Leprechaun's (better late than never)

I just found these pictures in my email.  I am so sorry I forgot to upload these earlier.  This is what the "leprechaun" did to our room before everyone arrived on St. Patrick's Day.  They children were horrified!  They could not believe the leprechauns made such a mess.  It was too funny!

The leprechauns TP'ed our classroom!

Leprechaun foot prints.  They did leave gold chocolate coins in the traps, but we didn't catch any of those little guys!

More incriminating evidence of a Leprechaun attack.

 

Volcano Unit Wrap Up

Here is the final project for our unit on Volcano's.  Enjoy the pictures.  We had a ball doing this project.  Thank you for all of the donations.  You made this experience possible for the kids.

Working on painting our volcano.  We had to do a lot of research to find out where volcano's are located.

Working together, problem solving, vocabulary expansion, visual/spacial reasoning, recall, speaking and listening skills, science (earth science concepts), geography, fine motor and art are just a few of the skills being reinforced during this project.

A volcanic island is born.  They did an awesome job, didn't they?

After doing a lot of research in books finished volcano is ready to erupt!

The baking soda is already loaded into the soda bottle inside of the volcano.

Now the children start to slowly add the vinegar to start the eruption.

Erupting!

Here comes the lava flow.

I tried to upload some video or the children experimenting with the volcano but it would not upload successfully.  I will try again and let you know if it uploads.

 

Regrowing from scraps: support to our spring science unit!

Here is the link and directions on how to regrow from scraps.  I am doing this in class as well.  I thought I would pass it along in case any of you want to do this at home as well.  If you have any of these items and would like to send them to school to help our project feel free!  This will be a great unit and they are really excited about it!  Have a great week!



http://pandawhale.com/post/3695/15-foods-you-can-regrow-from-scraps

An update on our volcano and dinosaur unit

We are moving along on our science unit.  The kids are really starting to get into the science vocabulary.  I have heard them talk about archeology, volcanology and excavating.  The proudest moment though was last week when I heard two of the kids talking and I heard one tell the other "well, I am going to be a scientist when I grow up!".  You know what, I believe him.  Enjoy the pictures!

We are expanding our vocabulary, our reasoning and research skills, our fine motor skills and our problem solving skills while participating in this science activity.

The children started to dig down deep enough to start to excavate rocks, shells and dinosaurs.  They also started to notice the fossils in the rock.  They were amazed!

A dinosaur is free after almost two weeks of work during center time.

Fossils are starting to appear and the students are becoming much more careful during their excavation efforts.

The children have to figure out how to share materials, take turns with the materials, how to decide how many children can work at this center at a time safely, how to divide up the rock fairly for excavation and how to navigate personal space.  These children are really developing some complex social skills that are critical to academic and work success.

Now we are going to show you how are volcanoes are coming along.  This is so exciting.  We will probably be able to conduct our volcano experiments before Spring Break!

This child works hard to create the paper mache volcano.  The students had to research in our volcano books to figure out the shape of their volcano and how to paint it later.

The first day they started this project I tore the paper for them, I made up the glue mixture for them and showed them how to put the glue onto the paper.  Ever since the first lesson the children have completely taken over ownership of the project!  The tear the paper, make the glue mixture, create the shape and form and clean up the area when they are done.  Wow!  They are becoming such responsible classroom citizens!

I think they are doing an amazing job!

Team Work, what's gonna work? Team Work!

Now for the painting to begin!  They really looked at a lot of books to do their research before they started painting.  It was amazing to listen to their conversations about what colors to use where and why to use them there.  They also did an amazing job of sharing resources and taking turns.

This looks amazing!  It looks like an island made out of volcanic eruptions!  They came up with this all by themselves!  I loved it that they added water after seeing pictures from my books from Hawaii.

 

Ronald McDonald House Charities Project comes to an end

I wanted to show you how much we collected for donations for our February Community Service Project.  Our 4th Grade Buddies came down to our room on Friday to help us sort and classify our items (this is a critical skills for math, science and problem-solving).  They were tasked to figure out a system together for sorting the items.  We then went back after we were done the first time sorting the donations and then we did it again, refining our classifications and fixing mistakes (this is critical for reading and writing - editing and checking our work in all subjects).  Mr. Alcamo and I were so impressed with their problem-solving skills, their reasoning and logic skills and their oral language skills as they worked together (over 44 children at the same time!), solved problems, navigated the space, resolved conflicts, constructed arguments and managed their time.  These are definitely going to be our leaders of tomorrow!

Our donations.

Sorry for the blurry pictures but I have to do that to protect the children's identities.  This is a shot of all of the kids working with their 4th Grade Buddies to sort and classify their donations.

Here are all of the donations before they started sorting and classifying them.

This is how the donations looked when the students were done sorting and classifying them.  They decided to put all of the cleaning supplies into one category.

The next category they created was food.

The other Kindergarten classrooms collected gum for their project and donated it all to our project.  There was so much gum it got it's own category!

This was the kitchen cleaner section they created during their "revision" the second time they went through to edit their first attempt at sorting the donations.  The cleaning item table got too full so they broke that category into three separate sections.  One for general cleaning, one for kitchen cleaning and one for laundry.

This was their personal hygiene category.  I was really impressed with how they navigated this project.  This was the academic portion of our project.  We also did lessons on why we collected the items, who we donated them for and that we expect nothing in return.  We will be weighing the items by category and listing how much we collected by pounds and by number of items for math on Monday.

 

Look at what we are doing during center time!

One of our favorite times of the day is center time.  This is the time of the day that the children are putting into practice many of the skills they learn during carpet and desk time.  I love to listen to their conversations and listen to their brains making connections!  It is so exciting and rewarding to me.  The students are really excited about science and writing at this point.  I am putting out lots of hands-on activities to support their ability to make connections and put into practice their research.

Here two students are working on a word find with popcorn words on the Smart Board.

We took advantage of the snow by bringing some inside and practicing our fine motor skills and science skills by using colored water and the eye droppers. 

At this center they also reviewed our previous science lesson on states of matter.  They noted how the frozen water changed into liquid water during center time.  They also explored how the liquid water worked its way down through the ice/snow.

Many of you made play dough for our classroom.  The children love to use this during math center time to practice math skills.  Here a student is practicing writing out equations (expanded form)

This student is practicing forming numbers in the teens.

These students are representing numbers by making tally marks.

 

Seussy Stuff

I wanted to share some pictures from our Seuss Day on Friday.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!  I will also be sending you all an email with your child and their "twin" from Thing One and Thing Two Day!

After reading The Lorax many of the students had fun recreating the Truffala Trees with the play dough so many of you graciously made or bought and sent in to us.  Thank you so very much!

I read the story The Lorax out loud.  During one part I gave the students these papers.  I did not show the pictures in the book from this part.  They were told to visualize (make the picture in their head) while I was reading out loud to them.  Then they were told to draw what they saw in their heads.  They did a great job with this project!

Here they are working in their pods working on the visualization lesson.

Another pod working on creating what they saw in their minds when I was reading out loud.

During Reading Workshop today we all picture walked and read Dr. Seuss books to our partners today.  I was amazed how how many of them were reading the words.  They are becoming amazing readers!

These two were finding popcorn words in their book.

These two were picture walking their book and commenting on how the author used big red words to make the reader excited to read them.

These two are taking turns reading the book to each other.  They like to play "teacher" during partner reading and take turns sitting in the chair and reading a story to her "student".

These two boys are searching the picture for details that might help them read an unknown word.  They are all getting really good at using their reading strategies to read unknown words.  Remind them to use their strategies at home (Eagle Eye - looking at the pictures, Lips the Fish - getting your mouth ready to make the first sound in a word, Chunky Monkey - looking for "chunks" of words you can read within a word, Flippy Dolphin - flip the short vowel sound to a long vowel sound, Skippy Frog - skip over the words and keep going (we also call it "driving through" the whole word), Stretchy Snake - stretching out each letter sound in the word and blending them together).