but because we can see how it affects things around us.

Finally, we read a book today called "In a Minute, Mom!" The main character learns that not so good things happen when we wait to do things instead of doing them right away. He finds out that it doesn't feel good to have to wait on others to do things for him, so he should do things right away when his parents and siblings ask him to. I highly recommend this book for parents and teachers everywhere! After we read the book, we practiced following directions right away, instead of doing it "in a minute". We learned that when we do things right away, we have more time for lunch, recess, fun projects, etc. It was a powerful end to a strong week of learning!






Friday, March 22, 2019

Welcome Spring!

More destruction!
The Leprechaun's tricks
Our weather has heralded spring in the usual Tahoe fashion--more snow! After last week's tease of sunshine and warmth, the gloom and cold were not welcomed back readily. However, thankfully we made it outside for recess every day this week, and lots of learning and fun was had by all this week! First of all, the students were greeted by quite the sight on Monday morning: the Leprechaun had made an appearance in our classroom, messing everything up and leaving pieces of candy in our leprechaun traps. We didn't catch him this year, but maybe next year we will!

Making slime!
Other highlights from this week included making egg-carton creatures and enjoying a reading of Puff the Magic Dragon for Granite's Special Me project. The students also got to make slime on Thursday, which was a huge hit. They especially loved mixing up as many color combinations as possible, turning their slime all shades of pink, red, green, teal, blue, brown, yellow, orange, etc. They loved it!

Finally, the students were able to write about their favorite parts of spring this week, and we will finish the project with some sunflower watercolors next week. In art, we read a book called Roller Coaster and then used scraps of paper and glue to create roller coaster art. You could hear a pin drop in the classroom, they were that engaged and involved! It's so cool to see the students' different ideas and creativity take shape throughout this year. Enjoy the pictures and see everyone next week!

Addition Games in math


Roller Coaster art




Friday, March 15, 2019

Tricky Little Leprechauns...

A beautiful week this week, and so many fun things that we were able to do in kindergarten! Something I love about teaching and learning is that every day is a new day. In the midst of some listening struggles this week, we did lots of learning and these students showed their growing stamina in completing projects and in writing, and they loved collaborating through fort-building as a part of Special Me this week.

Some other highlights this week included using watercolors to "magically" reveal sight words and numbers that we are working on. If you want to do a project like this at home, all you need to do is write or draw whatever image you want on a white piece of paper with white crayon. The crayon wax repels the water, so the paint doesn't adhere to the crayon.

We spent time practicing stretching out our words to try and hear all the sounds and then spell them out on our papers in writing. These students are becoming strong phonetic spellers, which is perfect for this stage in their word and linguistic development! They are also beginning to recognize punctuation markings--periods, exclamation points and question marks. After we finish writing a sentence, I always ask them, "Now, is that an asking sentence? Or a statement?" They identify which kind of sentence it is and put the correct punctuation at the end. Next up: spacing in our writing, and capital letters at the beginning of a sentence.

Math games
More math games
Finally, Thursday's highlight was creating leprechaun traps to hopefully catch the leprechauns that come out on St. Patrick's Day. The students worked for almost an hour on their traps and loved designing different things on their traps to catch the leprechauns, such as a pulley trap, holes in the floor of their trap covered by a "false trapdoor", and trip wires. So creative, and a great way to exercise the engineering and design process. For those who make these at home, I hope you have as much fun as we did in class. Enjoy your weekend, and we'll see on Monday if the leprechaun visited our classroom.....





Trying blood oranges for Harvest of the Month

Magically revealing sight words

Building leprechaun traps

A finished leprechaun trap, complete with a rainbow entrance

Friday, March 8, 2019

Excitement of Experimentation

"Look guys! Guys, it's EXPLODING!!"
Yes! We finally did it--a WHOLE WEEK of school uninterrupted by snow days! It felt really good to get back into a rhythm this week for sure!

Writers at Work
Some highlights of the week were: sliding down the hills by the ramps at school, and doing science experiments as part of Kove's Special Me. The students were able to explore baking soda, water, vinegar and fizzy tablets. They noticed that not much happened with the water being added to the solution, nor when they added baking soda to vinegar. However, when they added vinegar to the baking soda, that's when the "explosions" happened and excitement came over! It was noisy and messy and full of fun and learning, and the kids (and adults!!) loved it. If you would ever like to lead similar science/social studies activities in our classroom, please let me know! I am open and willing to accomodate :)

Finally, we spent quite a bit of time on our writing this week. These students are learning to draw detailed pictures of exactly what's going on in their minds, and then they add their words by sounding them out. This week, the kindergarteners wrote to Ms. Maryn about things they know about. Some topics included: parents, siblings, pets, electricity, and gardening. Looks like I am going to be taught SO MUCH by these intelligent students!

We enjoyed practicing number bonds in math this week, especially on Thursday, when the students were able to practice goldfish addition. Then Ms. Maryn read to them from One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish (one of my favorites!). We had a fun week of learning and dressing up for Dr. Seuss week! Enjoy the weekend!







Last Day Pics and more!

Walking in at the Closing Ceremonies Well, we did it. We made it! Congratulations to all these bright, spunky, energetic kindergarteners...