Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

We decided today would be a good day to see if we could read 100 books at school.  100 is a pretty big number and we were not sure we could do this all in one day.  We each chose some just right books and got started.  After we read a book, we wrote the title of the book on a heart and put it in a basket.  By Math (which is just before recess) we counted the hearts and discovered we had already read 78 books as a class!  We did some figuring and found out we only needed to read 22 more.  Now, we had two friends home sick today, which meant we had 21 students in class today.  Maggie came up with a great idea...why don't we each read one book right after lunch?  Then we would only need 1 more.  

It was a great idea.  We did it and it worked.  We even added the story Mrs. Kurt read to us this morning, which put us right at 100.  It took us a while, but we did it.  We felt so proud.  Now, wait until you see what we do with all of those hearts...  

Can you believe we even had heart shaped chicken nuggets and heart shaped cookies for lunch today?

Our book exchange was a huge success!  Everyone got a new treasure to bring home and enjoy.

Then we played Valentine bingo.  We were pretty serious about it!

And for a special Valentine snack, we had cuties.  Mrs. Kurt said that the cuties were eating cuties!!

What a fun day.  I hope everyone is resting up for tomorrow...the 100th Day of Kindergarten!!!

Getting Ready...

This is such a busy week!  Today, we celebrated two birthdays (and we have another one on Friday).  

We are busy getting ready for two more pretty special days this week...Valentine's Day and International Book Exchange Day on Thursday and the 100th Day of School on Friday!

We made Valentine Bingo cards.  We will use these tomorrow afternoon after we exchange books with our friends.

We also made some pretty sweet 100th day crowns that we will wear on Friday.

February is "I Love To Read" month at Northview.  Today we were visited by two Eagan High School  boys hockey players, Max Elsenheimer and Zach Schultz.  Max read us "Clifford's First Valentines Day" and he told us that when he was in Kindergarten, he loved Clifford books.  It was so cool to see high school hockey players and hear how they love reading, too!

Sea Creature Story Problems

In Math, we will soon be working together in groups to create story problems about sea creatures.  Before we do this, we are going to practice by acting out some problems.  Today we got to choose which sea creature we wanted to be in the problems.  Our choices were mother whale, whale calf, mother seal, seal pup or hungry shark.  When we made out choice, we got a picture of the creature, wrote our name on it, decorated it and added it to a class graph.  Then we decorated the sea creatures to make necklaces for our "costumes".  Since we still had six friends out sick today, we will hopefully finish this tomorrow.  We want to be sure everyone gets to have a part in our dramas!

In Art, Ms. Sunderland is teaching us about texture.  We were able to find different textures in and around the Art room and used crayons to make rubbings.  We did a museum walk of the papers we created when we got back to our classroom so everyone could see each other's cool work.

Remember how we practiced making hearts yesterday?  Well, today we drew hearts and finger painted them for Valentine's Day!

What's the News?

Every Monday, during our Morning Meeting, we participate in an activity called "What's the News?"  Each person in our class has an opportunity to share or tell us something about their weekend, or in this case, extended weekend.  We usually sit on the black line and Mrs. Kurt greets us and asks us "What's the News?"  Then we share our news.  Today, we did something different.  Each of us had a turn to sit       in Mrs. Kurt's rocking chair to share with our friends.  We love sitting in the rocking chair and we are getting more comfortable speaking in front of our peers.  We had lots to share, too!

Valentine's Day is quickly approaching.  We are busy making a special Valentine for our parents.  We are also learning (and practicing) how to make hearts for a special project we will do tomorrow.  Some of us are learning how to play checkers during Free Choice Time.

It was another good day in Kindergarten Plus!

Field Trip

We went on our first field trip on Wednesday.  We saw the play "Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly" at Stages Theater in Hopkins.  It was a long bus ride, but we had a great time.  Special thanks to Melinda Olson (Paige's mom), Paul Silgen (Audrey's dad) and Mrs. Radermacher for their help on this fun adventure!

When we got back from the play, it was time for recess and lunch!  Then we got our things all organized for our conference folders.  We got new table spots, too.  Mrs. Radermacher hung up our projects in the hall.  Thanks, Mrs. Radermacher!  Everything looked great for our parents to see.

It was great seeing so many parents at Parent - Teacher Conferences, too.  Thanks for coming and have a good weekend!

Golden Tray Award

Our class was very excited to receive one of our school's "Golden Tray Awards".  This golden tray is awarded by the lunchroom staff to the classes that do the best job of stacking their trays after eating lunch.  As you can see, our class is one of the classes that stacks their trays nicely.

Today we did lots of catching up with our assessments, Reading Workshop, and prepared our conference folders.

Tomorrow is our field trip to Stages Theater in Hopkins.  We will see a production titled "Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly".  We are looking forward to it!