Music, Dance and Movement In Kindergarten!

I hope you enjoy listening and watching your child/children during music class today. The children were using light, colored scarves and body movement to "dance"/"move" to the music.

Counting By 10's!

This afternoon we created ducks in a row! Each duck represents a group of ten! We practiced counting by 10's with a math partner. Lots of fun!

Poetry In Kindergarten!

We have begun a new writing study! We are reading, listening and writing poetry. Miss Post shared a few of her favorite poems with us and then we had an opportunity to look and read other poems. The SMARTboard was great because we were able to highlight words that rhymed! Lots of fun!

Ms. Sumner Visits Kindergarten With Pumsy!

This afternoon Mrs. Sumner visited Kindergarten. She talked to us about things that we can do with a friend. Afterwards we did some role playing about "How To" invite a friend to do an activity.

All About Birds!

We have ended our study of birds, but hope that you will continue to look for sightings of birds where ever you go! Today your child will be bringing home their Bird Habitats! Each child will also have their own pair of binoculars as well to use when bird watching. Have Fun!

A Quilt of Birds!

Today we each created our very own bird square! Each square is a bird in it's habitat. Then a small group of children discovered how to make rows and columns of squares to make a quilt! Wow! Great math thinking happening in Kindergarten.

Friendship!

This morning Mrs. Sumner came to Kindergarten. She brought her friend, "Pumsy" the dragon puppet. We looked at some pictures of children making good and not so good friendship decisions.
We discussed:

How friends help us
*ask someone to play
*listen to us
*share
*have fun
*smile

How friends hurt our feelings
*say things that make us sad
*ignore us
*leave us out
*being "bossy"
*using an angry voice

Mrs. Sumner read us a great story about Lucy. The story is called: Lucy and the Bully.

*** It is important to use an "I message and it's up to us to be a good friend.***

Problem Solving With Baby Chicks!

This afternoon we worked VERY hard on a math problem solver about baby chicks. A mother chicken laid 8 eggs and we had to discover how many eyes were looking at the mother after they hatched. Wow! We shared different counting strategies and discovered that counting by 2's was the quickest way to help us find our solution. The children are amazing and are so confident sharing their math strategies. The SMARTboard is a great tool that helps the children interact with their mathematical ideas. ****Remember you can click on any photo and it will enlarge! This way you can get a closer look at what we do when we solve problems in Kindergarten.******

Wow! Look What Happened With Our Tag Readers!

This morning during Reader's Workshop some of the children were reading with their tag pens and headphones, but I noticed that they were reading the words out loud by themselves with no audio. Wow! What a wonderful transformation!

Creating Birds With Cool Technology Programs

The children created their own bird using a program called, PAINT. The program has lots of different drawing tools so the children could change the lines, shapes and colors as they created their bird. We are also working on creating an Animationish of a bird! We will share this with you soon. You can also go to the Animationish website by clicking on Animationish under the Favorite Links section on our classroom blog.

What Do You Do With A Counting Rope?

Listen to what one of the children wanted to share! He even asked if he could make a video clip of his math observation! Wonderful!

Math Stations!

This afternoon we worked in many different math stations. The stations are set up for us to work independently in while working with a math concept. Be sure to ask your child what they worked with today!

Creating Birds Using Pattern Block Shapes!

During one of our math station activities each child was able to use different shapes to create a bird in it's habitat. Nice work!

Writer's Workshop! "All About" Bird Books!

The children created a brainstorming map about birds today. We brainstormed special features and characteristics that all birds have. The children then started creating picture frames of their ideas. Wonderful writing!

Birds! Birds! Birds!

This morning the children worked in partnerships and talked about the special features and characteristics that birds have. Afterwards the children were given a bird to examine and then talk about the features and characteristics that they noticed about their bird. Next the children worked in a writing partnership and wrote down the characteristics that all birds have. Wow! Lots of fun and some great writing!

How We Made A Difference!

This morning the children counted 200 books that our classroom collected to support Read Across America! The books we collected will be donated to local organizations to help provide more books in homes for children.

We collected over 200 books! The children sorted the books into groups of 5! We counted by 5's to come up with our total. Great example of how oral counting can be used to solve a group problem!

Ms. Lauren worked with a small group of children this morning and wrote a piece of writing about our efforts for the Blue and Gold Newspaper. Great Job Everyone!

Counting Ropes!

What fun we had this afternoon. We are practicing counting orally as well as creating single and double digit numbers. Each child has a counting rope with 100 beads on it. Each group of 10 is one color. The children count out loud as well as to themselves. I asked the children to show/represent a specific number on their counting rope. Great activity. We now have another mathematical tool that we can use to count with!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Today we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday. He was born in 1904! Try to figure out how old he would be today with your child! We enjoyed reading many of his books and we even had a special cake!