Tuesday!

No coats at recess today!!!!!  Staying busy with our Sea Life unit and enjoying every minute of it!

One of the kindergartners mentioned that she saw a homeless person in Seattle.  We had another deep discussion (these five and six-year-old students are amazing with their depth of feelings for others) about being homeless or hungry.  We decided that we wanted to bring a box of cold cereal for Helpline House.  The cereal idea was offered up and we talked about how it would be a nice treat for a family to go to Helpline and pick out a fun box of cereal.  We also will be saying goodbye to our box (aka Secret Laboratory) and thought it would be a nice way to honor THE BOX theme.  So if you can, please send in a box of cold cereal.  I will take it to Helpline House next week.

Sure do love these kindergartners.....

Monday!

More Sea Life....manatees, and jellies - we love them!  We started the book "Don't Squeal Unless It's a BIG Deal".  It definitely is that time of the year!

 

Friday!!!

Today we did Sea Life centers......rotating between three different jobs.  It was fun, REALLY fun because one of the projects required spray bottles!!!!

 

Thursday!!!!!

Late post...blogger is finally fixed!

The kindergartners are REALLY enjoying all the Sea Life books I checked out at the library.  Whales, sharks, crabs, and more!  We read a book about animals that live deep in the ocean and then watched a video about them.....these kindergartners are very interested in all things connected with salt water!

We learned how to write letters and wrote one to Scott - a lieutenant in Afghanistan.

African drummers came to our school.  Some students were chosen to dance on the stage!  Stephanie did a great job!!!!!!!

Wet Wednesday!!!

The gray days don't seem to dampen the spirits of these kindergartners!  We had a busy fun day.  We are working hard to create writing pieces and beautiful art to share for Artist and Author night.  We did an oil pastel drawing today based on the beautiful book "Birds".  I am beyond thrilled with the results - they are gorgeous! 

I sent you the wrong video yesterday.....this one is pretty amusing!

Tuesday!

These kindergartners are getting bigger by the minute!  They are acting more and more like first-graders....well except for the tattling!  We sent handwriting homework home today ....should be crumpled up in the bottom of that back pack somewhere!  And we even did a SPELLING TEST today just for assessment purposes to use for oral language development.  I went to a wonderful class on Saturday to learn about the "Words Their Way" curriculum.  It was great!  The spelling research reveals five main points:

• Our brains are pattern seekers
• Most students use systematic spelling strategies that we can highlight and teach.
• There are a number of strategies that good spellers unconsciously use (alphabet/letter-sound correspondence, within-word patterns and word meaning).
• Learning is enhanced when students demonstrate an understanding of how something works rather than reciting facts.
• Spelling is a developmental process like learning to Read and Write!

I will continue the class tomorrow....first and second grades are using this program already!

A quick peek at these wonderful, ever-energetic, kindergartners.....gotta love them!

Monday!!!

A funny start to the week....I had your children sitting in a horse shoe shape while they shared their weekend with each other.  Uh-huh, that lasted only a few minutes because all they wanted to do was make each other giggle!

We worked on whale books, painted with salt, wrote what we are famous for as writers, illustrated our dictated stories, read "Swimmy", "Whale" and "Can You Hear the Sea?", painted with sponges, wrote in our journals, glued eyes on our Rainbow Fish,read, built, colored, stapled and listened to our teacher ....all-and-all another glorious day with these AMAZING kindergartners!!!!!!!