Thursday, February 27, 2014

The 100th Day of Kindergarten…Finally!

Well, we finally made it to the 100th day of Kindergarten.  It was a busy and exciting day!  We started out by sharing our bags of 100 items during Sharing Time.  We brought in lots of different things and it was interesting to see that 100 items don't always take up the same amount of space.  In fact, Kailee S.  commented that she expected her beads to fill up the entire ziploc bag…but they didn't!


Next it was time to complete our 100 Activities for the 100th Day of School.  We each had to go to ten stations and at each station, we had to do ten things, like write our names, put ten stickers on a page, make ten tally marks, etc.  When we finished, we made it in to a book!

   

   


We also had a Guest Reader, Mr. Ryan Ellingson.  He was Charlie's special guest!

   

Following our Yoga Calm class with Mrs. Haldeman, we did a fun 100th day team building activity.  Mrs. Kurt put us into five groups and gave each group 100 plastic cups.  Our job was to work together to create a structure.  As you might imagine, it was a little chaotic but we did a good job working together!

   

   







Wednesday, February 26, 2014

More I Love to Read

We continue with our "I Love To Read" activities as we wind down the month of February!  Our guest reader on Tuesday was Tyler's mom, Natalie Mrozinski.  Tyler's little brother, Brody, joined us as well!


   

On Tuesday afternoon, we read with our third grade buddies from Ms. Elsen's class.  We also had a healthy snack, which was provided by the Northview Student Council.  We had planned to do this last Friday, but since we had a snow day, we postponed it until Tuesday afternoon.  

   

   

   



Yoga Calm with Mrs. Haldeman

We were lucky enough today to have a special visitor in our classroom.  Mrs. Pam Haldeman, our interim principal, came and taught us about Yoga Calm.  Mrs. Haldeman is a certified Yoga Calm instructor and is teaching us how to be ready for learning in our classroom.

Mrs. Haldeman talked to us about positive self talk and we practiced this.  These principles help us to know that we can have a good, positive attitude and that it really does help us to listen and learn.

   

She taught us about our breathing.

   

She also taught us some really cool yoga poses…mountain pose, tree pose and forward fold!

    

   

We really enjoyed Mrs. Haldeman's visit and look forward to having her teach us more about Yoga Calm.  In fact, she is even teaching our teachers at Northview all about it.  Thank you, Mrs. Haldeman!!






Thursday, February 20, 2014

Creating Story Problems

In Math, we are learning to work together in groups to create story problems.  Mrs. Kurt divided us into five groups and each group was assigned a sea creature to create a story problem about.  We really needed to work together as a group for this job and that was a little bit hard for some of us.  We are learning how to work in groups and to be respectful of other student's ideas and feelings when we do this.  In fact, by doing this assignment, we saw how when we work together in groups, we use many of the same problem solving steps we learned in Social Studies…we had to talk and listen, think of ways to solve the problem, agree on a plan and try it.

   

   


When we agreed on a plan (or problem), then each group got to act it out.  For example, our story problem may have been something like this:  There were two whales playing in the ocean.  Three more whales came to play with them.  How many whales are there now?  Here are our groups...


Baby Whales:  Sophia, Kai, Liam, and Elizabeth.


Adult Whales:  Maddox, Ryan, Landis, Chloe and Nadia.


Seal Pups:  Alan, Kai, Mahi and Kailee.


Adult Seals:   Charlie, Liam, Kate, Abbi and Jacob.


Hungry Sharks:  Ryan, Tyler, Kaylie and Sophie.

I was really proud of my kids, especially since they had never tried anything like this before.  They did an excellent job of working together.  Next week we will create and illustrate even more story problems.  Stay tuned!

   

We had another special guest reader today.  Mr. Bob Frank, Liam's dad, came and read us the story I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen.  We really enjoyed this story!

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Reading, Reading and More Reading!

You can sure tell it is "I Love To Read" Month at Northview Elementary School.  There is so much reading going on it is unbelievable!

   

On Tuesday, our guest reader was Mrs. Sutherlin, Sophia's mom!

   


We are all busy working hard on our Guided Reading.  We are trying to be sure we all get to bring at least one book home each week.  Be sure to listen to us read the stories at home and sign the paper before you return it to school so we can bring home another one to practice!

Today was our Black Out Day.  We wore black clothes and brought flashlights to school to remind us to turn off devices, like video games, iPads and computers and take some time to READ!  We all found a cozy spot around the room and got to work READING!

   

   

   


We had another great Guest Reader today…Mr. Chad Stiernagle, Chloe's dad.  Love having our guest readers come and share their love of reading with us!