Writer's Workshop:

Art:

Science: We

Quilts: We compiled our Quilt books, mounting squares and creating a cover.

Friday Funday:

Read Aloud:

Butterfly Release:

Dan the Flying Man

Movement: Again today we practiced teh Cha Cha Slide. The kids (and I) are getting the hang of it.

Writer's Workshop: During our mini lesson today, we focused on using words like "first", "then", and "finally" in our writing instead of linking all of our ideas with the word "and".. After students wrote independently for 30 minutes, four students were randomly selected to share their writing and illustrations.

Dan the Flying Man: Today we reread Dan the Flying Man. We used our imagination to think of where we would fly if we had the power to.. after brainstorming and creating a list, students did illustrations of the setting for their imaginative flying.

Video: We watched a Scholastic video with some of our favorite stories. This included Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Trashy Town, Rosie's Walk... During videos in the afternoon, I've been completing a few more assessments with students.

Great Job Yuto!

Movement: Today a new type of movement was introduced - dance! We learned the "Cha Cha Slide". If you haven't heard it, you're missing out (but you've probably heard at least a clip of it on a recent McDonalds commercial). The song basically calls out the instructions for what locomotive movements to do, and the children are really enjoying practicing it.

Read Aloud: For our read aloud we read a new book, Dan the Flying Man which will be the basis of our next class book.. It is a story about a man who flies over many different places and things.

Readers Workshop: Today our minilesson was a review of the Concepts of Print (front of book, beginning/ending, letters, words, where to start reading, etc.) While students read at their tables I pulled all students to retest their C.A.P. I'm pleased to report that almost ALL students have mastered identification of all parts of the book and the procedure for reading.

Lifeskill Assembly: After recess we reported to the blacktop for our Lifeskill Assembly. The lifeskill of the month is Common Sense which is taking what you know or think and putting it into action. Our award recipient, Yuto, has done an outstanding job demonstrating this in and out of the classroom. Student were rewarded with extra recess time and enjoyed the sun as it began to peek through the clouds.

Science: We now have 4 butterflies that have emerged from their chrysalis. Some students helped me to prepare some food for them. The Painted Ladies "eat" a mixture of sugar and water that can be given to them soaking a cotton ball, paper towel, or drizzled over a flower. We will most likely be releasing the butterflies on Friday, so if you're interested in taking a look, please do so before then.

Eric Carle Video: We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon watching several of Eric Carle's stories recreate in video form. Some of our favorites were The Very Quiet Cricket, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Mixed-Up Chameleon.

Congratulations Christopher!!!

Penmanship: Today we introduced another word family, the "all" family. We listed words like small, tall, call, ball, and fall and created a ball that helps us with our "all" word family.

Assembly: After recess we headed to the Flagpole for our Distinguished School Flag raising ceremony. We are all so proud of our accomplishment! Also, Citizenship award winners were recognized. Christopher from our class was the award winner.

Science: We noticed that one, and later in the day TWO, of our butterflies had emerged from their chrysalis. We also noticed that all of our silkworms had spun themselves into cocoons. A question was asked as to why the silkworms, which all seemed identical, spun different color cocoons (some yellow and some white). We hypothesized several things: either they will turn into different color moths or they were different species. We decided to separate one yellow cocoon into it's own container and one white cocoon into it's own container and see if there were differences between the moths that emerge.

Computer Lab: We continued to work on our math game, involving skills of addition and subtraction. Very fun! We only have one week left to visit the computer lab, but students are really seeming proficient in operating the mouse and keyboard during various activite.s.

Social Studies: We explored two different Let's Find Outs today. One of them was about Seahorses, we enjoyed it especially after reading Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle. We already knew some of the fun facts that it contained, including that seahorses come from eggs that fathers carry around in a pouch until they hatch.

Disaster Drill

We began our morning doing our Spring Word Write. This allowed children ten minutes to write as many words as they could without looking at resources around the classroom.

At 9:30 this morning, we began our District Wide Disaster Drill. We recieved an envelope letting us know that nobody in our classroom "was injured" so we proceeded out to the yard in a quiet line. As teachers and staff completed Search and Rescue and Release of some students, I stayed with the class (as I am a member of the Student Care team.) After about an hour, it was time for our classes to return to the classroom and recieve an extended recess.

After recess we toured the entire school, walking through all of the classrooms- examining all that they were displaying for Open House.

This afternoon we began our self portraits for May.

Open House

Tonight was Open House... we had 100% attendance from our class which is AMAZING! Thank you to all who attended. We spent most of the minimum day preparing ourselves and our classroom for the special occasion.


Here's the video that was looping last night:

almost ready...

Penmanship: We explored the -an word family and created a word family "fan".

Science: Today we compared the chrysalis of the caterpillars and the beginning cocoons of the silkworms. Together we made a Venn Diagram of their similarities and differences.

We created welcoming signs to display outside our classroom tomorrow night.

Math: We created two graphs. One was of our favorite Eric Carle book. The second graph was the question of which you like more - silkworms or caterpillars.

Activity: Before we went home, we created an invitation for Open House.

WE ARE GETTING SOOOO EXCITED FOR OPEN HOUSE!! WE HOPE THAT YOU ALL WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE IT - 6:30-7:30

Parts of a Flower

Rosie's Walk: Today we attached our rake to the "across the yard" page with a brad, and we added the footprints to each page in our book. These were the last two steps and now the books are COMPLETE! We brought our books to the carpet and read them together.

Writers Workshop: We had another work period for students to work with a partner and write some Kinder News. They chose events ranging from rest time to our Elves and the Shoemaker field trip and wrote a story about it.

Science: Today we learned the parts of a flower - stem, roots, petals, seeds, leaves. After completing a class pictorial, students worked on their own version to place in their science notebooks.

Painted Ladies

cience: Students finished coloring, collating, and assembling their "How to Plant a Seed" books. This six-step guide is an overview of the process we used on Friday and we are continuing to survey our seeds for any signs of growth.

Writer's Workshop: Today we created a chart of "What Writers Write About" to give us ideas in our narrative writing. Some of the excellent ideas that we came up with were families, friends, school, holidays, parties, injuries, trips, vacations, and insects. After brainstorming students did independent writing and most were able to complete several sentences about the topic of their choice.

Library: Today Mrs. Williams read us two fictional stories about dogs and students checked out new library books. Kudos to those who are reminding students to bring back their library bags so that they can check out fresh books. Today we had 16 of 17 students who were able to check out new literature.

Science: We were introduced to our newest classroom friends - The Painted Ladies. In addition to the silkworms, we are now going to be raising and observing these caterpillars that will become Painted Lady Butterflies. In the coming week we will be discussing similarities and differences between the two groups of insects.

Rosie's Walk: Today we put finishing touches on our Rosie's Walk book. They were bound this weekend and now students have painted the final page (Across the Yard),created their characters and afixed them to popsicle sticks, and created a holder for them on the back cover.

Sunflowers

Science: We got together with Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Chiappe, and Miss Ciampa's classes to introduce our unit on Seeds and Flowers. After an introduction of planting seeds, students broke up into two groups to complete two science projects. The first activity was creating a book of "How to Plant a Seed". The six step process was colored, cut, and collated by students. The next activity was actually planting a sunflower seed. Students filled cups with soil, made a hole with their finger, dropped in the seed, put in more soil, patted it down, and watered their seed.

Multicultural Presentation: Mrs. Luann came into our class and did a presentation about the culture, symbols, and life in China. She brought photos which the students really enjoyed as well as some items for students to pass around - incense, crickets, scrolls, etc.

Mother's Day Wrapping: Using tissue paper, stickers, and yarn, students wrapped their own cookbooks that were created for our mothers. We attached our sunflower cards, and students placed them in their cubbies to take home and give to our mothers. (oops, mom, sorry I ruined the surprise - it's in the mail)

Eric Carle illustrations

Show and Tell: Rosie shared a photo of two baby doves that were hatched from eggs found in a nest near her home. Students asked interesting questions about when the eggs were laid and hatched.

Rosie's Walk: We completed the page for "under the beehives" and began the page for "across the yard". We are near completion, and the children are looking forward to binding and reading their stories with characters that they will create.

Art: After introducing our author study of Eric Carle, we talked about the way he does his illustrations (painting on tissue paper then cutting it out). We then finger-painted our own paper to use once we begin to make our Hungry Caterpillar book.

We also completed a special "secret" project that will be revealed this weekend to families (especially mothers).

Today I received an AMAZING paper quilt created using children's pictures and hand prints. It was the most thoughtful and wonderful gift! I need to find a perfect spot to hang it, but for now it's up on our front board, please stop in and see the beautiful work that went into it. THANK YOU!

Cinco de Mayo AND Japanese Boys Day!

Rosie's Walk: Today we completed two pages in our Rosie's Walk book - "over the haystack" and "past the mill". These proved to be difficult, as we had to use a brad (brass fastener) to connect pieces to our pages.

Cinco de Mayo: To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we discussed the Mexican flag, counted numbers one through twelve (in Spanish) and the colors translated from English to Spanish. Students then colored their flags and crayons and we practiced using Spanish for things such as saying thank you "Gracias" and goodbye "Adios".

Library: Today Mrs. Williams read us two books about stars, a fiction story and a non-fiction piece of literature. The fiction book was Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, which the students recognized as a well known song.

Math: After introducing Japanese Boys Day, students were informed that to celebrate, families in Japan fly carp wind socks outside of their home (displaying as many carp as there are boys in the household). Students were asked to count and record how many were on each flagpole and some chose to sunsequently color them in.

Today I received a very generous basket FILLED with school supplies in recognition of Teacher Appreciation Week - thank you to all who contributed. We appreciate and will get lots of use out of these items!!!

Rosie's Walk: We completed another page for our book, this page was "around the pond". We cut out blue construction paper to make the pond and colored a background.



Art: We painted butterflies for the office display, we used Q-Tips to paint, and they turned out wonderfully.

P.E.: We played tunnel tag today, where students have to crawl between a frozen friend's legs to unfreeze them.