April 29, 2011

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: my

-The reading strategies we practiced this week were making conclusions and figuring out the story structure.

-We finished our nonfiction book about plants this week.  We put it together, shared it with friends in our classroom, and shared it with Mrs. Ashley's class!

-In math, we created and solved frog story problems this week.  Some of them practiced addition and subtraction skills.  Others really made us think hard by having us comparing quantities and putting frogs into groups.

-Our theme focus for the week was on recycling.  We read some books about the importance of recycling and some ways we can recycle.  We were also visited by Princess Wasteful.  We were able to teach her some different ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

-Our creation station was a highlight of our community centers this week.  Many of us spent most of the week at this center.  Another highlight is our recycle center in our dramatic play area.  At this center, we practiced sorting recyclable materials.

April 21, 2011

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: with

-We read a variety of stories this week and practiced the reading strategy of retelling.

-We have enjoyed two different writing projects this week.  One project focused on writing a nonfiction book about plants.  Our other focus was on writing poetry.  We learned about writing poems that describe something, poems that have onomatopoeias (sound words), and pattern poems.  On Friday, we were able to publish our favorite poem!

-In math, we started solving a new batch of story problems.  For these story problems, we used pictures and numbers to help us solve them.

-We continued our focus on plants this week.  We looked closely at the different parts of plants and what their job is.  We also went over various plants parts that we eat.

-Many of our community centers were the same this week.  Our flower shop has remained open and we are enjoying arranging flowers and delivering them around the classroom.  We also have dirt with lima beans in our science table.  It has been a lot of fun watching the beans in the dirt start to grow roots and a stem.  A new center this week focused on examining and sorting seeds.  We used tweezers to help us pick up the seeds, which also helped us with our fine motor skills (hand and finger muscles).

April 15, 2011

Wild Learning in Kindergarten

-Heart word of the week: look

-This week, we focused on some of the common features of non-fiction books.

-During our writing time, we were introduced to how to write poems.  This week we started learning about list poems.

-In math, we were introduced to new pictures for our calendar.  Each of these calendar pictures shows a different device that we can use to measure.  All of the devices either measure length, weight, time, or temperature.

-Our science focus this week was on plants.  We talked about various types of plants.  We then did a nature walk to practice spotting the plants.  We also talked about what plants need in order to grow.  We started an experiment to prove whether or not plants actually need what we came up with.

-Our community centers were full of plant activities.  Our dramatic play turned into a flower shop.  We enjoyed creating bouquets and delivering them to our friends in the classroom.  We also painted a flower this week using our hands, feet, and arms!  At our science center, we are exploring dirt with some lima beans in it.  In addition, we planted some grass seed in individual cups.  We are looking forward to watching it grow!