Crazy Friday

Whew! What a crazy day. In language arts today we re-read Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes! and kids made their own pancake recipes. Next week we will cook our own!

In math kids sorted attribute blocks at their tables. The attributes they looked for were color, thickness, size and shape.

Awesome mom volunteers Emily and Julie were here to help with songs, math, and the garden!

Kindergartners got to eat lunch AND have recess with their buddies today, which they all loved.

And of course, this afternoon was our big body presentation. Kindergartners did great! We sang a few body songs to the school afterwards. A huge thank you to Marcia Bernard, the librarian, who did all the recording and the slide show! We are hoping to be able to get the presentation on disc for all the parents.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Our Favorite Greeting

Every day, morning meeting begins with a different greeting. Today we did the spiderweb greeting, which is a little tough but always a big hit. It begins by one child holding a ball of yarn, saying "Good morning" to someone across the circle, and rolling the ball to that person. Everyone holds a bit of yarn, so it ends up being a big web at the end. Kids love it!

The math chart below shows the eyes of all kids in the class. With each set of eyes we added to the chart, that child got to count first how many people, then how many eyes total. Pretty quickly some kids developed some strategies for predicting how many eyes a certain number of people would have.

Today in math we drew self portraits. These will be used throughout the next couple of days for sorting. Kids will sort portraits in piles of "x" and "not x," ie: brown hair and not brown hair.

Chicks and Volunteers

Every day we are getting ready for our chick hatch, which is happening (we hope) next week. Kids have been taking turns rolling the eggs from side to side, which helps with the chicks' development. We have a separate calendar to keep track of how many more days til the hatch. Each morning the person who is first makes an X on that day to show that we are getting closer and closer!

Parents, we are looking for volunteers to help with some more projects. The first is a photo project. We have taken many photos of your kindergartners this year and would love to make some available to parents at the end of the year. The easiest, most cost-effective idea we came up with was to make a compilation of photos on a CD to give to interested parents. If you are Mac-savvy and would like to help, please let Nancy know. We'll also be looking for either a donation of data CDs or for parents to chip in a few dollars towards the CDs. Thank you!

The second project is a book-binding one. Kindergartners have been working hard writing their body books and it is time for them to bind them together. If you have any time to come in and help with this in the next week, please let us know.

Assembly Time Change

IMPORTANT!!!!

This Friday's assembly time has been bumped up from 2:15 to 1:45pm. At this assembly, kindergartners will present what they learned about the body this year.

See you on Friday at 1:45 in the gym!

More Architecture

We are making fantastic progress in the garden this week. Kids helped Julie, Henry's mom get the garden ready for plants by breaking up clumps of compost. Today we will be planting some veggie starts. After the last frost, which we hope is next week, we will finish putting everything in. Yay!

Yesterday Henry's dad, Andrew visited our art class and spoke about what architects do. He told us that architects have to make many drafts of their work. He showed us a floor plan of a recent project he did.

Afterwards, kids had a great time creating their own floor plans. Some used window cutouts that Andrew brought and some preferred to draw everything themselves.

It was a great lesson. Ask your kindergartner about what architects do!

Today we finished the GRADE - hurray! In math every student's assignment was to count the chairs in the classroom. As always, kids came up with some great strategies of figuring out this problem. We are sending home "Eyes at Home," a homework assignment based our yesterday's activity in which we counted every child's eyes. How many (human) eyes in your household?

Coming on the field trip?

IMPORTANT: Our Eric Carle Museum trip is coming up fast, next Thursday, May 27th. Parents, if you are interested in coming, please let us know. We plan to leave the school at 10:30am and come back around 1:30pm. This time we have our own bus, so we can provide all parent transportation. If you are interested in the field trip, you will need a current CORI form, so please let us know if you're not sure.

We sent a note home today about next week's assembly on Friday May 28th. Kindergartners will be presenting what they learned about the body! Assembly starts at 2:15pm in the gym. We hope you can make it! We'll be looking for parent help next week to prepare for it. If you are available on Monday or Tuesday afternoon to help kids rehearse their parts, please let us know!

Today we went to an all-school assembly in which the instrumental music program performed for us. Kindergartners had a great time, and many expressed the wish to play a musical instrument someday.

Kids are doing a fabulous job on the GRADE, which assesses langauge arts skills. We tell them to "pat their brains" to congratulate themselves on all their hard work!

Draw Me a Star

On Friday we read Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle. In the afternoon we began a star craft based on the book. Kids did an awesome job! We will continue this project today.

Today while the 3rd graders took the MCAS, kindergartners sat down with their own test: the GRADE, which is an assessment of language arts skills. They did the same test in the fall, and with all they've learned, it seems much easier the second time around!

In math today we began a new unit about data collection. The first activity involved each student finding a way to show a picture of how many kids are in the class. Each student had to first choose how to represent each child in the class. Some used stick figures to represent each student, some used stickers, some used numbers.

And a big thank you to Emily, Sylvia's mom, who comes faithfully every Friday to help with math. We are so lucky to have such awesome parent volunteers!

On Friday we sent home a survey about our blog, asking for your comments and suggestions. Your input is always welcome on the blog itself, too. Please feel free to leave us your comments. Thank you!

Gym Challenges and More Eric Carle

Today in gym we did a few partner challenges and a big group challenge. First, kids tried to tug their partner across the black line by reaching under their legs and holding hands.

Next, partners sat facing each other with their legs straight out, and tried to push each other across the black line with their feet.

Our whole class challenge involved holding hands in a circle. Kids had to try to get their bodies through the hula hoop without letting go of their neighbors' hands. Not easy!

Then, of course, there was lots of free time with hula hoops. Kids can get very imaginative

during free play. Look what they came up with!

Here are some images from our Today is Monday project. Kids are putting together a book of what food they ate on each day of the week. All kids will have their own books by the end!

Six Crayons in All

Today in math we did an activity called Six Crayons in All. In this game, kids either had a partner or worked alone to find as many possible combinations of crayons that added up to six using two colors. They used a 6-egg carton to count out six crayons, red and blue. They could do any combination of six crayons as long as they used at least one blue and at least one red crayon. Then they recorded their combinations in their workbook. There are at least as many ways of recording as there are kids! Look:

Our Eric Carle unit is coming along great. We are just about done our brown bears, and today we began our Today is Monday books. Kids are learning how to write the days of the week as well as their favorite foods!

We are very excited about our field trip to the Eric Carle museum coming up. Thanks to parents who sent in their permission forms already!