Art Adventure

Over the past two weeks, Mrs. Lynn Stein has visited our classroom for Art Adventure.  Art Adventure is a program offered through the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and is sponsored by the Northview PTO.  Volunteers attend training at the Institute and then visit our classrooms to teach us about pieces of art on display at the Institute of Art.  Admission to the Minneapolis Institute of Art is free, so if you are interested in seeing some awesome art, head on down!

   

Many thanks to the Northview PTO and Mrs. Stein for bringing this great program to our classroom!

Saying Goodbye!

Thursday was our last full day with the chicks.  They were picked up on Friday morning and went to the farm at the Minnesota Zoo where they will be much happier then they would living in a box in our classroom.  We did manage to spend lots of quality time with them on Thursday, though.  And we even had some very special visitors in our classroom to see the chicks…our principal, Mrs. Carl and Dr. Jane Berenz, Superintendent of Schools.  Pretty cool!

   

   

   

We also worked on a painting project.  We painted ten yellow circles.  Once they were dry, we added some details and made chicks!

   

   

We do kind of miss our chicks, but we know they will be happier at the zoo.

Fun With Chicks

Last week was a busy, but fun week in Kindergarten Plus.  We got two more additions to our classroom…two yellow chicks!  It was lots of fun to have three chicks in our classroom!

We spent lots of time getting to know them, observing their behaviors, journaling about them in our chick journals, and just playing with them.  They are a lot of fun…and pretty noisy, too.  They sure did get tired quickly when we did have them out of the box to play!

   

   

Some of our friends really liked holding the chicks.  Some of us were not as comfortable.  

   

   

Earlier in our chick unit, we listed the things we already knew about chicks and the things we wondered about them.  This week, we made a list of all the things we learned about chicks while they were here.

Meet Our Baby Chick

Big day today.  We got to hold (or at least pet) our newest class member.  The chick that hatched on Tuesday is now living in the box outside the incubator.  It is really soft and very cute and the kids just love it!  No other eggs hatched today, but we will get more live chicks delivered tomorrow and they will be here for about a week.  We are super excited!

   

   

Kindergarten Visit from Head Start

Today we had visitors from the morning and afternoon Head Start classes.  They were visiting to see what it is like to be in kindergarten.  It was fun for the kindergartners to be the "big kids" and show the Head Start students what it is like to be in kindergarten.  We had a Morning Meeting, did the alphabet chart, Number Corner, read a story and completed a farm coloring sheet.  We even introduced them to the newest member of our class…our cute baby chick!  The kindergartners were great role models.

   

   

   

   

The Farm…Pigs

In between all of the excitement today, we did manage to learn a little more about farms in preparation for our upcoming field trip.  Today's topic...

We read an awesome nonfiction book called Pigs by Robin Nelson.  This book was full of facts about pigs.  We couldn't believe how such a small book could have so much information!  After we read the story, Mrs. Kurt divided us in to groups to work together and come up with two or three pig facts we learned from the story.  We are still working on how to work together in a group so this was good practice.  Here is what we came up with:

This afternoon, we finished our pig projects.  We did the painting yesterday and finished it today.  They turned out really cute!

   

Fourth Grade Story Problems

A couple of weeks ago, the fourth grade students in Mrs. Fifield and Mrs. Holtz's class asked if we could help them with a math project.  They were going to create story problems for kindergartners.  In doing this, the fourth graders had to be authors to write the problems and like most authors, they needed to do some research.  They visited our classroom and interviewed the kindergarten students to learn about them, their interests and what kinds of problems they liked to do.

   

   

Now, the fourth graders have been working hard.  They conducted research, wrote problems, edited their work, printed their problems using the computer and even found graphics to go with them.  This morning, they invited us to their classroom to actually see the finished product and to see if we could solve the problems they created.  

   

   

   

   

It was really great to see the fourth grade students take ownership of this project.  They did an excellent job and the kindergartners really enjoyed solving problems with them.  It was especially fun for Mrs. Kurt to see some of her former students, too.  Thank you fourth grade students!