Money Money Money!
Last week, the class and I talked about coins and closely investigated what is on the heads and tails sides of each one. They were intrigued that each coin shows what year it was made in, the buildings or icons on the tails side, the U.S. presidents on the heads side, and the different word patterns (In God We Trust, United States of America, ___ Cents). Money is not a learning standard anymore for kindergarten, but I know it is something that my students are intrigued with and want to learn more about. Plus, introducing it now will help them prepare for when they start counting out money and making change in first grade! 

Mrs. Brandi from Junior Achievement did a money extension activity with the class on Monday.

In Science, we learned about the different parts of plants (i.e. stem, roots, leaves, flower, seed) and what the five things are that plants need in order to live: 1) water 2) sunlight 3) space 4) air and 5) soil. 

We planted grass seed...

...as well as root veggies.

The kids thought the grass seed resembled rice and smelled like hamster food.

Carefully patting our seeds down into the soil.

To go along with our plants unit, I taught a rhyming/word family lesson to the class. Each student was assigned a different word family ending and they had to write their own silly or real words. 

The spring weather has been gorgeous lately so we've been spending a lot of time outside. One day, we looked for signs of spring, and noticed that the trees are starting to bud leaves and the grass is turning greener. 

The ice has melted!

We spotted geese taking a swim.

Mrs. Bridget (our student teacher from St. Catherine's University) taught the class a math lesson on Wednesday. She reviewed addition in a new challenging way. Instead of solving equations with standard numbers, she used pictorial representations instead. Different ways to represent a number can include dots, fingers, number words, and ten frames. The students had to count the pictorial representations, then solve the addition sentence. It showed the class a new fresh way of looking at numbers. 

Each student got their own Number Cruncher card and wrote their sentence down on paper. 

When everyone's equations were solved on paper, some students got to go up and use the Number Cruncher "machine" to see if they solved their addition sentence correctly.