SPRINGing into Action!

Decorating recyclable containers for Earth Day

Earth Day is every day--that was a focus for kindergarten this week. From taking old yogurt containers and decorating them to replant our bean sprouts in, to cleaning up trash around our campus and on our Shirley Canyon hike this Thursday, I am so proud of this group of young activists. On Monday, more than one students shared that their favorite part of the day was cleaning up around our campus and classroom to help the earth. One of our students spied trash on the ground during our hike, and another student said to them, "Yay! You're helping save the earth!" Well done!

Other highlights of the week included starting a new read aloud picture story book about pioneers on the Oregon Trail. As this was how settlers ended up in the Tahoe area, it fits in well with our history unit. Students compared and contrasted how kids used to grow up long ago in colonial America, as well as during the westward expansion time. They were surprised to learn that, long ago in the 1700's, children weren't able to attend school unless their parents were very wealthy, and if parents didn't have an education, their children were likely to also not receive an education. What an amazing gift we have with free education for ALL students today, regardless of socioeconomic status!

Old Fashioned Vegas dress-up day

As spring unfurls into full bloom, students' energy and excitement for being outside increases. They greatly enjoyed being outside for Old Style Vegas Day pictures on Wednesday, as well as playing outside for our CHOICE time on Monday. They quickly and eagerly grouped up to play a tag game. A parent this week commented on what an adventurous and overall cooperative group this is, and I must agree! Overall, it's been amazing to see them start to blossom into caring and cooperative little humans. That's what kindergarten is all about!

Harvest of the Month!

Time to hit the California Trail!

Adventurers

Explorers

Seeds of Knowledge

Welcome back after a wonderful Spring Break! This week was all about plants, plants, plants. We reviewed and added to our knowledge that we gathered before Spring Break about the plant life cycle and how to plant seeds. The kids were highly motivated and loved talking about what they already know about plants and how to take care of them. It's awesome to see how many of them have had planting experience before, and I hope that this serves as a really good I.S. project for the rest of the year!

Subtraction Stories

We also introduced subtraction this week, and the students really seemed to enjoy it. We told subtraction stories, talked about what subtraction means (to "take away"), and did lots of practice problems with books, manipulatives, and pictures. It was a great introduction! I love seeing the kids' growth in math this year. 

Our Giving Tree

This week, we also focused on kindness to each other and to the earth. We read The Giving Tree, and discussed ways we can be kinder to each other and give to one another. They also read this book in Spanish with Ms. Monica! What a cool cross-language experience. 

Finally, we ended the week with a bang--repurposing old t-shirts into reusable bags. Almost the whole school was there to cut the t-shirts and tie them into bags. Students paired up with their book buddies, which they enjoyed! It was fun to be out in the sun, and doing something to help our planet! SO excited to see this spring weather! Enjoy the weekend everyone!

Planting!

Annnnd Break!

It's such a joy to be writing this from sunny Los Angeles this morning, and I hope everyone is enjoying their day wherever they are! Although this week was filled with heightened emotions and excitement for Spring Break, we still conquered our learning this week! Students learned about the life cycle of plants, as well as what plants need in order to grow, through fun music, songs, activities, and a version of rock, paper, scissors where the winner becomes the next part of the plant growth process, and the loser goes back down a step in the plant life cycle. Ask your kindergartener about it--they had a blast!

We tried new math games with addition this week, and I introduced a game called "tap it" with letter blends. I would say a word, and students would tap the letter blend they heard at the beginning of the word. Soon we will move on to digraphs, but we will continue to play "tap it" with both blends and digraphs. Students love it and are very engaged.

A final highlight this week was inviting in one of our students' younger brothers, who has Cerebral Palsey. She showed the class how his "gait trainer" works, and the kindergarteners were full of all kinds of questions about what Cerebral Palsey is, how he uses the gait trainer, and what all the different levers and knobs did. They were fascinated, and a very captive audience. What an awesome way to introduce them to kids with special needs so that they feel comfortable asking questions, and so that they can begin to understand how to be compassionate and understanding of kids with special needs.

I hope that everyone has a safe and restful Spring Break, wherever you are! I will be off the grid from Saturday to Saturday, and will be trying my best to not be connected to technology. Whether you're staying in the Tahoe area, or going elsewhere, enjoy the time and the break and don't forget to spend time together as a family! See you all in mid-April!

Plant Life Cycle "Rock Paper Scissors" Game

Tissue Paper "Stained Glass" artwork

Learning about Cerebral Palsey

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!