“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart”
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The Earth balloon visited our school a few weeks back. The class got to learn all about the 7 continents and even take a trip inside! Reader's Workshop outside! The kids had so much fun decorating these recycled paint cans for mother's day. They got to look through magazines & cut out pictures of things that they thought their mom would enjoy. Then they got to fill them with dirt & choose three different types of seeds to plant. We learned all about germination & the process a seed goes through in order to become a beautiful flower. We planted nasturtiums, impatiens, cosmos, hollyhocks, poppies, zinnias, and a few others. We went out each day to water and check on our flowers. The kids were SO excited when they started seeing growth!
I love any & all reasons to celebrate! It can be anything - birthdays, holidays, accomplishments, milestones, or just because! Every single day of kindergarten is special, exciting & new but the last few days of the school year can sometimes feel sad. I am always sad (yet very proud) to send my little crew onward to 1st grade. They have worked really hard all year long & like I said - I LOVE celebrating. They deserve to have a little excitement in their last few days of kindergarten. We pop a balloon each day that has a special note inside letting us know what our fun activity/surprise will be for the day. Bubble & sidewalk chalk day! Sit anywhere you want day! Notice how all of the boys sat together and all of the girls sat together ;) Game Day Friday! We spent part of the day doing all sorts of games in the classroom. We started off with a cup challenge. Each team had 1 minute to build a tower/structure. They were given 80 cups per team & they had to try and use as many as possible in that minute. It was fun to see how each team built their structure and how they worked together as a group. Then.. we decided to try another structure. We set the timer and timed ourselves on how long it took to really use ALL 80 cups. It was a challenge! Star sunglasses at recess & in the classroom!
Quinn's last day at The Atlanta Academy was today & we were MEGA sad to see him leave!! His family is starting a new chapter in life in South Carolina. We had brownie bites & juice boxes to celebrate his time with us here and he loved reading all of the cards the kiddos made for him. Dillan told him - "Quinn, I'm really going to miss your sense of humor when you go.." I about fell into a pool of my own tears when she said that. This class is so sweet! Enjoying the brownie bites & juice boxes!
Earth day/week was a huge success! We had many discussions on how WE could make a difference in this world & how important it is to help spread the word about taking care of our Earth! We spent most of our time outside and tried to conserve energy by turning off the lights when we left the room. We had reader's workshop outside at the front of the school & enjoyed reading to our partners in the warm sunlight. We even went on a nature walk and found lots of new friends(A lizard, TONS of turtles, a dragonfly, & birds galore)!
I love all of the art that we do in our classroom! It looks like spring is here to stay! Our playground inspiration :)
The class has been working hard on strengthening their number sense! Our math unit these past few weeks has been all about addition. We only described addition as ___ and ___ is _____ at the beginning of the school year. The kids have been hard at work understanding exactly what a number is and HOW it is that number. They have learned all about composing and decomposing numbers into different parts. Now - they get to put their number sense to the test! Developing number sense early on helps the student understand exactly what it means when you say 'addition' or 'subtraction.' ![]() Froggy Roll & Cover - the kids got to play with a partner to see who wins. They each got to roll 3 dice & then they had to find the 'sum' of those 3 dice (yes! they even learned what the word sum meant). They then had to find that numeral on a lily pad & cover it with a frog. The first person to cover all of their numerals was the winner! A few weeks back we made our very own marshmallow castles to correspond with Valentine's Day (hence the heart shaped marshmallows)! The class was VERY excited about this project. We watched a HowCast youtube video ( https://youtu.be/y6FmrOS72EA ) about engineering principles. The challenge was to construct a multiple story structure that had to stand on its own AND undergo an "earthquake." I let them have free range as to how they constructed their castle. It was so neat to see their thinking & what process they decided to take. At the end we made our very own earthquake on the table. It was a success! I love how they all chose different ways of organizing their marshmallows. Some chose to do it by 10s, 5s, 2s or even be 'type' of marshmallow. Kindergarten has collected a total of 489 books so far! That's a lot of books for only two days! Author Gail C. Goldberg can't wait to find out the final count!
A few days after the 100th day of school we had a really fun math activity. It involved tootsie roll pops and tally marks! First, we had to make sure we had enough for every student (12 total). Then, we discussed if 12 was an Even Steven number or an Odd Todd number. Afterwards, I asked if anyone could sort these tootsie roll pops into equal groups. Their minds started racing! Once we figured out one way of sorting them then another kid would raise their hand & let us know there was yet another way to sort them into equal groups! This went on until we exhausted all of our options. I was very impressed with the crew! Now, it was time to eat our tasty lollipops. The challenge was to see how many licks it took to get to the center of the tootsie roll pop. Every time they took one lick they then had to document it on their chart using a tally mark for every lick. They knew that each square stood for 5 tally marks because that is how we group our tally marks. We even got to watch the old tootsie roll commercial with the owl (they had no idea what I was talking about when I first mentioned it)! Dillan even informed us that if your wrapper had a guy shooting a bow & arrow on it then that meant you were going to receive good luck. I had no idea! So... that lead us into another lesson where we figured out how many kids had wrappers with the arrow & how many had them without the arrow. We used tally marks to figure out our answer. I love teachable moments like those!
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AuthorKindergarten teacher to 12 incredible students. I love photography, traveling, coffee, & board games. Archives
February 2016
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