Letters from our Grandparents

To practice writing a letter and to continue our study of maps and the world, we all wrote letters to our grandparents.  We asked that they send us a postcard to tell us about where they are from.  We have gotten postcards from all over the United States as well as 2 from Canada.  They have been so much fun to read!  Thank you grandparents for participating in this project with us!

Task Force

The other day we did some very cute Earth day pictures.  My idea was that they would hang in the classroom replacing the flags that had been up for a while.  Another student wanted them to hang up in the hallway though.  So...we decided to make this a great lesson in Shared Values which is an Imagine Schools philosophy.  One of the shared values is fun which says that in an organization it is important for everyone to have ownership and everyone to make decisions.  We have a decision maker board in our class and each kid has had a chance to make a decision this year but this time we took it a step further.  If something needs to be decided in our school, we form a task force that has a leader who chooses the decision maker and they talk amongst themselves about the decision and the decision maker seeks advice from others as well.  With guidance, the child who had a differing idea than me formed a task force and  appointed a decision maker who came to the decision that we should hang our pictures in the hallway so more people could see them.  It was awesome to see this shared value in action with the kindergartners!

Mystery Guest #1

We are starting "Mystery Guest Fridays" in our class.  Our first guest was Ms. Kim who came to read us a story and gave us some coloring pages.  It was so exciting to see the look on her daughter's face when she realized that her mom was the mystery guest!  The kids LOVED the story (it was The Three Little Pigs from the wolf's perspective.)  They also loved the coloring sheets afterwards.  Thanks Ms. Kim for being a fantastic first mystery guest!

 

Sewing

The other day I went to Michaels and purchased 10 large bags of Polyfil.  Of course this elicited lots of stares and questions as to why I needed with so much Polyfil.  My answer to everyone was "I am doing a sewing project with my kindergartners."  You would not have believed the looks of pity and concern I got.  One lady who was kind enough to help me pick up all of the Polyfil as it was blowing out of my basket and into the parking lot because of the wind said, "Oh, you must be a new teacher.  This will be your first and last sewing project I guarantee it."  Boy were they ever wrong.  The kids did an AWESOME job sewing.  I had a basket full of all kinds of fabric squares and the kids got to pick the 2 they wanted.  We learned all about the sewing machine and how to use it and the kids went to town.  Everybody's pillow turned out awesome and everyone had such a fun job doing it.  I will DEFINITELY be sewing with the kindergartners in the future!

Syllable Game

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have such a cool class.  The other day, 4 of the kids created a "syllable game" to practice syllables.  We all sat in a circle and one child had a clipboard with everyone's name on it.  They would pick a name, read it, the decide how many syllables it had.  They also had a cube and they would pass the cube 4 times if the name had 4 syllables, 3 times if it had 3, etc. Whoever the cube landed on got the clipboard and got to pick the next name.  Great job inventing another game, kindergarteners!

Bring Your Favorite Vegetable to School Party

I was so proud of the kids for this party.  All of the kids tried LOTS of vegetables.  Some they liked, some they didn't; but they tried them!  They also all tried a Brussels Sprout (or Russell Sprout as we call them in class.)  My poor brother...when we were young, my sister Audrey and I would call Brussels Sprouts "Russell Sprouts" after my brother Russell.  To this day he will still not eat a Brussels Sprout because of it.  He does secretly look forward to the annual call though when the kindergarteners call him and tell him that they are all eating Russell Sprouts!  This year we even got stickers that said "I ate a Russell Sprout" and we took a picture to send to him!

Spring Party

Ready, set, go! We had an egg hunt to celebrate spring and it was so much fun. The kids got to practice their counting by only finding 15 eggs. Some eggs were hidden very cleverly and required some climbing to get to them!

After hunting for the eggs, we got to go back inside and play with the toys in the eggs and eat some candy!

We then did a bunny craft with lots of cotton balls. It was super cute!

Finally, we went outside again and threw jelly bean "eggs" into the grass and hoped they would hatch. We hopped like bunnies around the whole school, did the chicken dance, and when we returned, there was a sucker in the place of our eggs!

Meteorologist

Meteorologist Mike Nelson came to our school last week to teach us about weather. You should ask your kids what they remember about weather balloons, the jet stream, and radio sondes! I know that I learned lots! We even got on the news:

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/video/30837113/index.html (Thanks Jason for the link!)

Planting Seeds

To learn about plants and what seeds need to grow, we planted our own seeds. We have soil and the kids water their seeds daily. They get sun on the windowsill and the kids talk to them to give them carbon dioxide! We are journaling what happens with our seeds each day. Lots of them are already growing!