May Baskets and Fish

Today we finished our last service learning project for Kindergarten.  All of the Kindergarten classes at Northview made May Baskets for the residents of the Augustana Emerald Crest Memory Care Unit in Burnsville.  You may remember that we made place mats for them for Thanksgiving last November.  We worked hard on these baskets and wrote each of the residents a note wishing them Happy May Day.  We even sent them some Hershey kisses for the baskets.  We hope that they enjoy these baskets and that it helps to brighten their day!

  

We are learning about fish in Science this week.  We will focus specifically on goldfish and guppies.  We are reading lots of fiction and nonfiction stories about fish.

We are even incorporating our fish theme into our new writing unit.  We are learning about writing "How To" stories.  The first how to story we are writing together as a group is titled "How To Set Up A Fish Tank" which is really cool because we are setting up fish tanks in our classroom for the goldfish and guppies!

This afternoon, we made paper aquariums.  They turned out pretty well!

  

Did you know our Kindergarten plates have arrived?  We were super excited about them!

Meeting Mrs. Hannon and DEAR Time

Today we got to meet a special new person at Northview...Mrs. Hannon.  As you already know, our principal, Mrs. Carl, is recuperating from her recent knee replacement surgery.  Since she will be out for at least four weeks, we have a guest principal.  Her name is Mrs. Lisa Hannon.

Mrs. Hannon is actually a retired principal from District 196, but she is really excited to be back working with kids and teachers.  She visited our classroom this afternoon so we could get to know her. She loves maps and she showed us the route she drove back to Minnesota from Texas last week so she could meet all of us!

Then she read us one of her favorite stories..."Corduroy" by Don Freeman.  We were so excited because we love Corduroy.  Mrs. Hannon is really nice...and we noticed she is really tall!  We are so glad she is at Northview and we hope she comes to visit us more while she is with us.  Welcome to Northview, Mrs. Hannon!

  

Today was another all school DEAR time.  We were paired up with Mr. Nylin's third grade class.  The third graders read books to us and then the most exciting part...we read books to them!!!
It was so exciting and we all felt so proud reading to third graders.

  

  

Have a great weekend!

Neighborhoods

This week, we are learning all about neighborhoods.  We learned that although our neighborhoods may be different, there are many things in our neighborhoods that are the same.  We read the story "Franklin's Neighborhood".  In this story, Franklin the turtle has a homework assignment to write about his favorite part of his neighborhood.  This is a hard assignment for Franklin because he discovers he likes so many things!  In the end, he drew a picture of all the people in his neighborhood because he thinks the people are the most important part of his neighborhood!

After we read the story, we brainstormed a list of ideas that tell the things we might find in our own neighborhoods.  We have some great ideas!

We continue to do lots of Guided Reading.  We are becoming such great readers and we love being able to read on our own!

  

Another Snowy Day

We started our new Social Studies unit on neighborhoods today.  We watched a video called "What is a Community?"  

  

You know, living in Minnesota makes us love our winters.  We love playing in the snow!  But I think even my Kindergartners are getting tired of all this winter wear.  We are hoping for this snow to melt and spring to arrive...soon!

  

  

  

Kindergarten rocks!!

Art Adventure

This was the view from our classroom on Thursday afternoon.

On Friday morning, Mrs. Cheryl Neeser visited our classroom for Art Adventure.  This is a program funded by the Northview PTO.  Volunteers are trained at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and then come in to our classroom to teach us about pieces of art that are on display at the Institute.  The theme was Family, Friends or Foe.  If you get a chance, check out the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Admission is free!

  

We did more team building with our Math work stations.

  

Just some photos from the week...

  

Our silly faces with Granny Goose!

  

Monday, April 22, is Earth Day!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Severe Weather Awareness and Community Building

I know.  It doesn't look or feel much like spring.  However, it is Severe Weather Awareness Week in Minnesota so this afternoon we had a severe weather drill at school.  As you might imagine, it is not a very comfortable position.

  

We talked lots about the importance of knowing what to do at school just in case there is ever severe weather.  The kids really did a great job and seemed to understand why we practiced.  Please use this opportunity to chat with your child(ren) about what to do at home in the event of bad weather.

In our post yesterday, I mentioned we would be spending more time on community building.  We made some changes in the classroom...we moved tables, got new assigned seats and began calling our tables "teams"...for example, instead of the red table, it is now the red team.

One of our team building activities included spending three minutes talking with our writing partners.  Our job was to learn one new thing about our partner and then share it with the class.  Although we have been together for 136 days, we learned lots of new things about each other.  Each pair got to stand up and introduce each other and tell the class the one thing they learned.

  

We learned things like Ethan loves basketball; Sammy's favorite sport is bowling; Madi loves cotton candy ice cream and watermelon; Logan likes to play Angry Birds; Andrew likes chocolate cake...the list goes on and on!  It was fun to learn new things about each other.

Since the weather was not so good, we had another inside recess day.  Our teams each had a large piece of paper and they started working on a poster that would represent their team.  They are not quite done yet so maybe we will work on them again tomorrow.  It was great to see that teamwork happening in our room again!

  

   

 

It was another good day in Kindergarten Plus!