March 31, 2011

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: has

-We worked hard this week on the strategy of making inferences.  We read three great books about Miss Nelson.  These books were full of fun little clues that helped us solve some mysteries of the story.

-During our formal writing time, we wrote another nursery rhyme inspired story.  We wrote about where we might find Little Bo Peep's sheep.  With this story, we worked on positional words.

-We learned a new math center this week.  It's called, Beat You to 30 cents.  With this math center, we are practicing exchanging 10 pennies for a dime.  We are also working on recognizing numerals and comparing quantities.

-Our community centers were mostly the same as last week.  We continued to act out and explore various nursery rhymes.  One of our favorite centers was acting out Humpty Dumpty with our bricks.

March 25, 2011

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: he

-The reading strategies we worked on this week involved identifying characters and identifying the setting.

-In writing, we wrote a story inspired by the nursery rhyme, Hey Diddle Diddle.   We practiced making our stories more interesting by adding adjectives.

-A new measuring center was introduced this week during math.  We are using towers of ten cubes to measure various objects around the classroom.

-A big focus this week was on nursery rhymes.  We practiced identifying rhyming words.  We also practiced acting out the nursery rhymes.  We focused a bit on the verbs and changed them to a different action.  We then acted out the nursery rhyme in a slightly different way.

-Our centers were full of nursery rhyme related activities.  We acted out Humpty Dumpty in our brick area.  We also acted out Hickory, Dickory, Dock on the rug with a gigantic clock.  We were able to move the hands on the clock to practice telling time by the hour.  In our dramatic play area, we acted out Pat-a-cake.  We also did a Jack and Jill inspired experiment at our science center.  We used various sized buckets and we compared which one held the most.

March 18, 2011

Needed

-3 oz. dixie cups (used for snack)

Wild Learning in Kindergarten 

-Heart word of the week: she

-This week in literacy, we practiced making visualizations in our head while we are reading.  We also practiced distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

-We read many different versions of The Three Little Pigs this week.  We compared them to see how they are the same and how they are different.

-In math, we practiced sorting sea creatures and frogs in as many different ways as we could think of.

-During our science time, we continued to talk about weather. We started to connect our current weather with the season.  We talked about Spring and the various things we might see.  We also went on a weather hunt and used our senses to learn more about Spring!

-During our community center time, we had many of the same weather centers.  One of the new centers was our art center.  We painted wind pictures by using a straw to blow wind.  At science, we did an experiment with various materials to see if water would absorb or repel.

March 11, 2011

Needed

-3 oz cups (used for snack)

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: was 

-With our focus book this week, we worked on visualizing while we are reading.  We also talked about the setting of the story. 

-In math, we were introduced to the word "estimation".  We now have a new math center where we take a handful of sea creatures, make an estimation, and then we count them to see if our estimation was right.

-We started learning about weather this week.  We received a DVD from a robot named Glinda.  She comes from outer space and knows nothing about weather.  As we are learning about weather, we are recording this information down, so we can give it to her.  This week, we have been learning about rain, thunderstorm safety, wind, and tornado safety.

-During our centers, we explored what it is like to be a meteorologist.  We also did an experiment to see if object would move when blown.  In addition, we also tried to figure out how to make a toy car move without touching it.  We had a tray, play-doh, and a tooth pick.  It's been neat discovering all the various ways we can move the car.

March 4th, 2011

Needed

-3 oz dixie cups

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: here

-Our reading strategies for the week included visualizing pictures in our head while we read.  We also worked on main idea/details.

-In math, we finished up our sea creature story problems.  We also put a new twist on a couple of our old math centers.  For our sea creature matching center, we changed it so it is a memory match game.  For a center called, Beat you to 20 cents, we changed it to Beat you to Zero where we work on taking away pennies instead of adding pennies. 

-We had a wonderful week full of Dr. Suess books and activities!

-We wrote a variety of Suess inspired stories during writing time this week.  We read, Mr. Brown Can Moo!  Can You? and practiced writing a story with onomatopoeias (sound words).  On Wacky Wednesday, we read the book and drew a wacky picture.  We also read There's a Wocket in my Pocket.  With this book, we made up our own creature that rhymed with something in our house.  With the book, Green Eggs and Ham, we wrote a food that we do not like and where we would not eat it.

-During our theme time, we continued with Dr. Suess activities.  We read The Foot Book and  afterward, we practiced sorting our shoes in as many ways as possible.  Inspired from the book, Horton Hatches An Egg, we drew a new animal that was a mix between two animals just like in the story.  We also made green eggs and ham! 

-During our community centers, we practiced retelling The Cat in the Hat in our dramatic play area.  We also made cat heads and cat in the hat hats.