Where to begin... I'm so behind on our blog between holidays and snow days and I truly apologize! Let's take a quick trip through memory lane and see all the fun winter had in store for us! 'Tis the SeasonChristmas is such a joyous season! We celebrated Jesus' birth by learning the real reason for the season. We decorated our table top Christmas trees and made delicious edible trees as well. We also had a lot of fun with our gingerbread STEM activity. Students had to help solve the gingerbread man's problem of not being able to cross the river by building a bridge to help him get to the other side. We also learned about how other countries around the world celebrate Christmas. Winter WonderlandAs we moved into January and the New England winter began to settle in, we had lots of fun exploring winter themes. We learned about Arctic animals and their habitats and adaptations. During one of our STEM lessons, we built animal habitats with marshmallows and toothpicks. We also learned how animals adapt to cold climates. We used a blubber glove to keep warm in icy waters. For another STEM unit, we practiced our measurement skills by building snowmen that had to be ten inches tall. It was so fun, but burrrr were our hands cold! Chinese New YearWe had so many celebrations this winter including: Mardi Gras, Valentine's Day, and the 100th Day of School. However, our favorite celebration was Chinese New Year! We got to explore China and learn some really exciting things like our zodiac signs, numbers 1-10, and how to use chopsticks. We even had a special guest that brought us treats, lucky money envelopes, and she taught us Chinese calligraphy. It was so much fun! Winter OlympicsThis year's winter Olympics was so exciting! We even had a special friend with us for two months from South Korea so learning about Korea was super fun! During the Olympics, we learned about other countries and about many winter sports. We ended our Olympic unit with the Kindergarten Olympics. Both kindergarten classes joined together and were placed in teams to represent different countries. We had an opening ceremony parade through the middle school hallway before beginning all of our exciting games. Everyone was a gold medal winner in the end!
Whew! Winter was lots of fun, but we are so excited for spring! If only the weather would warm up so it would actually feel like spring... Until next time...
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November was jam-packed full of fun and learning. We continued working on letter sounds, but began using those sounds to build words. We started a new morning challenge called "Give it a go..." to help us practice sounding out and writing words independently. It's so much fun and it has helped us grow so much as writers, readers, and thinkers. We have also continued to practice numbers by learning different ways to decompose those numbers. This has helped us build a great foundation for addition and subtraction. The month of November offered several thematic learning opportunities as well. We began our month by learning about American symbols. We discussed voting and how to become the president. We also discussed the important job of the president. During our America unit, we worked in small groups to research and present American symbols. We learned so much and used our writing skills to develop a report and we practiced our speaking and listening skills during our presentations. The rest of November focused on Thanksgiving. We learned the importance of giving thanks for all of our blessings. We collected green beans and sweet potatoes to share with those that may not have a Thanksgiving meal. We also learned about the very first Thanksgiving. We learned how the pilgrims set sail from England on the Mayflower and discovered a new land. Once they got to that land they met the Wampanoags. The Wampanoags taught the pilgrims how to hunt and farm. They became friends and shared the first Thanksgiving feast. During our learning adventures, we had many Thanksgiving themed centers. We also had a fun STEM activity in which we had to build a boat to transport the pilgrims across the Atlantic Ocean. During this lesson, we also practiced our map skills, which was super fun! We also created story bracelets to help us remember and retell the story of the first Thanksgiving. We even had a visit from the biggest turkey of all, Mr. Dave! He led us on a Kindergarten Thanksgiving Day parade and it was so much fun! As we move into the Christmas season, we will continue to count our blessings. We will also take a trip around the world to learn how Christmas is celebrated in other parts of the world. Happy Holidays, everyone! Until next time...
Happy Fall Y'all!!! It's my favorite time of year! Caution before you go any further: this is a LONG post! I've gotten a little behind on posting so this post will contain a lot of learning excitement for both September and October. Friendship Salad Let's go back to September... If you remember from the last post, our social studies focus was on building friendships and learning about friendship traits. We worked together to make some super yummy friendship treats! The following week, we continued this focus and made another yummy treat: FRIENDSHIP SALAD! Each student shared a different fruit. The bowl represented our classroom, the fruit represented our friends, the marshmallows represented our love for one another, and the yogurt represented the "glue" that sticks us all together. Ms. K and Ms. Amanda brought in yucky, rotten bananas but we did not add those to the salad. Rotten bananas would ruin our salad just like rotten friends have the ability to ruin some of our fun. Just say no to ROTTEN BANANAS! Alphabet Apple Orchard As we continued learning our letters, sounds, and numbers, we left bootcamp and made our way to the Alphabet Apple Orchard. We had so much fun learning about apples and Johnny Appleseed. We also learned how to write a recipe and made some yummy applesauce. Our room smelled DELICIOUS!!!! Fire Safety October is Fire Safety month. At the beginning of the year, during our Back to School Bootcamp drills, we learned what to do during a fire drill. During the month of October, we practiced those drills with the whole school and did a great job. We also had a visit from some really special guests, the Waltham Fire Department. They taught us what to do in case of a fire. The firefighters also brought us some super cool stickers and fire hats. During our Fire Safety week, we also learned some fun songs and shared fun stories about fire fighters. We learned to call 911 if there's ever and emergency. We also learned how important it is to ONLY call that number if there is an EMERGENCY. To end our Fire Safety unit, we made thank you notes for the firemen and had yummy campfire snacks! Camp Learn-A-Lot From the Alphabet Apple Orchard, we packed our bags and headed into the woods to Camp Learn-A-Lot, and let me say, we learned A LOT! We finished learning all of our letters, sounds, and numbers. We started to learn our sight words and color words. We practiced nursery rhymes to begin learning rhyming words. In math, we learned about 2D shapes and their attributes and we are already learning how to add. While we were in the woods, we learned about different animals, their habitats, and their traits/adaptations. We learned about nocturnal animals and did a study on bats and spiders. We also made foxes out of 2D shapes. To end our Camp Learn-A-Lot adventures, we reached our complement goal and celebrated with a day of reading and s'mores eating! Ms. K and Ms. Amanda set up a super cool, but kind of spooky, tent and invited a guest reader, Fly Guy, to read to us. It was so much fun! Camp Learn-A-Lot closed on Halloween day so we also had some fun and spooky science and math games to play and ended the day with a super fun costume parade and party. Jesse's dad also read us a spooky story! It was so much fun! And there you have it! So much learning fun jam-packed into 40 days of school! We are so excited to continue our learning adventures as we move into the holiday season. Until next time...
Wow! What a wonderful first two weeks of school! We have already done so much learning and have done a wonderful job practicing our routines and procedures. We have been practicing our letters and numbers. Many of us already know our letters, but it is important that we review as we are also learning letter sounds which will helps us with our reading and writing. Practicing proper formation of both letters and numbers is also very important and we have been practicing at school and for homework. Along with letters and numbers, we have been practicing writing our names with a capital letter at the beginning and the rest lowercase. This is such an important skill that will help us in our future writing endeavors. We have been completing a lot of anchor charts during our writer's workshop that have included classroom rules, how to be a good listener, and how to have good church behavior. We have also researched how to use our school supplies, too. Our social studies focus so far has been learning how to be a good friend. Here are a few highlights from this week: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a kindergarten favorite among alphabet books. On Friday, we read the story and built our very own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees for our first STEM activity. Students worked with partners to practice social skills and to problem solve. Their task was to build a coconut tree with different sized and shaped blocks and popsicle sticks. Once their tree was built, we tested to see how many letters their tree could hold. It was so much fun!!! Friendship Treats Another fun learning adventure was making our friendship treats! First, we discussed all of the things that make a good friend. Then we created a recipe. We used Lucky Charms, marshmallows, butter, and vanilla extract to work together to make friendship treats. At the end of the day, we got to enjoy our yummy treats! Adopt a Classroom Most importantly, over the last two weeks we raised money and sent school supplies to a school in Houston, TX that was directly affected by Hurricane Harvey. We raised over $500 and ordered supplies through Amazon. Some of the supplies we ordered included clear backpacks, crayons, glue sticks, primary notebooks, pencils, manilla paper, construction paper, bilingual books, and learning resources and games. We also included some small stuffed animals to make our new friends smile. We received a thank you email and picture of our friends, too. Their school district doesn't allow for pictures to show their faces but we were still excited to see them! Be sure to check out our photo gallery of all the fun things we have been doing and to see more pictures of the activities mentioned here. Until next time...
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Ms. KA Mississippi girl, teaching in a New England world. Archives
December 2017
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