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!

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.