Frogs

     It is Frog Week in our Kindergarten class.  We started the week learning about the life cycle of a frog.  


                     eggs to tadpole to froglet to frog




      We practiced drawing frogs.  I love to teach the children how to draw because of the confidence it gives them to create many other things.  And children just love to draw!  


     In math, we guesstimated how many frogs were in a jar.  We wrote our guesses on sticky notes and posted them on the white board.  When all the guesses were in, we counted the frogs to find the actual number.  There were 16 frogs in the jar, and Carli guessed the exact amount.  We also performed addition and subtraction story problems with frogs.  I gave them a sentence like, "There were 3 frogs at the pond.  One more came along and joined them.  How many frogs are at the pond now?"  The children drew the picture and wrote the math sentence that goes along with it.


     The word family -og joined the neighborhood.  We listed all the words that live in the -og house.


                        fog   frog   dog   hog   jog   log    blog

       We are anxiously awaiting Fun and Fitness Day on Friday.

Bunnies and Eggs

     It is a fun week of bunnies and eggs.  On Monday we read Jan Brett's, The Easter Egg.

      In the book, Hoppi, a little bunny, tries to design the best Easter egg so he can help the Easter bunny deliver the eggs on Easter morning.  After reading the book, the students were so excited to write their own books about the different kinds of eggs their friends and families decorated.


      
                    Mommy has a big red egg.
                    My sister has a little striped egg.
                    Taryn has a bunny egg.
                     I made a gold egg.


     The children love sharing the books they write.  I continue to be amazed and proud of their writing skills.

     In math, we used jelly beans to estimate, sort, count, graph, add and subtract. 

     During the week, we have been playing, "Crack Open an Egg."  The students choose a plastic egg out of a basket and break it open.  Inside is a sentence directing them to complete a skill we have learned during the year.

                        Tell us what an author and illustrator does.
                         Draw a worm and tell us the body parts.
                         Count backwards from 10.
                         On the whiteboard, draw 1 circle and 2 triangles.
                         Find something in the room that is a cylinder.

     For Sharing, the children prepared a "surprise egg".  I gave them a plastic egg to take home.  They had to place something inside the egg and write 3 clues about the item inside.  At Sharing time, they had to read their clues and the class guessed what was inside the egg. The students had to be detectives and use the three clues to make reasonable guesses.  This can be a difficult skill for many kindergarten kids.



      We made this cute bunny.  (This is a picture of Ava's bunny.)

      The students were given two cut-out egg shapes.  The first egg was decorated by drawing different lines (straight, zig zag, curly, etc.)  After decorating, we folded it in 1/2 and cut on the fold line.  They drew a bunny face on the second egg shape.  We used brads to attach the egg parts to the top of the oval to create bunny ears.


     

      This is an bunny bag made out of a white paper lunch bag.  The opening was cut into bunny ears and the students decorated the front with a bunny face.  When they returned from specials at the end of the day, they found a couple of pieces of goodies in their bunny bag.

     This is a simple art project.  The body of the chick is a circle.  The wings were made by tracing our hand.  We added Goggly eyes, a beak, legs and grass.

 

      I have always loved duck/bunny.  One side is decorated like a bunny.  Flip it over and the other side is decorated like a duck.
  

Peter Rabbit & Snails

     We started the week reading Beatrix Potter's, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  This is the story of a naughty rabbit whose choices almost have dreadful consequences for him.  After reading the story, we had a good discussion about how some of our own choices led to unfavorable consequences.  The students made many connections with this theme!  After our talk, the children wrote in their journals about their choices and consequences.  

     I shared with the students the Peter Rabbit web site.  You can go here with your child to find activities and information about Peter Rabbit.

     After studying fish and worms, we moved on this week to our next animal, snails.  What interesting animals!  Imagine how excited Kindergarten kids are over an animal that uses a cool belly foot to move along very slowly on a trail of slime!  We are learning the body parts of a snail, its needs and how it is different from the other animals we have studied.  Water snails are available for us to observe.

Worms

     Last week was worm week in our Kindergarten.  The purpose of studying the worms was to learn different kinds of worms have similar structures and behaviors, worms have basic needs and all animals, even worms, deserve respect. 

     The students dug out a red worm and an earthworm and compared how the two worms were alike and different.  We learned the body parts and discovered how they moved.  We learned how worms are great for the earth.  Who knew worms could be so interesting?

     We integrated worms into our other curriculum.  In Literacy, we read the book, Dairy of a Worm, and then students wrote their own diaries about a worm.  They were so excited at the opportunity to write a diary just like the one we read.  Their creative juices were flowing, and the results were terrific.  I can't wait for the students to share the books with their parents.

Worms are Here!

     Before leaving for Spring Break, we read the story, The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  We read two different versions and compared how they were alike and different.  Both versions were very similar.  Our favorite activity was to act out the story.  We have some terrific actors in our class!

 

      Our first day back from a wonderful Spring Break, we wrote about our favorite animal for 4th quarter writing sample.  The students wrote about dogs, zebras, komodo dragons and many other animals. They were careful to use spaces between words, kindergarten spelling, punctuation at the end of the sentence and capital letters at the beginning of the sentence.

     We finished our study of fish before the break.  Today we returned to find worms waiting for us.  We started a KWL chart with things that we already know about worms.  We read a non-fiction book to learn facts about worms.  Then, the most fun of all, we all were able to dig a red worm out of the dirt, take and observe how the worm looked and moved.  For kindergarten kids, how cool is that?