Good Bye, Pip and Squeak!

Well, today was our last day with our chicks Pip and Squeak.  We really liked having them in our classroom and we also learned a lot about chicks and chickens.  It is amazing how quickly they grow and change, even in just one week.  We will get to see lots of chickens and other animals on Monday at the farm at Dodge Nature Center.

  

  

This morning, Mrs. Kurt and Mrs. Radermacher had us each paint ten yellow circles on a large piece of white paper.  We were curious why we were doing this...

  

After lunch when the paint was dry, we learned why we did this.  We made the circles in to chicks!

Aren't they cute??

  

Hope to see everyone at the school carnival tomorrow night.

More Farm Fun

We are really having fun getting to know our chicks.  They are lots of fun and we are also learning lots about them.  It takes 21 days for eggs to hatch.  Sometimes hens sit on the eggs in the nest but sometimes eggs are placed in incubators until they hatch.  Incubators need to be kept at 100 degrees to keep the eggs warm.  We learned more about chickens by participating in an interactive SMARTBoard activity on chickens last Friday.

Of course our favorite time with Pip and Squeak is when we get them out of their box and play with them...

  

  

Although we do have baby chicks in our classroom, we are learning about other farm animals as well.  We have been busy reading and writing about chickens, pigs, sheep and cows.  We have also made these animals and hung them in our classroom and out in the hallway.  They look great!

  

Thanks to Logan Schmitt and his family for taking care of our chicks over this holiday weekend!  I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend.  Only seven more school days left of this year...hard to believe it has gone by so fast!

Meet Pip and Squeak

I am sure you have heard the news...we have baby chicks in our classroom!  Our new chick friends are named Pip and Squeak and they arrived during recess on Thursday.  We are all adjusting to this wonderful new addition to our classroom.  Stay tuned to our blog to see more photos of them next week!

  

More Farm Animals and Outside DEAR Time

Today we added to our farm animal collection.  We finished making our chickens.  We traced our hands to cut out for the chicken's comb!

We also made some cute cows.  We learned lots about cows, like they can drink enough water to fill a bath tub every day and dairy cows can produce 10 gallons of milk everyday!  People can milk cows, but machines milk them much faster.  Cows eat lots of grass and grains, too.  They give us milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream and lots of healthy things!

Thursday afternoon the whole school went outside for DEAR time.  We were thankful it was finally a nice day.  We enjoyed reading outdoors!

  

  

Seeds and Farms

On Monday, we read the story "Seed to Plant" by Melvin and Gilda Berger.  We learned that seeds need soil, water, air and sunshine to sprout.  It's kind of hard to see how a seed sprouts, especially if you plant it in dirt.  So, we are trying to sprout bean seeds a different way.  We put a bean seed with a wet cotton ball inside a ziploc bag.  Then we taped the bags to the window in our classroom.  We are hoping that  the seeds will sprout and that we will be able to see what it actually looks like.  We are checking our bags every day.  Hopefully we will see some progress soon!

  

We started our farm unit this week.  Each day we read a nonfiction and a fiction story about a specific farm animal.  After that, we list facts about the animal of the day.  We add facts about the animals to our Barnyard Journal during Writing Workshop every day.  Then we have been making some pretty awesome farm animals to hang in our classroom and in the hallway.  On Monday, we made pigs.  On Tuesday, we made sheep with our guest teacher.  Wednesday we made chickens and tomorrow we will make cows.

  

We did some partner reading this afternoon, too.  Since we have to return everything to the Library this week, we are borrowing books from our classroom book baskets to practice our reading at home!

  

Tomorrow is a big day in Kindergarten Plus.  Our baby chicks arrive and we are super excited!

Walk 4 Northview

A big "Thank You" to everyone who contributed and participated in the third annual Walk 4 Northview!  The day started with a visit from Nordy, the mascot of the Minnesota Wild Hockey Team. We raised over $4,500.00 and had a fabulous time.  Thanks to everyone for their support and thank you to the Northview PTO for sponsoring such a great event!!

  

  

  

  

Could not be more proud of these Northview All Stars!!