This week was so strange. This winter will not stop, and it’s very frustrating! Regardless of the lack of routine, some amazing learning happened this week! We continued our beach unit. We read a fun story called Just Grandma and Me by Mercer Mayer. It described Little Critters trip to the beach with his grandma. After reading the story, we talked about all the things we could find on the beach and used those items to create recipes for “Seaweed Soup.” Their recipes are so funny; they included things like shells, rocks, octopus tentacles, crabs, and fish. We also created some SCUBA divers for our bulletin board.
My favorite part of this week, though, was our sea animal research. I blogged about our experience on our website (www.mrshansenskindergarten.weebly.com), so check that out if you can. We had so much fun! We used a website called PebbleGo to research sea animals. The website is designed for young readers, and it reads all of the information to the kids. We learned about all different kinds of sea animals! Today, we became experts on our favorite sea animals. We are going to be using all of this information to write some great books. I have never seen this group of kids so excited about learning! It was the coolest experience, and I wish you all could have been there!
In Jolly Phonics, we learned that “ow” can make two sounds: it can make the long o sound (oa) and it can make the “ou” sound. You see these alternatives in words like howl, bowl, down, and bow. Our tricky words were “little” and “down.” We wrote Mya’s story this week, and we will finish it next week. During our Daily 5 time, the kiddos did some amazing writing in their Wonder Journals. Our wonder this week was about sand castles. I challenged the children to write at least three wonders (instead of stopping at one like we usually do). Some of the kids filled two pages with wonders about sand castles! I was amazed! They asked things like, “What is sand made of” and “How long does it take to build a sand castle.” We are also starting to learn about making sure we understand what we’re reading. I taught them a strategy called “check for understanding.” To use this strategy, the children stop after every page to see if they can remember what they just read. If they can, they continue to read. If they don’t, they reread the page.
In Math, we continued to measure. We experimented with the need to have standard measuring tools. We used cutouts of our feet and cutouts of the King’s feet (from the story we read last week – a “King’s foot” is a standard foot) to see the differences in the measurements of different objects. We also learned about how to use and count tally marks. We’ve really been working on counting by 5s. Today, we did some predicting about Groundhog’s Day. We gathered everyone’s predictions and decided how many of each prediction there was.
Our beach party was so much fun today! Everyone looked so summery during our picnic on the “beach!” Again, check out my website for pictures of our picnic!
We started a classroom Twitter! If you don’t know about Twitter, it is a way for us to communicate with other classes in our school and around the world. The students help me decide what to tweet and who to send it to. We have been experimenting for a few days. It is a great way for you to see what is happening in the classroom. If you would like to follow us @HansensKinders, please feel free to do so. Everything is private, so I will have to accept your request to follow first. This also is a way for me to be sure that only people we know and trust can have access to our tweets.
My favorite part of this week, though, was our sea animal research. I blogged about our experience on our website (www.mrshansenskindergarten.weebly.com), so check that out if you can. We had so much fun! We used a website called PebbleGo to research sea animals. The website is designed for young readers, and it reads all of the information to the kids. We learned about all different kinds of sea animals! Today, we became experts on our favorite sea animals. We are going to be using all of this information to write some great books. I have never seen this group of kids so excited about learning! It was the coolest experience, and I wish you all could have been there!
In Jolly Phonics, we learned that “ow” can make two sounds: it can make the long o sound (oa) and it can make the “ou” sound. You see these alternatives in words like howl, bowl, down, and bow. Our tricky words were “little” and “down.” We wrote Mya’s story this week, and we will finish it next week. During our Daily 5 time, the kiddos did some amazing writing in their Wonder Journals. Our wonder this week was about sand castles. I challenged the children to write at least three wonders (instead of stopping at one like we usually do). Some of the kids filled two pages with wonders about sand castles! I was amazed! They asked things like, “What is sand made of” and “How long does it take to build a sand castle.” We are also starting to learn about making sure we understand what we’re reading. I taught them a strategy called “check for understanding.” To use this strategy, the children stop after every page to see if they can remember what they just read. If they can, they continue to read. If they don’t, they reread the page.
In Math, we continued to measure. We experimented with the need to have standard measuring tools. We used cutouts of our feet and cutouts of the King’s feet (from the story we read last week – a “King’s foot” is a standard foot) to see the differences in the measurements of different objects. We also learned about how to use and count tally marks. We’ve really been working on counting by 5s. Today, we did some predicting about Groundhog’s Day. We gathered everyone’s predictions and decided how many of each prediction there was.
Our beach party was so much fun today! Everyone looked so summery during our picnic on the “beach!” Again, check out my website for pictures of our picnic!
We started a classroom Twitter! If you don’t know about Twitter, it is a way for us to communicate with other classes in our school and around the world. The students help me decide what to tweet and who to send it to. We have been experimenting for a few days. It is a great way for you to see what is happening in the classroom. If you would like to follow us @HansensKinders, please feel free to do so. Everything is private, so I will have to accept your request to follow first. This also is a way for me to be sure that only people we know and trust can have access to our tweets.