Sea Creature Handfuls and Ways to be Helpful

In Math today, we learned how to do a new workplace.  It is called Sea Creature Handfuls.  It teaches us  more about estimating.  You take a handful (or two) of the sea creatures from the tub.  Put them in a pile and estimate (or guess) how many you think there are.  Then you color in the ten frames on the worksheet to show how many you estimated.

Next, using the counting mats, you count to find out exactly how many sea creatures you pulled out.  Then you color in the ten frames to show how many sea creatures you had on the same worksheet.  

In Social Studies, our unit this week is called "How Can I Be A Good Helper At School?"  Miss Odeen read us the story "Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler" by Margery Cuyler.  In this story, the kids think it is cool to be rude and impolite.  Their teacher, Mrs. Ruler, convinces them that it is cooler to be kind.

After the story was done, we decided to write ways that we could be helpful.  It could be at school, at home or in the community.

When we were finished writing, we each shared our ideas.  Then we took a museum walk to admire everyone's pictures, too.  We discovered that we are good helpers at school, home and in the community!

Editing and Being Helpful

This morning, Miss Odeen read us a story.  It was a nonfiction story that she wrote about herself!  We learned some pretty cool stuff about her.

In Writing Workshop, we are learning to become editors.  Editors help writers by checking their writing.  They read through it and make sure the writer is using upper case letters, spaces and punctuation marks.

Miss Odeen read us a story called "Being Helpful".  Then we made a list of what being helpful looks like and sounds like.

  

Miss Odeen is also checking to see how well we can sort things.  We are having a great week!

Meet Miss Odeen

This is Miss Becki Odeen.  Miss Odeen is a senior from the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  She is majoring in Early Childhood and Elementary Education.  She is currently completing a Level Three Field Experience which is why she is with us.  Miss Odeen is originally from Tipton, Iowa and she is super excited to be in our classroom.   She will be with us all week.

While here, Miss Odeen will work with Mrs. Kurt to plan and teach specific lessons.  She will also spend time observing classroom management, procedures and routines.  In addition, she will have some experience working with the whole group as well as small groups of students.  She will also be here on Friday for our ImpactLives service learning event.

Please join me in welcoming Miss Odeen to Northview Elementary!

Snow Day Adventures and Story Problems

I hope everyone enjoyed their snow day yesterday.  It sure sounded like the kids had fun.  In fact, we wrote all about our "Snow Day Adventures" in Writing Workshop this morning.  Hopefully we will finish and share them tomorrow!

Our next order of business was to finish our group sea creature problems.  Again, we had to work together in a group and share responsibilities.  We know that this is a hard thing to do sometimes, but we worked hard and had fun!

  

Great job, everyone!

Dental Health and Working Together

We know that February is Dental Health Month.  But since it is such a short month and we had so many other events, like Valentines Day and the 100th Day, we decided to talk about it in March.  We made a toothbrushing chart.  Our goal is to do our best to brush our teeth every morning and every evening, even on the days that we are too tired!  We also talked about the fact that many of us have lost, or are losing, some of our baby teeth.  Losing teeth is a little scary, but it is fun when the Tooth Fairy stops by.

This is our new friend, Blake.  His first day in Kindergarten Plus was today and he did great!  We are so excited that he is part of our class and we look forward to getting to know him better.  Welcome, Blake!

We are finally getting to the end of our sea creature story problem activity.  Today, Mrs. Kurt had us work in groups.  As a group, we had to decide which sea creature we wanted to use, addition or subtraction, and the numbers.  Wow.  We found out that sometimes it is hard for everyone to agree!  We learned that when you work in a group, everyone has to contribute.  We also learned that we don't laugh at other people's ideas because we need to be respectful.  Most of all, we learned about compromising and being patient!

After our discussions, we started writing out our problems.  It was pretty cool to actually write a Math problem!

 When we finished our writing, Mrs. Kurt published our problems.  Now tomorrow, we will work as a team to make the pictures to go with the problems.  It is going to be fun to actually solve each other's problems!

The Cat in the Hat, Shoe Tying and Good Bye!

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss' birthday.  All week, we have been reading books written by Dr. Seuss in honor of his big day.  Today, we had our third grade buddies from Mr. Nylin's class help us make our own cat in the hat.  They were awesome helpers and it is so much fun to work with the big kids and learn from them!

 If we got done a little early, the third graders read to us!  We had such a fun morning!

 Here are the finished projects, hanging in our class room.  Thanks Mr. Nylin and the third graders!!

We had a visitor in our classroom this afternoon.  Mrs. Jackie Young is an Occupational Therapist that works for our school district.  She came to help us learn how to tie our shoes.  We discovered it is a little hard, but if we try and practice lots, we will be able to do it!  She let us practice and if we didn't have tie shoes, our friends that did have tie shoes shared with us.

We definitely all need to keep practicing this skill.  Any extra practice at home would be great!

It was time to say good bye to another one of our friends.  Today was Krishant's last day in our Kindergarten class.  He is moving.  We are going to miss his friendly smile and enthusiasm for learning.  We wish Krishant and his family all the best as they start off on their new adventure.  Keep in touch, Krishant!