Last Day of School

     Friday was the last day of school.  It is always difficult to say good-bye to a class that has grown so much academically, socially and emotionally.  After 12 years of teaching, it does not get any easier.

      We started our last day together by doing the calendar one last time.  We read the book, Goodnight Moon, and then gathered into our Sharing circle.  With yarn, we made our goodbye spider web.  Each person took the ball of yarn, wrapped the yarn around their hand a couple of times and didn't let go.  The child said goodbye to one thing in the room.  Still hanging on to the yarn, the student threw the ball of yarn to another person in the circle who repeated the procedure.  When all the students had shared, a beautiful web connected everyone in our class together. 


     The spider web was used several times throughout the year.  On Thanksgiving, it was used to share things we were thankful for and on Valentine's Day, we shared things that we loved.


     After the web, we returned to our seats to draw and label 4 things we wanted to say goodbye to.  When completed, the students shared their paper with 3 other students.

     For story time, we read the book, Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the Last Day of Kindergarten.

     Earlier in the week, we made a Kindergarten Memory Book.  Today we finished the last thing in the book.  We collected our classmates autographs.  The children love this!  I had to convince one little guy that he was to write his name in all the books and not the name of the student seeking his autograph.  Autographs were a new concept for us!

     To end our morning, I had a give away.  I put all the posters, interactive writing pieces, class books and any other things I don't want any longer in the middle of the circle.  I pulled student's names and they could choose one item to keep.  I am always amazed at how excited they are to be able to keep these things, and I'm always surprised at what they choose.

    After cleaning the room, it was time to say goodbye to my little friends and close the room for another year.

     Summer!  Yes!  Here I come!

     Continuing today with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, we began writing our own book, The Hungry Five (or Six) Year Old.   On each page of the book, the students are writing and illustrating what they eat on a particular day.

                        On Monday, I ate a pickle.

                        On Tuesday, I ate a watermelon.

                         On Wednesday, I ate ice cream!

      We watched a DVD of Eric Carle sharing how he makes the illustrations for his books.  He uses a collage method which means gluing on a collection of different materials. 

       The students used the collage method to decorate a butterfly.  They were given a cut-out construction paper butterfly, and they cut out different colors and shapes from paper scraps to glue onto the butterfly.  We also learned that a butterfly is symmetrical so the scraps had to be glued on to maintain the symmetry.  This was a simple lesson to practice collage and symmetry.

     

Frogs & Eric Carle

 

 These are the activities we did last week during our frog unit.  

*We started our study of frogs with a KWL chart.  We read numerous non-fiction books to learn as many facts as we could about frogs.

* Learned about the life cycle of a frog and participated in a cut & paste activity sequencing the life cycle  (eggs, tadpole, froglet and frog).

* Focused on reading and writing words from the -og word family (dog, log, hog, frog, etc.).


* Wrote  fiction or non-fiction stories about frogs in our journals. 

* Completed another fact writing activity by completing the frames:

        Frogs like to eat _______.
        Frogs can ________.
        Frogs live in _________.
        Frogs are __________.

* Created construction paper frogs and wrote one fact about frogs on it.

Today we started our author study on Eric Carle.  We discussed the collage method that Eric Carle uses in his illustrations and later this week we will create our own collages.  We looked at his web site, and watched a video of Mr. Carle reading, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Together we read, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  The book led to a discussion on the days of the weeks and healthy vs. non-healthy foods.  We created a class book with each student completing a page about what they eat when they are hungry.