Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Look at how many high frequency words these kindergartners recognize!  They are getting so good at that!

We read a fun story called Clever Tom and the Leprechaun by Linda Schute.  Clever Tom caught himself a leprechaun and he was just sure he would have his fortune soon.  The leprechaun had a different idea…ask you kindergartner what happened in the story!

   

We cut out some very funny looking ears that were made out of green paper.  We weren't sure about what they were for, but Mrs. Kurt told us to be patient because we would find out later in the day!

   

   

We did a fun shamrock sheet, too.  Then we had a visit from one of our most favorite leprechauns of all…Mr. Ball!  He even had some funny green ears on, and then we knew why we had cut out the ears earlier in the day.  We all put them on and posed for a class photo...

…and of course we had to take one with our silly faces, too!

These are some of the cutest leprechauns I have ever seen.  Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!!

A Busy Week in Kindergarten

It was a busy week in Kindergarten!  

   

We learned a new Math activity called Roll and Build.

   

We are working on our problem solving skills in our Math Notebooks.

   

   

We did lots of Guided Reading and writing in Writer's Workshop!

   

   

We worked on our Math work places.

   

   

We continued our study of Materials in Our World by observing different types of fabric.  It was a busy but fun week in Kindergarten!

Golden Shoe Award

Wednesday was a pretty proud day.  We earned "The Golden Shoe" award from Mr. Nelson and Mrs. Mueller.  This golden shoe is awarded to the class that consistently arrives at P.E. ready to listen and learn.  Another criteria to win this award is that most of the students remember to wear their gym shoes on gym day, which is cycle day 2 for us.  As you can see, we felt pretty proud of this accomplishment!

Recycling Paper

The is week, our kindergarten scientists had the opportunity to make recycled paper.  There are lots of steps involved in this recycling process, so we began the process on Tuesday and finished it on Wednesday.  We started by taking 8 squares of toilet paper and tearing them up into very small pieces.  We then put all the small pieces in a plastic jar and waited until Wednesday morning to see what was next!

   

   

We were so excited to get going on this on Wednesday morning.  We quickly got our safety glasses and lab coats on and got to work.  We added water to the plastic bottles, placed a lid on them and had to shake the bottles.  This doesn't seem like it would be hard…but it was as we had to shake the contents of the bottles for ten minutes.  Our arms got tired!!

   

   

   

Our next step was to get the paper pulp out of the bottles.  We each got a small plastic tub and put a screen on top of it.  Then we dumped the contents of the bottles onto the screen.  The pulp stayed on top of the screen and any water went through the screen, into the tub.

   

Then we placed another screen on top of the pulp and squeezed out as much excess water as we could. We also used sponges to blot out the extra water.

   

   

If the recycled paper was dry enough, it would peel off of the screen easily.  If ti was still too wet, then we used our plastic bottles like a rolling pin to squeeze out even more water!

Next we needed to get a piece of wax paper to put our recycled paper on to dry overnight.

   

This is what it looked like!  Then we had to do what all scientists have to do…clean up!

   

WE did a little more investigating today with different types of paper and we learned what happens when you add water to certain types of paper.  Paper towel absorbs water…wax paper repels water.  You should ask your kindergartner what absorb and repel mean!

Next week…fabric!