Chinese New Year

Last week we learned about the Chinese New Year. We read many great books that taught us about the Chinese New Year and why it is celebrated. We talked about the Chinese Zodiac and learned that each year is represented by a special animal! This was the year of the dragon. In celebration of all of this, we made lanterns with Chinese symbols on them and we made our very own dragon! Wow—what a process! The kids did a great job and our dragon turned out SO GOOD! Here are some pictures of our dragon making process:

This is what each group started with—a big, blank piece of white paper! They already had their ideas rolling around in their head so they got started right away!

      

     

Adding detail:

     

      

After our dragon body was made, we ALL worked together to create the dragon head. It’s the best dragon head I’ve ever seen!

The front

                                                   

The side

 

The back

       

After all of our hard work, we are ready for the parade!

                                   

Here we go!!!

 

If you missed the link on the school website, you can view the entire dragon parade here:

Here are some pictures of our lanterns and lucky money.  On Friday, we celebrated by listening to the story, Sam and the Lucky Money. Then each of the kids got an envelope with lucky money of their own. They got to choose to come to “the store” and buy some candy with their lucky money or save it and take it home!

  

 

It was a fun week in kindergarten learning about a different culture and pretending to celebrate like they do!

This week we will be focusing on the 100th day of school and Valentine’s Day activities!

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

Milk Lids and Penguins

Here are a few pictures of our milk lid counting extravaganza! We had a blast celebrating in our p.j.’s today—pictures will be up soon!

 

 

It was a great math lesson! We got to practice counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s and 100’s!!

Last week we studied penguins and learned about where they live, what they do and the different kinds. We also did a fun math lesson on addition with Penguins and the fish they eat.

                         

Coming soon: a post about our Chinese New Year Celebration!

Enjoy your weekend!

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.

Today I got to introduce the kids to Martin Luther King Jr. (Easily confused with Barack Obama in the minds of a 5 year old. ) After we established that the picture I showed them was of a man named MLK Jr., not our current president, we were on our way!
We listened to an informational book about MLK Jr. on bookflix. After that, we talked about the things he did and what made him so special.  We know that he worked very hard to make sure ALL people were treated fairly and that no matter what we look like, we have the right to have the same privileges as everyone else.  We did a guided drawing of MLK Jr. and wrote the words “Thank you” on top in appreciation of all that he did.
   
Here are the things the kids remembered about MLK Jr. :
                                   

In the afternoon, we watched a short video that showed the events of MLK Jr.’s life.  Then, we took a virtual tour of his house growing up! The students were able to see how different houses looked back then from what we have now.   If you want to take a look, here is the website:
http://www.nps.gov/features/malu/feat0001/BirthHomeTour/porch.html
Our final activity today was something I felt the kids could relate more to in regards to this topic.  I hid a different color crayon at each child’s table spot.  Once they found it, they knew that was the color of crayon that represented them.  I read the story, The Crayon Box That Talked, by Shane DeRolf. It is about crayons in a crayon box that don’t get along because they look different from each other.  Someone buys the crayon box and uses all the colors to draw a beautiful picture.  The crayons are able to see how beautiful it is and that all the different colored crayons were needed to make the picture, there is not one more special than another.  As I was reading, I had the students come up to our blank canvas if their crayon was called and draw using their color.  This is what they created:
                               
The kids each colored a crayon the color that represented them and then drew a picture of themselves in the middle.  They are so cute and I think the students really understood that each of us are special and unique and we all deserve to be treated the same!
                                    
Thank you to Martin Luther King, Jr. for helping us remember these very important words.
 

Our Busy Week

It’s only Wednesday and the kids have already gotten so many things learned and accomplished! They have become such great workers—it’s so neat to see the growth that has taken place in them! This week we have been reviewing all our letters and sounds.  We have also been focusing on all things WINTER! We read The Mitten by Jan Brett on Monday and talked about the sequence of events that happened in the story. They were able to tell me which animals came into the mitten first, second, third…etc. They will be bringing home mittens they made with their own animals so they can retell the story to you using their “props.”

                

Tuesday we talked about things we see in the winter.  I had a big chart where we recorded all our answers.  The students told me something they saw in the winter and then they all helped me spell the word by sounding out the letters. AWESOME! They loved being able to tell ME how to do something! They came up with lots of great answers and we finished with this sentence activity:

The students completed a worksheet with these sentences and filled in the words “the” and “see.” Ask them to read their sentences to you this weekend!

Today we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. Peter, the main character, does many fun things in the snow. We made text to self connections by thinking of things we do in the snow that Peter did too! They did a great job of making connections from the book to their own lives!

  

Peter made a snow angel. I made a snow angel.

LAST THING! In Math we are working hard on counting and recognizing the “teen” numbers.  They are very good at counting them, now we just need to be able to write them! This counting hat page was a good start! We are also working on counting to 100 by 10’s.

Letter "P" Practice

I am starting to make lessons for each letter to practice writing it as well as websites to review the sound.  There is also a fun video clip for the students to watch, too! Here is the first, of hopefully 26, letters!

Feel free to let your student do this at home. I will also be introducing it for them to do at school.

http://mrichardson23.wikispaces.com/Letter+P

Winter Wonderland…(Kind Of!)

Our first four days back at school flew by! We were very busy learning about our letter friend, Mr. D and his dazzling dances! We also did a lot of fun things with snowmen and winter. However, it’s been difficult to think that it is winter when there is no snow on the ground and the kids are outside playing in 60 degree weather!
Before we left for Christmas break, the kids made their own snowman and decorated it however they wanted.

This week we read the book All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Shertle. We talked about the steps in making a snowman using the words first, next and last.  The kids drew three pictures showing the progression of making a snowman. Then, they wrote the steps. They are starting to stretch out words by sounding out each letter and doing SUCH A GOOD JOB! They impress me everyday with their abilities! This project turned out great!
            

                                                    First, roll a ball. Next, roll one more snowball. Last, add detail.

 
Another fun writing prompt we did was, “If I lived in a Snowglobe I would….” We pictured in our minds what we would be doing inside the snowglobe and then brainstormed together some of our ideas. The kids were then able to draw the picture and write about it.

                  
 I would invite a friend over.                                             I would ice-skate.
This next project was hard to visualize, since we don’t have any snow on the ground!! But the kids used their imagination and made connections from past experiences to accomplish our goal. I asked the kids to close their eyes and imagine what it would look like outside in the winter if they were looking from their window.  They came up with lots of fun ideas like making snowmen, sledding, having a snowball fight, other houses with Christmas lights and snow plows
The kids loved the fact that their pictures look like a window! I do too!
Here’s our classroom display

  
               

On Friday I read the book Snowmen at Night. Instead of using the normal book, I projected it onto the screen thanks to:
http://www.wegivebooks.org/books/snowmen-at-night
I read the words as the kids looked at the big pictures.  It is a really neat book! We did a writers workshop on it afterwards where they got to choose what their snowman was doing during the night. Boxing, milking a cow, and riding a monster truck were some of my favorites.
This next week is all about REVIEW! We will be reviewing ALL of the letters we have learned so far and doing various assessments to make sure we really know our letters and sounds and how they are written (uppercase and lowercase).  If you get a chance, please review all of these letters with your child so they get all the practice they can!
                     
Thank you!