With our egg hatching life cycle study, we have been doing a lot of learning about chickens and what they need in life. The students have been keeping a journal of observations and questions that have come up since the eggs were incubating in the room up to now where we have our baby chicks.
It has been a while since I have had time to post so I will do a quick picture catch-up so that you can see how we celebrated earth day at school. All of the students in kindergarten made an earth day hat. We also made a quick and easy paper kite for our kite flying festival part of our Earth Day Celebration. The recycled art projects that came in were great and very creative!
Recycled Art Lamp
Recycled Art robot
Recycling Assembly presented by Ms. Parker's 5th Grade Class
Let's Go Fly a Kite!
During our Jobs and Choices time we have had a couple of new Choices introduced and the class has had a great time with them. We have a couple of LED Lite Brites now and it is very exciting to see the kids spell their names in the light bulbs and make pictures.
We have also experienced cloud dough (named so because of how soft it is), lacing cards, board games, and perler beads. It is always fun for me to bring in a new sensory item to the class. Some of the sensory items are a huge hit with everyone, while others are only exciting for some of the students. The lacing cards are a great practice for fine motor skills and the class really liked to "sew." I got a couple of board games for the class, including "Candy Land" and "Cootie." This has been such a great way to help with turn-taking, rule-following, and cooperativeness in our classroom. Another fine motor activity has been the perler beads where the students put the beads onto the templates in order to create different designs... these are definitely tricky for little hands and big hands alike!
Fun with Pattern Block Shapes!
Playing Candy Land!
We finished our P.E. unit of T-Ball and did a final game with Ms. Brown's class to put our practiced skills to the test. Now we will be starting relay races and games for the month of May.
in-field
out-field
We also have finished our unit in math on basic subtraction. We have talked about how subtraction means to take-away. One of our favorite learning videos for this subject is here:
Here the class has taken sticks of 10 cubes and broken them into two groups. The class discovered that there are many ways to take 10 apart!
Telling a subtraction story! 10 - 2 = ?
With the end of the month we also had an Awesome Attendance and Character Trait Assembly! We had two students from our class that were very successful with last month's character trait of perseverance. Congratulations for always trying and never giving up!
Our other focus over the last 2 weeks has been SIGHT WORDS! We have been doing Sight Word Boot Camp for 2 weeks now and the class seems to be enjoying it. Because all students learn at different levels, we have 4 groups in our class for boot camp (Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue). On Monday mornings students are quizzed on their 6 sight words that they were working on during the previous week and are given a new set of 6 words to practice and focus on during the current week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do some major focus groups with those four color sets and the students rotate between playing a sight word game with me, making one of our letter craft project,s working on our Lexia computer software, and doing an independent sight word activity. We have been making progress with our sight words and this gives each group of students a chance to work on the words that are right for them at the time. Each Monday your student will bring home their words they worked on for the previous week so that they can continue working on them at home, as well. Wednesdays we do a whole group activity involving our sight words and on Fridays we review and tell our words to a partner. I am loving this time to focus on sight words and getting the students more prepared to be consistent readers! Check your child's folder for their sight words from this week on Monday!
The School Science Fair is coming up and will be held on the same evening as Open House, May 24th. Students can submit a project for the science fair, if they would like to. This is NOT mandatory. Families are encouraged to help their students with any projects. Science projects can be: displays, experiments, models, and focus on any of the following areas: Earth Science, Physical Science, Space, Biology, or Chemistry. If your child would like to do a project, now is the time to be thinking of what the project will be and how much time it will take to complete. All participants will receive a ribbon for submitting a project.
Some great ideas can be found on these websites:
HAVE A GREAT, SUNNY WEEKEND!
Also, if you are looking for a way to help out our classroom, I have a proposal up on donorschoose for some other seating options in our classroom. Spread the word and share the link!
