Week of February 17

Donorschoose Thank You Letters:  We wrote our thank you letters to the donors of our math folders.  The kids were so excited to be able to thank people for the wonderful games they have been enjoying.

Panda Bears:  We are continuing our study of bears.  We learned about panda bears and listed the facts on our "can/have/are" chart.  The kids are really enjoying learning about bears.  We also learned about brown bears...but alas!  No pics!

Math Number Book:  Everyday the kids work in their number books.  They take a number, see how it is made with ten frames, they write the number 3 times, they write what number comes before and what number comes after the number.  They are doing a great job with their numbers.

Artist in Residence with Sharon King:  The kids had a blast at the last artist in residence session.  They did a four step art project (at least I think it was four steps...they did a lot).  Wow!  I was impressed!

Mrs. King talked to the kids about butterflies.

She had a book on display.

Aiden prepped his butterfly.

Jakob and Gage are getting their butterflies ready.

Garrett is doing a great job with his butterfly.

Jeidin and Samuel are getting ready for the project.

S. is spraying watercolor around the edges of her butterfly that received a color bath.

The kids were very focused on spraying their watercolor on their butterflies. 

Spraying was a little hard for them.

Nice job Cody and Garrett.

More color on the butterflies.

Ava's butterfly is so colorful!  So is Alex's butterfly!

Nice job!

Panda Bear Art:  The kids created their very own panda bears.  Have I told you I LOVE kinder art!  Everything looks so cute!!!

That's it for now!!!

Week of February 9--LBCC Play--Pictures were on my phone...

LBCC Play:
We went to a play at LBCC.  We had so much fun riding the bus and getting situated on the chairs in the theatre.  The play was called Follow Coyote.  It was an hour long and several times during the play the actors encouraged the audience to participate.  Thank you to my 6 volunteers who helped me manage our 25 kids.  I could not have done it without you!  THANKS!

Week of February 9--Where are my pictures???

Assembly:

We have started to have assemblies on Mondays.  These will be weekly.  We will do the pledge and build a sense of community though singing and the announcement of Eagle Egg award winners.  We had fun at our first assembly.

Valentine's Day:
The day started off crazy and ended that way too.  We were busy busy busy today and I forgot to take pictures...really, I did.  Oops.  We exchanged Valentines when we first walked in and then put them away.  We did some Daily 5 activities and some math activities.  Then we got to look at our Valentine's Day "stuff" and we got to eat one piece of candy before lunch.  After lunch we had our movie (Magic School Bus Goes to the Arctic--we learned more about polar bears) and popcorn (thanks Alicen--Abigail's mom for popping enough for 26 kids).  Thanks to everyone who brought popcorn.  I think we have enough for the next 3 Fridays.  We also had a cookie with a little smudge of pink frosting--I didn't want to overdo it on the sugar--yeah right (thanks Jennifer--Sadie's mom).  The kids went to PE (burn that sugar) and packed up.  I read a book about popcorn and sent them home to you!

This was the quietest part of my day.  Ahhhhh!

Popcorn and a movie!  Awesome!

So focused!

Week of February 2

Math Games:

We are fortunate to have over 80 math games in our classroom through a grant that I wrote through donorschoose.org.  The kids LOVE the games.  Right now they have been using the Numbers and Operations games, but I will soon use Measurement and Data math folders and Counting and Place Value.  I took the following pictures and used them to complete the picture part of our grant.  We need to write letters to some of the donors thanking them for their donation to our project.

Jakob and Garret are enjoying working on addition.

Gio and Jacob are working on some number sentences.

Samuel is getting ready to play the hamburger game.

Kolton, Jacob, Gabby and Inga are using the pig spinner game to work on numbers in the teens.

Look how busy everyone is.  Math is fun!

Book Orders:
Book orders benefit the kids in so many ways.  Through the book orders, you get books at a cheaper price (and your kids get books at home) and I get books for free depending on how many you have purchased (and the kids get to read them at school).  The last order was pretty big (thanks!).  This allowed me to get all the books below for FREE.  Yep, FREE!  THANKS!  I chose many non-fiction books since I tend to have more fiction books from previous years.

Look at ALL those books!  WOW!!!

Artist in Residence:

Apparently we have artist in residence twice this month.  Very cool!  We finished our previous projects by using water on top of our watercolor pencils.  The kids loved what happened when they put water on the color!  I think we need to get some watercolor pencils for the classroom!!!

Mrs. King gave the kids step-by-step directions on how to use the water 

on the paper that had been colored with watercolor pencils.

Aiden and Evan are being very careful while painting.

Vaughn and Samuel are very focused.

Hannah and Miri are very detailed oriented.

Kolton and Cody are very focused.

Zander and Jeidin

Gabby is doing a great job!

Nikolas and Abigail are so focused.

Gio and Kernan working.

Jack and Jacob

Inga and Maddy

Jakob and Gage sharing the water.

S. and Lillian doing a great job at sharing.

The kids did so well that they got to create another project: an eagle.  This is Gio's eagle!!!

Science Fair Habitats:

Since we had been studying penguins and polar bears, we decided to create a habitat for the animals that we would be able to display at the science fair on Feb 26.  The kids chose whether they wanted to create a penguin habitat or a polar bear one.  The kids made their habitats and wrote one fact about their animal.  Come to our science fair to see their work!

These children choose to represent a penguin habitat.

These children decided to represent a polar bear habitat.

Week of January 26 (3 day week)

Visitors:
Visitors?  Where did our visitors go?  We were supposed to have visitors from the district office and we were supposed to show them how we use the iPads.  Since one of our other kinder classrooms was demonstrating how the kids use Showbie, I figured we would show them how we use Raz-Kids.  The kids did an awesome job finding their account, finding a book, getting their handphones ready and alas!  no visitors.  They ran out of time to visit us.  No worries!  The kids had fun listening/reading books at their levels using the program.  Please remember that you can use it at home. If you forgot how, send me an email.

Vaughn is listening to a book.

Gio is enjoying a book at his new level.

Jacob really enjoys reading because it is fun!

Zander found a non-fiction book.  Cool!

Jakob and Kernan are really focused.

Gingerbread Houses:

The kids had a blast making and decorating gingerbread houses.  A big thanks to all of you that donated food/candy and Lacy Surmeier for helping me get everything set up for the kids, help during the event especially as houses collapsed and then clean up after.

S. and Evan trying to put their houses together.

Gio and Gage trying to do the same thing.

Lillian was very focused on getting her house put together.  She did a great job.

Jakob and Kernan are working hard.

Nikolas is working hard too.

Candy!

More candy!!

Yep, more candy...and then I sent the kids home to you!

What a great job!