Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Grouchy Ladybug and Boa Constrictors

Our Unit of Study on Eric Carle is coming to a close.  As a culminating activity, we are reading The Grouchy Ladybug, making our own grouchy ladybugs and creating a timeline about the story.


In the story, the grouchy ladybug meets up with a boa constrictor at 12:00.  As you might imagine, the kindergartners became focused on the boa constrictor and had lots of questions about them in general.  Well, we decided to do some research and just go with it.  


We started out by googling boa constrictors.  We landed on the National Geographic for Kids site, which was interesting…we saw lots of photos and learned a few facts about boa constrictors, such as they live in tropical climates in Central and South America; they are not poisonous; their prey includes rats, birds, monkeys, and wild pigs, and they swallow their prey whole!  An adult boa can weigh more than 100 pounds and can grow to be up to 18 feet long.  We watched a short video about the snakes, too.  But we still had a question…how long is 18 feet?  We decided to find out.

   

We headed out to the hallway with some masking tape and a yard stick.  


We put a piece of tape on the floor to use as a starting point.  Then we used the yard stick and some classmates to measure off 18 feet.  When we got to 18 feet, we put another piece of tape at that spot.


It seemed like a long way, but we still weren't sure we really understood. Next, we decided to see how many students it would take to make 18 feet.

   


It took about five students laying on the floor all in a row to make 18 feet.  On Monday we will continue reading The Grouchy Ladybug and work on finishing our other ladybug projects.  We will post more photos next week.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

The 100th Day of Kindergarten

Today was the 100th day of Kindergarten and we celebrated the occasion in style!  We made 100th day headbands, completed 100 activities, watched a movie about the 100th day of school, counted to 100 by tens and fives, and created structures using 100 cups.  We had a great day and we hope you enjoy seeing some photos of our fun time.

   

   


   

   

   

   

   
  
   

   

   

   


Happy 100th Day of Kindergarten!!!

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Happy Valentine's Day!

Although we did not have school on Valentine's Day, we managed to squeeze in a few Valentine's Day projects!

   

We made a really cool hanging heart valentine to decorate our classroom.

   

We learned how to draw a heart.  Then we drew a heart and finger painted it with white paint.  We made Valentine bingo cards, played Valentine bingo and exchanged Valentine cards with our friends.  It was a really fun time in our classroom!

   

   

   

Happy Valentine's Day!

   





Art Adventure

On Wednesday, we had a special visitor.  Mrs. Josie Hurka, Claire's mom, came to our class for Art Adventure.  Art Adventure is a program sponsored by the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Volunteers are trained at the Art Institute and then they come to classrooms throughout the metro area to teach students about the art on display at the institute.  Our session was about dressing for special occasions and we learned lots about the four art examples Mrs. Hurka showed us!

   

   

It was really cool to see these pieces of art.  Mrs. Hurka used our SMART Board to show them to us so we could all see them better.  If you'd like to see these and other pieces of art on display, consider visiting the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Admission is free and it is a great place to visit.  Special thanks also to the Northview PTO for supporting this program for our school.





Friday, February 6, 2015

Sock Snowmen

For sure, one of the highlights of this week was making our sock snowmen with the third graders from Ms. Elsen's class.  We each worked with a third grade buddy to make a really cute snowman.  This was really fun for us but also for the third graders, because they did this project when they were in Kindergarten.  Mrs. Kurt enjoyed having some of her former students back in her room to be the "teachers" for our kindergartners!