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.

Letters P and J

Last week we focused on the letters P and J. The kids had a blast wearing their pajamas to school on Pajama Day. They have been very excited about the pajama drive, we collect and count them each day.

Some activities included:

Painting a Pretty Picture

Making Puzzles for our Partners

Creating a "new" jelly bean flavor

Brainstorming P and J words and then recording the sounds in the words

Searching for P and J words around the room. We call this activity "Write Around The Room"

Happy Thanksgiving from your kindergarten friends!!!

We made Friendship Turkeys this week. Each kid received 6 feathers from 6 different friends.