Happy Thanksgiving from the Kindergarten Turkeys!

I am thankful for...

Being at Peirce School (CJ)

My Family (CA)

My Food (CK)

My mom and my dad (EL)

A mommy that lets me help her (EH)

Momma and Daddy (GG)

Mashed Potatoes (IB)

My dad (IC)

My family (JK)

Turkey on Thanksgiving (JR)

My mama (JB)

Chicken my mom makes (KH)

My Kindle Fire (KW)

My family (MB)

For not eating corn on Thanksgiving (QJ)

Mommy, Sophie and Daddy (RG)

Hand sanitizer that my dad got me (SM)

My family (SK)

The fence that keeps Bailey from running away (TF)

Hide and Seek in a tent (UD)

Ancient Egypt Props

Our class worked hard making the props for our adventures in Ancient Egypt.  Some of the highlights were painting pyramids and making the sandy desert ground.

Friendship Turkeys

This week we made friendship turkeys.  Each child made a feather for 4 of his/her friends.  This was a great community building activity, and the kids really enjoyed giving out the feathers that they made!

Planting Garlic!

Today we had lots of fun planting garlic in the science garden.  Thanks to Ella's dad for leading the activity.  

Castles, Knights and More!

This week we officially begin our Magic Tree House adventures.  We will be spending 3 weeks on each Magic Tree House book.  The first week we will build background knowledge and we keep very busy making props, props and more props.  The second and third weeks we read the Magic Tree House and dramatize the story.

In writing, the kids will write a fact sentence for the first week and write about Jack and Annie's adventures for the second and third weeks.

Today we were busy painting castles, making shields and crowns.

Three Little Pigs

This week's fairy tale is The Three Little Pigs.  On Monday, the students worked together on making props.  Below is a picture of the three houses that we made.  Each day, the kids dramatize the story with their group.

Home Activity: Have your child give each family member a role and act out the story together.

Mystery Question

Every morning the kids enter the classroom, put away their belongings and answer the mystery question.  This activity allows the kids to engage in conversation and figure out the question together.  It is a great opening activity to start the school day.  Each day, ask your child what the mystery question was and what his/her answer was.  

First Day of Kindergarten

Today was a great day in Rm. 115.  We got to meet some new friends, we played outside on the little playground, we played inside for free choice, we had library with Mrs. T.  I hope you found your child's kissing hand in his/her folder.  The kids enjoyed getting a little messy and making something extra special for you.  See you in the morning for Day #2!!

Welcome to Kindergarten

I would like to welcome everyone to our class!  This year will be filled with lots of fun and excitement for everyone.  I hope you are just as excited as I am to get this year started.  We will be kicking off the school year with a unit on fairy tales.  Welcome to Kindergarten!!!

Planting Flowers

On Thursday, the Kindergartners planted flowers in the large containers out front.  Thanks to Ms. Dorothy for organizing this!

Today we had a visit from the Mass Audubon Society and we learned about Plants and Pollination.  The program was very informative and fun for the kids.  This was a great introduction for our plant unit, which we will be starting when we return from April vacation.

 We worked as a class to make this beautiful mural of plants and pollinators.

The kids pretended to be bees and flowers.  The bees had fun spreading the pollen around!

Pajama Day for Dr. Seuss' Birthday

Today was a perfect day to be comfortable in our pajamas at school, with all the snow outside.  We had a blast celebrating Dr. Seuss' Birthday today.  We started the day eating green pancakes.  Breakfast was a success and almost everyone loved them.  Thanks to everyone who helped make the breakfast possible.

Some of the recent events in our classroom...

A belated Happy Valentine's Day to you.  Thanks to all the parents for making the Secret Valentine Message center a success.  The kids had a blast revealing the secret messages.

Happy Belated Chinese New Year!  

Happy 100th Day!!!  We had a blast celebrating the 100th day with lots of fun activities.



We painted 100 dots!

 









       We made pictures of what we will look like when we are 100 years old!







We worked in small groups and built structures with 100 cups!!!





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Martin Luther King

To teach the kids about Martin Luther King, we started with a simple egg experiment.  We had a brown egg and a white egg. 

 

 

 

 

I asked the kids to draw what they thought was inside the brown egg and the white egg.  We talked about our predictions.  A very interesting discussion =)

 

 

After drawing and discussing our predictions, we cracked open the eggs and saw that they were the same on the inside. 

 

 

Then we read a story about Martin Luther King, and I asked the kids to try and figure out what the egg experiment had to do with Martin Luther King.   One boy said, "Oh, I know!  The eggs looked different on the outside, but they were the same on the inside.  People can look different, but we are all the same too!" 

The science experiment went just as planned =)

Happy New Year!

Last month we learned about Winter Holidays Around the World; including Kwanzaa, Hannukah and Christmas.  This month we are moving on to Mittens and Winter.  The main focus of this unit is
The Mitten by Jan Brett.

Before the winter break, we finished up all the letters of the alphabet.  We are now moving on to Unit 3 in the fundations curriculum.  This unit introduces tapping words to read and write.  Please check in your child's folder for the Unit 3 information packet.

We will continue to practice writing lowercase letters with a handwriting review.  The kids like our new approach to handwriting.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays we review one letter.  I model writing the letter and then we write 5 together.  Then I play a song that goes along with the letter we are practicing, and the kid fill their boards while writing to the music.  This week's song was Allie Alligator for the letter "A". Lastly, we practice writing on lined paper.  The kids are really enjoying handwriting since we added music to the mix.

This week we read Snowment at Night .  We made snowmen, by ripping white paper. This was very challenging, but ended up being a very successful project.  We added a sentence to our project, which says what our snowmen like to do at night.

On Friday we made snowflakes with our 5th grade buddies, using white pattern block shapes.