A Building/Creating Type Day

Here's what we were up to today in K!

 

Building a dog house out of blocks.

Building a 3D Big Ben.

Building and measuring a truck (notice a trend?).

"I will draw a truck so we know how to make it."

Next step: Why not watch a 'how to draw a truck' tutorial on YouTube?

And the truck drawing began!

 

We also filled the Earth's bucket today! The entire school participated in a town wide clean up. The Kindergarten class paired up with Grade 1s and cleaned around the rink and school.

 

In the afternoon, we took up the challenge of creating self portraits using different medium including paint and construction paper.

 

We also read the story "The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot", which is a modern spin on The Boy Who Cried Wolf. We finished off the day in the gym, exploring basketballs, Frisbees, and squishy balls. :0)

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

From Electricity to Chris P. Bacon

I'm back! I was away at a Kindergarten workshop on Monday, getting a lot of great ideas from other Kindergarten teachers. :) Collaboration is always a wonderful opportunity! Here's some of our students working together to figure out how electricity works:

Mr. Pratchler brought in this really interesting clear tube with wires inside of it. When you make a connection with two or more people hold it, it lights up. Whenever someone breaks the connection and you are no longer touching, it stops. It works on and off as you touch someone- such as by tapping their nose! The K's thought this was highly amusing!

 

On Monday, we had some exciting visitors in our classrooms: baby chicks! Why did I plan this on a day that I wouldn't be there? haha I do not have any photos to share, unfortunately. They did all draw pictures of their favorite part about the chick visit and they read Click Clack Peep, as well.

 

Here's an update on our beans:

 

Some are finally starting to sprout in our big bucket of dirt!

I was told that this is wheat that someone planted.

They're getting bigger! Some still have not grown, so I secretly put a new bean seed in those ones. Hopefully they will sprout soon!

 

We also got some new mail from Little Passports. This time the adventures of Sam and Sofia took us to England. We did a bit of extra researching by checking out some images of London and Stonehenge on internet.

 

They also worked on some alphabet recognition and math with Ms. Amendt before heading to the library. This afternoon we worked hard on our "This is me in May" self portraits. Before heading to gym we read a new story:

He's so cute! So, we also had to check out some Youtube videos of Chris P. Bacon! It was a great story to also generate conversation about people who have to use wheelchairs.

 

Thanks for stopping by our blog! I'll be back on Friday. :)

 

 

Yesterday Morning

We continued our plant exploration yesterday morning. I had found a set of seeds from the Agriculture in the Classroom set. The Ks worked on trying to match up the seeds with the picture of the plant.

 

 

We also incorporated some math! As a part of the morning message, I asked if their beans grew or not. We counted the number of yes and no answers and talked about which number was higher.

 

We also worked on sheets of paper that were set out to look like garden rows. Students chose four different types of seeds and were given a number of seeds to 'plant' on their page.

 

Voila! A garden of seeds.

 

More math skills came into play when I realized that the four sets of seeds were all mixed together. They were numbered from one to fourteen, so I enlisted the students in helping me put them back together in groups.

 

We also read a story about leaves. We learnt that leaves have veins, which carry food to the different parts of the plant. The Ks had no prior knowledge of humans having veins, so they were very excited when I told them about this! They were checking all over their arms, wrists, hands, and faces to look for traces of veins. We tried feeling our pulse, too, but I am not sure that anyone was successful.

 

When we went to record our observations of our bean plant growth, one student exclaimed, "Look, you can see the veins!"

 

Some of our beans are getting taller with big leaves, some are just sprouting, and some are yet to make an appearance!

 

We will see what the bean plants look like after the weekend. I am sure that they will enjoy the sunshine and I hope that you do too!

Beautiful Beans

Welcome back! We had an extra long weekend with the holiday. It was great to see everyone's smiling faces this morning. We're winding down so fast! Only 14ish Kindergarten days left!

It is indeed that magical time of year again: warm sunshine, singing birds, green grass, and dandelion bouquets!

 

We were welcomed to an exciting surprise this morning! Some of our beans grew!!! One of the most heart warming moments of the day (aside from dandelion presents), was a student gazing at the beans with the comment: "They're beautiful!"

 

 

Only one of our beans from the first group has grown so far. We discussed why and decided it was because they didn't have enough water or sun. In fact, the only one that did grow was in the bin that got A LOT of water. The soil is still moist from last week! A lot of our greenhouse bought flowers were not so happy this morning, however. They would have liked more water.

 

 

Of course, we had to record our observations in our Plant Observation Booklets. We also had a look at some photos of our plant exploration. I had students offer captions for all of the photos, so that we could recap what we have done and learned so far. They did a great job! I added the pages and photos to our bulletin board in the hallway.

 

When we came across the idea that plants can't talk, I just had to take the opportunity to see what their imagination would come up with. I asked them all to answer the question, "If plants could talk, what would they say?" I video taped their responses. The  most common response was that they would ask for water. :)

 

During my prep today, students had another teacher come in to work with them. They worked on their number booklets and went to the library. In gym, we played tag and then practiced throwing bean bags. We're working our way up to the ball toss event at play day!

 

One more day of K this week~ see you all on Thursday!

Plants are everywhere!

 

Plants, plants, and more plants! We had some new additions to our classroom, once again. It makes our classroom so bright and fresh!

 

I also set out some art projects as an invitation for students to explore. A few of them colored flower pictures and made some flower crafts during free choice center time.

 

 

I had found some grass growing in one of our plants, so we pulled it out and had a look at the roots.

 

Our bean plants look the same!

 

 

It's also that time of year~ the students informed me that the farm toys should come back out, as their dads are working in the fields again.

 

 

One of our flowers' stem broke off of the main plant, so one student decided to replant it in our garden center to see if it will grow.

 

Since there was no growth in our beans to observe, everyone picked one of our classroom plants and observed what they saw, smelt, and felt. They drew pictures of their plant and then I recorded their other observations.

 

Here's some literature that we looked at today:

 

Roots was the book that they looked at on Monday.

 

We also watched a video about the parts of a plant.

 

 

Of course, throughout the day we have to check on our plants!

 

Since we're learning so much and our bulletin board in the hallway was bare, I decided that we should let other people know what we know! So, we brainstormed information that we could share with others. Everyone came up with a part that they wanted to make for the bulleting board (ie: sun, cloud, flower, etc.)

They worked really hard!

 

The finished results look great!!! I want to add some photographs of their plant exploration as well and we'll see if there is anything else that they want to add.

 

Great work Kindergarten! :) Have a fantastic long weekend everyone!