Spring Fever

I am loving this spring weather! I love how the days are getting longer and we finally don't have to bundle up like Eskimos to go outside. Woohoo, there is a light at the end of the tunnel after all!!! :P In science, we've been talking about signs of spring and how you can tell it apart from the other seasons. I took the class outside to explore and had them bring their science journals with so they could write down and draw any observations they notice about spring. They LOVED it! We saw woodpeckers, geese, airplanes, bugs, robins, (dead) fish, melted ice, water, and lots of brown/tan. Some of the kids still think that the trees are dead since there are no leaves on them, but I am trying to help them learn that they ARE indeed alive. Once it starts raining and getting warmer outside, they will start to bud. It'll be fun to draw our observations in our science journals as the weeks go on.

Nature Walk

Spring Stations

Addition sentences

Tens and ones place

Measuring length

Syllable count: put pictures in the 1 basket if it has 1 syllable, the 2 basket if it has 2 syllables

Writing blends

Rhyming words

Beginning or ending sounds

Sequencing letters in order

Poetry
I introduced poetry to the class last week. I am super excited because in my 4 years of teaching thus far, I haven't really taught a full unit on it. This class will be my guinea pigs and I am already loving the process and how well they're responding to it. They are poets and didn't even know it (ok ok, that was cheesy, but I just had to!) The big emphasis with poetry in kindergarten is that poems can be about ANYTHING. It could be about a shirt, crayons, animals, people, a color, the weather...whatever! I have been sharing actual poems that other kindergarteners have written and discuss with the class what we notice about each poem; the layout, the words and wording, if it has a rhythm or beat, if it rhymes, how much white space it has. The first poem we wrote was about our lunches. The kids thought it was so funny that you could write a poem on food, but hey...they were all about to think of and write about what they had for lunch that day and come up with a title and an ending for their poem. The endings that they came up with were cute and original!

Here is our friend Kovyn sharing her poem with the class. Sharing is a huge piece of writing and helps build confidence and community within the class. Sounds like a win-win to me!

The other poem we wrote about was spring-related. It went along well with our nature walk. I happened to take a video of one classmate sharing his poem. Enjoy!

Math 
We are continuing to practice making partners of a number (ex. partners of 5 would include 1+4, 2+3, 3+2, 4+1, 5+0). Down below, we are playing a game with 10 pennies. The goal is to find out the partners of 10 Partner 1 goes first and takes away a mystery amount of pennies while Partner 2 looks away. Then Partner 2 gets to look and tries guessing how many pennies are missing. Partner 1 reveals the mystery amount of pennies to show if Partner 2 was right or not. The class is getting very proficient with their addition facts and finding out how many MORE they need to make a particular number.

Word Families
To go along with all of the spring related things we've been doing lately, I thought it'd be fun to write word families on flower petals. Word families are a set of rhyming words that all end with the same sound. I assigned each student a different word ending like -at, -ot, -up, or -ick and they brainstormed and wrote either real or silly words with their ending. Trying to think of different rhyming words was a bit challenging for some, so this will be something that I'll continue working on with the class.

Mrs. Vadnais (our Ecostar from St. Catherine's University) taught us a fun science lesson on living vs nonliving things. She discussed the different characteristics of living things (Can it move? Does it grow and change? Can it breathe? Does it make babies?) and filled out a chart with the class on whether an object was living or nonliving.

Hope you all had a nice weekend! Hope you were able to spend some time outside and enjoy!!!