Rainy Days and Indoor Recess

April showers,

Bring

May flowers!

At least that is how the saying goes.  However, it would appear that we are in for a long haul of indoor recess.  Usually when we have indoor recess, we get to play in the gym.  But this week, the staging is all set up for the First Grade Music Program on Thursday so there is not as much room to run around.  So, being the Super Flex bunch that we are, we tried something new for indoor recess.  We played games!

Each table had a game or two that the kids could play.  We had Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Connect Four, Jenga, Cootie, Hungry, Hungry Hippo, Crocodile Dentist, just to name a few.  It was something different for the kids but they were so flexible and did a great job!

   

   

   

Kindergarten Plates and Incubators

Big day in Kindergarten…the plates arrived!  They should have come home in your child's back pack today.  There is a sticker on the back of the plate with directions on how to take care of it.  Enjoy!

Our next Science unit is Animals 2 x 2.  We started preparing for this today by setting up our class incubator.  The incubator is home to the six eggs we will attempt to hatch successfully, somewhere on or close to May 20.  The incubator sits on the counter near the sink in our classroom and needs to be kept at 97 degrees.  The yellow rack you see inside the incubator is the egg turner.

   

We learned that the purpose of the incubator is to keep the eggs warm so they can hatch.  It takes eggs 21 days to hatch, so we are going to learn lots about being patient!  We put water in a trough in the bottom of the incubator to keep the humidity levels up.  We took some time to let everyone look inside and see what it looks like.  Tomorrow when we get to school, there will be six eggs inside!

   

After we learned about the incubator, we decided to make a K-W-L chart about the chicks.  K-W-L stands for what we already know; what we want to learn (or wondering about) and what we did learn.  Today we worked on the first two parts…what we already know and what we want to know, or what we are wondering about.  Here is what we came up with:

   

Our Science unit includes learning about goldfish and guppies and pill bugs and sow bugs.  It is going to be an exciting month of May!!  Stay tuned...

School Spirit Day

We continue to work on our guided reading each week in school.  We are all becoming pretty strong readers!

   

We also made some nice litter bags to go along with our theme of taking care of the earth.

   

Today was also a School Spirit Day.  Now, school spirit is not usually something this Kindergarten class is short of.  Today we showed our school spirit by supporting the Minnesota Twins!

Have a great weekend!

Earth Day

Tuesday April 22 was Earth Day.  We read stories about Earth Day and discussed ways that we can help take care of the earth.  We discovered that even five and six year olds can help take care of the earth.  We read the story The Earth and I by Frank Asch.  The story talks about how when the earth is happy, we feel happy and when the earth is sad, we feel sad.

Next, we brainstormed a list of ideas that we can do to help take care of the earth.  We came up with some great ideas!

For Writer's Workshop, we each wrote about what we would do to help take care of the earth.  First we wrote a sloppy copy.  We fancied up our writing and copied it on to a neat sheet.  Then we started to put the project together!  We got a piece of blue paper with a circle on it.  Mrs. Kurt painted one of our hands green and we made a handprint in the center of the circle.

   

   

When the paint was dry, we cut out the circle and glued it to the top of a large sheet of green paper.  Then we glued our neat sheet on to the bottom.  They turned out really well and we did a good job.  

  

   

   

We learned that even though we may be little and young, you are never too young to learn good habits to help take care of our planet!

Where Am I In The World?

In Social Studies, we are learning about where we are in the world.  We are part of a community.  Last Friday when Ms. Arboe was here, we read a story about communities.  We brainstormed a list of things that we would find in a community.

   

Then we each got to choose a place in the community and draw it on a huge piece of white paper.  We worked together to create "Our Community".  It was great to see us all working together and each doing our own part of the community.

   

We really do accomplish great things when we all work together!

Coloring Eggs

Today we had the opportunity to learn about coloring eggs with a special guest.  Mrs. Sarah Wall, Elizabeth's mom, came and taught us about dyeing eggs by using natural ingredients.  She created dye for the eggs by using red cabbage, blueberries and tumeric.

   

She showed us some eggs that she and her daughters had already dyed at home.  The colors were really cool!

   

Then we each got an egg and got to choose which dye we wanted to put the egg in to.

We had to put the eggs in the dye carefully so they did not break.

   

We were able to leave the eggs sit in the dye overnight.  Mrs. Wall put them in the refrigerator for us.  Tomorrow we will get to take them out of the dye and bring them home.  Thanks, Mrs. Wall, for showing us some cool science today!!