Saturday, September 29, 2018

GERMS!! AHH!!



 Germs, germs, everywhere, 
germs in the sky
 and germs in the air!

It was very important for students to understand how to protect themselves and others from spreading germs. The two most important ways we learned to do that was ...

1. Washing our hands before we eat. 
2. Sneezing/coughing into our sleeve

We practice these daily! 

Often times it is hard to understand something that we cannot see. If we only had a working microscope and some petri dishes :). Instead, we use a germ kit with germ bug toys. These germ bugs all had a name like the stomach bug or the common cold. We created our own germs using finger paints and pom poms! When creating the germs students were asked where in their body is their germ invading. One student said her germ bug was a 'headache' :). 






















This week we finally got to explore in the outdoor classroom!! The students love this classroom. It reminds me of my childhood where we played 'house' and made mud pies. Students rarely play this way anymore. What a great way to build their imagination! 











They found a spider and provided the spider with a habitat. Don't worry we released him when we left the classroom. 




We create and build on a daily basis. I believe there are a lot of engineers in this group of children! 



Stacking builds fine motor, fine motor helps you to hold your pencil properly, holding your pencil properly helps you to write:). 


Using recipes is another concept in Kindergarten that students will learn. They have already begin exploring with recipe books in the kitchen corner. 


As you can see, writing comes from play. 



I'm a firm believer in students making the classroom their own. Therefore, instead of putting up a factory made color wall, the students are encouraged to create their own color wall. This activity makes color sorting meaningful for children. They will also begin to recognize the color words. 






We read the story 'Frankencrayon' where students learned that a 'scribble' can turn into a beautiful creation. 







Mr. Richard Churchill is the new Safe and Caring Itinerant. He offered to come into all of the kindergarten classrooms to read a story, 'The Crayon Box That Talked'. It is about a box of colors who did not get a long but in the end they created a beautiful picture together! I have attached a short clip of the song he played at the end of the lesson. The students also created a crayon with their image on it. It was meant to show that all students are different but when we work together beautiful things happen. 

* This song eventually turned into a full on jig! 




Monday, September 24, 2018

First weeks of September



It has been a busy couple of weeks in Kindergarten. This blog post will show a variety of concepts including; fine motor practice, letter recognition, 1-5 number identification (5 frame), circle hunt, and an apple exploration. 

We also read a book today titled 'You Get What you Get'. We always like to read this book during the first month of Kindergarten. It is a great reminder to students that we should be happy with what we have been given. 


Every morning in our 'Town Meeting' (circle time), we watch and listen to the ABC Phonics song. This will give students a chance to recognize their letters and learn their respective sounds. The video only gives the hard /c/ sound. The video also only gives one vowel sound. It doesn't have the greatest examples for /t/ and /x/ either but it is a start:). 








This is our circle hunt. Each student has a paint brush that they used with imaginary paint to find circles around the room.