Thursday!

What a day with these wonderful, smart, amazing kindergartners!  We are wrapping up our letter "D" work and all things dinosaurs.  Tomorrow we will do lots of things with paper, including making a little piece of our own!  Next week we will have a Stone Soup party on Wednesday.  Each student will need to bring a vegetable and a can of soup to donate to Help Line.  We will also need some cookies or cupcakes to decorate, and some fruit to "kabob".  Patrick's mom, Dinah (party central) will be sending out an email to let you know what you can contribute!

Today the students tested their "recall" by practicing retelling a story that I read.  The book  was "Kitten's First Full Moon" which was the Caldecott winner a couple of years ago.  These students were great at remembering the series of events from the book - really, I was impressed! 

We had our Handwriting time with Ms. Hanley and worked hard on our pencil grip using little pencils.  She asked all of the kindergartners to practice writing some words at home!


We learned a new math game using our pattern blocks - Hungry Caterpillars.  

It was students verses teacher - students won!  I remind everyone that the games we play are games of chance, you don't win because you are smarter - it's just luck!  And we all know to say "good game" at the end so no one's feelings get hurt.  I also think it is a good idea to let your children lose some of the games you play with them at home - get them ready for the real world and teach them to be good sports!

The highlight of the day was a visit from Ellie's mom to do an art docent lesson for us.  It was the best!  Susan shared some portraits and talked about Realism and Abstract painting.  She had a great way of explaining it to the children.  Then she walked them through a drawing of their own and helped produce fabulous results!  I tell you, these kindergartners are something!!!!!

And the masterpieces.....