Winter Wonderland

We are still in the midst of winter here in Ohio, and this year the weather has not disappointed with snow.  To celebrate this wonderful phenomenon, we made snowflakes, and hung them in the window at school.  We discussed how no two snowflakes are exactly alike, just like no two people are exactly alike.  On the Smartboard we made a bubble map of activities that we can do during the winter season.  Our snowflakes are hanging in hallway window, you can see them if you drive by the lot on our side of the building.

Click here for a copy of the newsletter this week.

Scarecrows

As we wrapped up fall season activities we discussed scarecrows, and their purpose of protecting crops for farmers.  We made tree maps to show what scarecrows can, have and are.  The class had fun doing our first glyph and freezing after each direction so that we didn't move ahead and color any pieces the wrong color.  The glyphs also made a great bulletin board.  (See the pictures below.)

Click here for a copy of our Scarecrow Tree Map

Click here for a copy of this week's newsletter

Wrapping Up Fire Safety

Since the end of the quarter assessments interrupted the last week of October, we wrapped up our Fire Safety unit this week.  We discussed making a plan with your family to include a Meeting Place in case there is a fire in your own home.  Then each child made a Fire Exit Map for their family.  We also made a fire truck craft to decorate our bulletin board with.

Click here for a copy of our class newsletter

A Colorful Second Week

We had a great week learning about colors!  To practice our names we stamped the letters in rainbow colors with bingo dotters.  Using scraps of construction paper we glued the colors in order to make rainbows.  Many of us have learned to read some of the color words by sight already!  Our class listened to lots of books about colors, including: My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr., and A Color of His Own by Leo Lioni.  Check out the picture to see our art work displayed on the bulletin board. 

Click here to view a copy of this week's class newsletter.

Welcome Back!

We had a wonderful first week of Kindergarten last week!  Each cutie that walked into our doors on Monday morning is going to be a great addition to our class this year.  I can't wait to see how much they all grow by June! 

For parents, below is a link to our first class newsletter.  This came home in your child's FROGS folder on Friday, and was put in the plastic sleeve.  We will keep all of the newsletters for the quarter in this sleeve, and then at the end of the quarter you can remove them and use the "What We Learned This Week" section to help your child review for assessments.  This will be repeated for each of the 4 quarters.

Let me know if there is anything specific you (parents or followers) would like to see featured on our blog this year.  Thanks for reading!

Click here to download our newsletter.

Popcorn Sight Words

I found these cute as can be Popcorn containers for only $1 at Deal$!! What a great motivator to encourage students to practice their sight words. A few days later I saw the post over at Kindergarten Whale Tales, where you can get a free game of Popcorn Sight Words! This was such great timing, now I have a game to play with my kinders that they love and think is fun, while they are practicing sight words! Plus it matches our bulletin board, bonus! Click the link to go to the blog and get your own Popcorn game.

http://kindergartenwhaletales.blogspot.com/2011/05/dollar-well-spent.html

President's Day

For president's day we learned that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were known for their honesty. We discussed the importance of always telling the truth - no matter what. Our bulletin board displays the silloheuttes of our past leaders - Washington and Lincoln - and our own silloheuttes as the leaders of the future. Seeing as how we have 30 silloheuttes up on the board, they would not all fit in the picture. We also discovered that the president's pictures are on the penny and the quarter. For a science experiment we predicted how many drops of water would fit on top of a penny and a quarter, then we used an eye dropper to find out the answer. This was a very fun experiment! We enjoyed learning about these important leaders of our past.

100th Day

Since some people have not be able to come into our class to view some of our fun projects that we did on the 100th day I wanted to post pictures of some so you can see them here, even though it was almost a month ago - where has a month gone??? What a fun, fun, fun day, even though it was delayed by 2 days due to our days off for snow. Of course everything we do on this day, we did in 100's. We practiced counting to 100 by 1's, 5's and 10's, did 100 exercises, wrote one letter of the alphabet 100 times, estimated how long it takes for 100 seconds to pass, chose an adjective to describe what we hope to be when we are 100 years old, created a school of 100 fish, made 100 day celebration crowns, and drew pictures of what we would look like when we reach the age of 100. Our bulletin board displays our 100 collections brought from home, and our ice cream cones with 10 scoops, which we used to count by 10's to reach 100. The second bulletin board shows our stars, on which we wrote and drew about an item we would like to have 100 of. Congratulations class on 100 great days of learning in Kindergarten!