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!

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

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

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!

Can You Feel the Love in Kindergarten....

SO thankful we had at least two days of outdoor recess this week! Being inside, and the excitement of Valentine's Day and the upcoming Ski Skate Week break made for a high-energy, and sometimes difficult week. Still, we were able to stretch our learning brains and grow in sight word fluency, decoding, adding and subtracting, and practice kindness and gratitude towards others.

We made gratitude cutout hearts with our book buddies, slid down snowy slopes, and created collages of things in life that are close to our hearts. I love seeing all the students' creativity and passions come out in these art projects!

Enjoy the pictures, stay safe and warm in the snow, and have a great Ski Skate week! See you in 9 days!

100 Days Smarter

This week was short, but what a fun and great way to kick it off with the 100th day of school on Wednesday, February 6th! We talked about counting to 100's by 1's and by 10's and the kids played hopscotch, built structures using 100 Legos, created Fruit Loop necklaces with 100 Fruit Loops using various counting strategies and colored 100 gumballs in groups of 10's. The kids had a blast and loved learning about 100!

Other things we did this week: We did have to forgo the Thursday afternoon hike because of the depth of snow, so instead we did an artist study on Vincent Van Gogh and his still-life paintings of everyday objects with primary colors and short painting brush strokes. Then the kids were allowed to explore painting with big and small brushes and attempted to paint everyday objects with the primary colors.

Finally, we worked on retelling a story with beginning, middle, and end pictures. We did this with one of my favorite stories that also highlights empathy: Hooway for Wodney Wat. Ask your child what the book was about! This hilarious book explores celebrating differences (in this case, Rodney pronounces his "r"s as "w"s), and how to accept and be kind to those who are different than us. The students loved it!

Have a wonderful weekend, stay safe and warm, and hopefully we won't have any snow days next week! 

Ski you later!

What a fun week this week! We started off with a fantastic field trip to Tahoe City's XC Ski Club. The kids had a blast learning the strides, falling over, getting back up and skiing onward. I love how they serve as a fresh reminder of the beauty of resilience. Even when they fall, they get right back up and aren't afraid to try again with the very thing that made them fall in the first place! If you get the chance, be sure to say thank you to Cami, Allyson, and Meggie, as all three of these outdoor enthusiasts sent me the flyer to sign us up for free ski dates. Thank you, ladies!

We spent time learning about primary colors, and the kids were challenged to find out what happens when artists mix different colors together. They LOVED it. Pretty much every one of them figured out how to mix the colors and what combinations created which new colors. What a fun afternoon of exploration!

The kids also got the chance to experiment with and learn about the water cycle. We spent time on evaporation last week, and I showed them a video this week of my brother back in Wisconsin. He threw up a boiling cup of water into -25 degree (-50 with windchill) air, and the water immediately evaporated. Then we had the chance to explore the rest of the water cycle--condensation, precipitation, and collection (or accumulation). Students put water through a sponge (the cloud) with an eyedropper and were able to feel how heavy the sponge got before water started to "precipitate" through down to the ground. It was messy, educational, and they loved it!

Speaking of precipitation--be prepared with the snowstorm that's coming our way, and stay safe! See y'all next week!

Myles' Special Me read-aloud!

Exploring precipitation

Having fun on our Shirley Canyon expedition!