May 31st, 2013- Celebrating Kindergarten

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Celebrating Kindergarten
• Heart Words of the Week: on, it, at
• In language arts, we read a story and talked about cause and effect.  We also practiced rereading parts of a story that we did not understand.
• In writing, we wrote our last two stories.  We wrote about our favorite thing to do over the summer and our favorite part of kindergarten.  We practiced including some of the following: who, why, when, where.
• This week, we also worked on our kindergarten memory books.
• In math, we practiced solving addition and subtraction problems.  We also practiced writing addition and subtraction sentences as well.
• During our theme time, we read some Click Clack Moo books and worked on the strategy of comparing and contrasting.
• Our community centers were full of some of our favorite items from throughout the year.

It has been a joy working with you all this year!  I have really enjoyed teaching your children and watching them grow!!  Don't forget to read over the summer!!

May 24th, 2013- Wrapping up Butterflies

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Wrapping up Butterflies
• Heart words of the week: in, up
• In language arts, we practiced the strategies of using the pictures and rereading to help us understand the words better.  We also came up with rhyming words in the -in family and practiced counting how many syllables are in words.
• In writing, we practiced writing stories that include some of the following: who, when, where, why. 
• In math, we were introduced to a new math center where we pretend like we are frogs.  We then measure with Popsicle sticks how long our jump was.
• During our science time, we wrapped up our learning about butterflies.  Throughout the unit, we recorded facts that we learned about butterflies in a book.  This week, we reviewed those facts and drew an illustration for each of the pages.  We also finished our KWL chart.  Before we started learning about butterflies, we recorded what we already knew about butterflies and something that we want to know.  This week, we recorded something that we learned.
• During community centers, we had a few butterfly centers left.  The rest of our centers were some of our favorite activities from the year. 

May 18th, 2013- Butterflies

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Butterflies
• Heart Word of the Week: come
• In language arts, we practiced identifying what in a story could be reality and what is fantasy.  We also practiced asking ourselves questions while we read.
• In math, we solved some story problems created by our classmates.  We also explored some addition and subtraction sentences and checked to see if they were represented in a picture.
• In writing, we worked on adding voice to our stories by adding an interesting way to start our stories.
• In science, we focused specifically on butterflies.  We have learned that butterflies smell with their antennae and taste with their feet.  We also learned what a butterfly tongue looks like and that a butterfly has 4 wings...not 2.  One of our favorite activities from the week involved being wrapped up in toilet paper to see what it is like to break out of a chrysalis.  We also acted out the life cycle of a butterfly in the garden.  We even sipped nectar from flowers (juice boxes decorated to look like flowers).
• During community centers, we have continued with many of the same butterfly themed centers.  We love going into our butterfly garden and acting out the life cycle of a butterfly.  We have also loved observing our caterpillars turn into chrysalises.  Just this week, we saw the butterflies pop out of their chrysalis!  After their wings dried, it was neat watching them fly around.

 

 

May 10th, 2013- Life Cycle of a Butterfly

Please remember to return the book publishing order form on Monday, even if you do not want a book.

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Life Cycle of a Butterfly
• Heart Word of the Week: where
• In language arts, we read a really neat book called, Fish Faces.  It introduced us to new and interesting types of sea creatures.  With this book, we practiced the skill of comparing.  We talked about how some of the sea creatures are the same and how they are different.
• In writing, we worked on the book we are publishing. We started the process by brainstorming what our favorite part of kindergarten was and a couple details about that experience.  We then wrote a rough draft that was edited by our "editor" who gave us extra ideas on how to make our story better.  We then worked on the pictures for our book, deciding on a name for the book, and deciding on the dedication for the book.  It was a really neat process!!
• In math, we individually solved some tough story problems using white boards or cubes.  These story problems involved comparing quantities and grouping objects together.  We then created our own story problems that we could practice solving.
• In science, we focused on learning about the life cycle of a butterfly.  We read many books, acted it out with our bodies, watched movies, and made a life cycle bracelet.  We also are presenting the life cycle of a butterfly on our bulletin board in the hallway.  It is based off of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Every day, we feed our sock caterpillars whatever food that the caterpillar ate in the book.
• During community centers, we have a few activities based off of the life cycle of a butterfly.  In our butterfly garden, we are retelling The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  At our art center, we are using our hand prints to represent the life cycle.  We are also representing the life cycle at our fine motor center.  We are using different shapes of pasta to show each stage.  We are still observing our caterpillars as well in our dramatic play center.  All five caterpillars have how turned into a chrysalis!  It was really neat watching them do this!

May 3rd, 2013- Caterpillars

Vote May 7th

Lakeshore Bond Proposal:

• Information can be found outside the office.
• Or on the Lakeshore Public Schools web page. Here are two links:

http://www.lakeshoreschools.k12.mi.us/bond.html

http://lpsvision2013.com/

• Here is a link for frequently asked questions:

http://lpsvision2013.com/?page_id=26

• Here is a link for why a new elementary school is needed:

http://lpsvision2013.com/?page_id=402
 

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Caterpillars
• Heart Words of the Week: me, my
• In language arts, we read a book about beetles and practiced asking ourselves questions while we read it.  We also practiced categorizing the beetles and putting them into groups according to how they are the same. 
• In math, we learned couple new centers that will help us practice addition.  For one of our new math centers, we are learning how to add numbers vertically!
• In writing, we worked on writing stories that include details of who, when, and where.  We also finished up our plant science journals.  We did an experiment to see if plants needed sun, water, air, and space in order to grow.  We recorded the results in our journal by drawing a picture and writing some labels.
• In science,we started to learn about butterflies.  We did a KWL chart.  In the K section, we recorded what we already knew about butterflies.  In the W section, we recorded what we want to know about butterflies.  This week, our focus was on caterpillars and we read some books about them and learned some fascinating information...like they eat their egg shell, they have 16 legs, and they do a variety of things to protect themselves from being eaten by other animals! 
• To tie together our learning about butterflies, we decided to make a butterfly garden in our classroom.  So far, we have made vines, flowers, eggs, and caterpillars.  We are excited to add more later!
• During community centers, we have a variety of activities that have a caterpillar theme.  At our art center, we are working together to make a giant caterpillar.  Everyone is making one part of the caterpillar's body out of tissue paper and a paper plate.  At the math center, we are making a pattern caterpillar. Our dramatic play has turned into a science lab and we are observing real caterpillars that will turn into butterflies!!