Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, this is one of the end of the year gifts I was given this week:

The book is filled with pictures of the kids and notes about their favorite memories as well as gift cards to some of my favorite places! Amazing huh?

Thank you SO much to Lynette Bell for putting my photo book gift together and thank you to everyone who helped make it possible! I love it SOOOO much. I keep looking at it and showing it to people because I think it is so sweet.  I really appreciate all the gift cards and separate gifts many of you have given, as well. I feel beyond blessed to have worked with such thoughtful and supportive families! I am going to miss each one of you and your children over the summer! I look forward to seeing you all around the halls of NG in the fall though. Thanks again and have a great summer!

With Love, 

Mrs. Maggie DeYoung

Just Dance

We had a little fun dancing today.  We practiced following directions and moved around the room to this popular One Direction song.  The kids want to have a dance off with the Turtle room tomorrow so we will see what happens (I think we have better moves, but I may be a little biased)! You'll have to ask them to show off their moves for you at home! :)

Favorite Memories and Bucket List

I can't believe this is our last week of school together. We spent some time reflecting on our year together. The kids wrote about their favorite memories in kindergarten.

We also made summer bucket lists.

Isn't their writing impressive? I am so proud of their hard work!

Cha Cha Slide

We all need some breaks from the normal routine, especially these last few days of school.  I came across a dance on youtube.com for kids that is basically the Cha Cha Slide. You've probably danced to it at a wedding before.  Anyways, we learned it today and it really does help the kids with their directional skills. Here is a video of the kids dancing ... some of them have some pretty good moves! I thought it was cute so I just had to share it with you. Enjoy! :)

Butterflies

We learned about butterflies last week.  We learned about their life cycle and wrote about them.

 We read the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and sequenced what happened in the story.  This is one of my favorite stories.

The students finished up their butterfly reports this week.  They turned out AWESOME! It is so cool to see how far their writing has come. These will be coming home next week in your child's blue writing folder so be  sure to look for it!

Zoo Field Trip

Well, we had our last field trip of the school year on Monday.  We went to John Ball Zoo. There was a chance of rain all day but it held off and proved to be another sunny, warm day.

The kids were SO excited about this field trip.  The bus ride to the zoo was filled with questions and predictions from the kids about the animals and the exhibits.  This was probably my favorite part of the field trip. I just love their curiosity and excitement for life.

 

Thank you so much to all of the parent volunteers who helped lead small groups around the zoo.  It was so nice to have you join us and I appreciate all your help!

 

 

I kept walking through the penguin exhibit because it had air conditioning (and because I like penguins).  One of the times I walked through I caught the zoo keeper feeding the penguins. It was pretty cool!

 

They did such a great job walking around together in the heat.  

The lion was trying to keep cool in the shade.

I can always count on a silly picture with these kiddo's!

The bus ride back to school was much quieter than on the way there - I guess the zoo tired them out! 

Zoo Animal Reports

The students and I have been reading about zoo animals and writing facts about them.  Last week the kids took their facts and wrote them into a report all about their animal (a zebra, lion or giraffe).

Everyone made their animal's body when they finished their writing.

These are a few examples.  As you can see, the reports turned out awesome and the kids seemed to enjoy writing all about their animal.

Our reports are on display in our classroom now.  If you are in the area, I encourage you to stop in to see them. Way to go owls!

Zoo Animals

In preparation of our field trip to the zoo, we took some time to learn about zoo animals.  The students practiced labeling the animals and putting the animals in alphabetical (ABC) order.

I'm not sure how but the zoo animals escaped the zoo one day and decided to hide around in our classroom (or so we pretended for this game!) The kids had to search around the room for the animals.  If they found all of the zoo animals and wrote their names correctly, then they won.  They did a great job with this.

We read the story, 'One Night in the Zoo' by Judith Kerr.  This story is about what the author thinks the zoo animals do after all the visitors and zoo keepers leave.  

The students responded to this fun little story by writing their own story about what happens.  I laughed so hard reading through their ideas.  From nail polish parties to milk shakes at Captain Sundae - the kids had great ideas!

I love their creative ideas!

Measurement

Hi Everyone! I haven't had the chance to post any pictures recently because I was having issues with my computer. My husband seems to have fixed the problem though!

Last week we learned about capacity, weight and measurement.  We learned what capacity means and decided that if we are really thirsty, we would want to drink a cup that is not only tall but wide, as well. The kids practiced measuring objects using blocks and cubes.  They learned what taller, shorter, wider and longer mean.

The kids enjoyed sorting groups of objects from tallest to shortest and vice versa on the Smart Board.

We compared our body height.  Some of  us are tall and some us are short.

I showed the class a water balloon and a regular balloon filled with air.  The students made predictions as to which balloon weighed more.  As you can see, most of the class thought the water balloon weighed more. After we put the balloons on the scale, we quickly figured out that the water balloon weighed more because that part of the scale went down so almost all of the predictions were right!

We will continue to learn about measurement and measure things around the room this week.

Worm Investigation

We continued our living and non-living science unit this week. This week's activities involved worms - yes, living worms! We investigated our worms and learned that they are alive because they breathe, move, eat and grow.

Before we looked and touched our worms we tried to move like a worm around the room.  We quickly realized that having no arms and legs makes you move a lot slower!

The students enjoyed using the microscopes to zoom in on the worms features.

Some of the students were very brave - daring to touch and hold the worms.

I think everyone named their worms.  Some of the names they came up with really had me laughing.  "Spike", "Princess".... one group decided to name their worms "Mr. DeYoung" and "Mrs. DeYoung".  I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not? :)

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After we played with our worms and investigated them, we set them free outside.  We decided they would like to live in their natural habitat more than the small classroom container they came in

Since it was such a nice day outside, Mrs. Heyboer's class decided to meet up with us on the playground and play a game of Spaghetti and Meatballs. 

What a great day!

Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar?

We enjoyed reading the story, Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? last week. You can't read this story without eating a cookie so I splurged and baked some cookies for the class.

After our snack and story, we played a game where we all sat in a circle and chanted the "Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?" cheer and practiced inserting our own names into it.  We passed around a container of fake cookies, too. On the back of the fake cookies were different types of punctuation.  Who ever's name was chanted picked a cookie from the bag and told the class about the punctuation mark - what it is called and what it does.

This was a really fun group activity I saw on Pinterest.com. It helped the students recognize the different types of punctuation better, too. Man, what would I do without Pinterest?! :)

Popcorn Word Push Ups

Most of the students in our class have earned all 40 stickers in their popcorn word sticker books which is awesome! This means they can recognize all 40 Sitton words.  We continue to work on spelling these words accurately when we write.  The other morning we turned our popcorn words into a morning workout.  This picture shows the students doing push-ups as we spelled out the words.  We jumped, clapped and hopped as well. They're writing has come so far. Keep it up owl friends!

Making Inferences

What a week! Although it was so nice to see my little owl friends again after our week off, the rain made our week a little crazy.  We were only able to participate in Walk-A-Thon on Friday and we spent the majority of the week inside, avoiding the pouring rain.  Today has been beautiful though so I hope you take some time to go outside!

One of the many things we learned this week was inferring.  We have been talking about using our schema (prior knowledge or what we already know about something) to help us make predictions and share connections when we read.

Well, this week we took that a step farther and learned the word: infer.  Inferring is when you take your schema (prior knowledge) and clues (in this case: illustrations in a story) to make inferences.  

For example, we talked about how if we were walking to the lunch room and we smelled something sweet in the air, we might infer that cookies, brownies or some other type of tasty treat was being made.

Once again, I stole this idea from a great blog I found on Pinterest.com.  We practiced our inferring skills this week by using this mystery box.  I told the kids I put something in the box and they made guesses as to what they thought it might be.  Then, I gave them clues.  Using their schema (what could fit in this size  box) and the clues I gave them (ex: It is a rectangle) the students made inferences.  It was a fun activity and one student guessed the actual item: a greeting card! We practiced inferring with the story No David! as well.  Please encourage your child to work on this skill at home with their JRL book.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.  I'm going to go for a bike ride!

Reading Strategies

We have been working on our reading strategies and comprehension skills so much this year.  The growth and progress the students have made just floors me.  It really has been so fun to watch them take the skills I've taught them and go with it.  I decided that the students need more opportunities to show off their abilities .  One way we do this is through a shared reading during the day.  I ask for volunteers to be the 'teacher' and read the words on the chart to the rest of the class.  Sometimes there are tricky words in the reading so the 'teacher' has to decide which strategy to use.  The 'teacher' then asks the class what strategy he/she used.  The kids have been doing really well with this and I have noticed a big improvement in their reading.  Keep it up owls!

How-To Blow a Bubble

Happy Spring Break! I hope you have had a great week so far wherever you are.

 Just before break started our classroom finished up our How-To writing unit.  This was a very fun unit to teach.  The students and I thought about things we know how to do very well (ex: walk a dog, make a pizza, get ready for recess, etc.) We then picked three activities and created a scaffold of each step needed for each activity.  The students created How-To stories about each of their activities.  Their stories included a title, cover, illustrations and all of the steps written in complete sentences.  One of the things we focused on in this unit was the use of transition words (ex: first, next, then, and last).

Since Thursday was our last day together before break, I decided we needed a fun way to wrap up our How-To writing unit.  After brainstorming ideas and looking on Pinterest.com, I decided Thursday's activity would consist of bubblegum, glue sticks and construction paper.  That's right - I gave 25 kindergarten students a piece of bubblegum and taught them how to blow a bubble with it.  It was actually kind of hilarious!

We had a great time with this activity and we were able to create a scaffold of the steps of How-To blow a bubble.  The kids did a great job with it and the self-portraits they created with the construction paper and glue turned out awesome!

I hung their work up in our classroom so if you have the chance to stop in you should definitely check it out!

Enjoy the rest of your break! I look forward to seeing my kindergarten friends at school on Monday!