A Fun First Week!

The children have had fun learning about the life cycle of the apple tree.  We enjoyed apples on Wednesday for snack and learned about the core and even saw the special "star".  Painting with apples was a different experience.

Our science experiment showed how trees need water, sun and nutrients from the soil to grow. We watched Crystal leaves grow on our tree during class!

A look at the trees in Miss Kathi's hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Holiday Session Begins......

 We have begun our fall session with new jobs in the classroom.  The most favorite so far is being the teacher.  Cole led us through our Question of the Day, "Do you like raisins?"  We post the Yes and No answers on our board and then do a math equation with the answers.

Marcus was the reporter today and kept us all captivated with his spooky story about ghosts and zombies and how Ollie Octopus caught them all with his eight legs.

We are learning about Apples this week and the sequence to grow apples.  See if your child can tell you the steps.   We enjoyed apples today for snack and got a close up look at the core, which we also made at our art center.

We did a special project with the help of Miss Kathi and Pinterest.  Our owl handprints were a smash hit and everyone was excited to take them home!

Welcome to our new friend Indie, who just moved to Gilbert two weeks ago!

A Great Session!

Thank you parents for supporting your child in our learning process!  We work together as a team to support the "whole" child!  Here are the last of the pictures from the Fall Session.  I'm looking forward to a great Holiday session with new learning opportunities as well as holiday fun!

We learned how to play Zoo Bingo today and everyone got the concept!  

In to the Rainforest......

We began using Center signs this week to see how many are allowed at one center.  The children are taking an active role in organizing our schedule.  This and walking in line and other skills will help in Kindergarten.

 Science was fun as we watched capsules grow in our water cups during Ocean week.  The children were anxious to see what grew with water in the cup.   As we moved on to our Rainforest unit, we put a dried plant in water to see what happens.  When it is submersed in water, the plant opens and becomes a fern.  Many of these are in the rainforest.   When the plant dries out it goes dormant again.
We'll see the result on Monday!

Rainforest week was fun as we made rainsticks, fun snakes and a collage of things from the rainforest.

Cole brought in his spider book to share with friends.

  Many have been working hard on Reading.

Our Reading Group works on beginning words during our quiet reading time.

Sharing books and re-telling stories is all part of the language process and is essential for learning to read.

Rylee drawing a monkey from the rainforest.

Trying to make it rain in class!

And at the end of centers, we are a team cleaning our room!

Forest to Sea.........more on Friday!

Art is important in creativity , math and reading language skills.  We used colored packing peanuts to build and create from our ideas.

  Math activities during our unit included weighing 'bears' to see how the scale tips.  It is interesting to hear the dialog and how they are figuring out how a scale works.

 Harlow tries her hand at copying FOREST on the board.  Reading from a board and copying are Kindergarten skills.

Cole is looking at our new fish and sharks as we begin our new Sea unit.  Marcus is enjoying counting with gold fish.  Everyone counted their fish in their cup and we graphed how many everyone had.   A great lesson for "more" , "less" , "greater than" and "less than".   Sean won with 20!

We had a great time with our Forest unit, and

the "What Does the Fox Say" song and book
were a hit.  As we go through our animal units
we are learning how different animals can
be in different environments.  We are looking at
eating habits, prey and similarities and contrasts.

The children have been learning to count pennies, identify money and recently they have decided to "open a movie theatre" and sell tickets with their dollars.  (I love when they come up with their own ideas.  Don't worry - the movies are rated G.)     : )  

Short Week~

I hope you all had a safe and fun Labor Day!   Back in class on Wednesday and Friday we learned about different farm animals.   We also had our "Buddy Bag" time.   These are small bags with games, projects, manipulatives, puzzles, etc.   that we do with a buddy.   The children get randomly chosen to be with a buddy and then spend sometime with just that friend doing the activity.  They must like this new activity because they keep asking "When is it Buddy time?"

The piggy banks were a hit as we learned to identify pennies and count them.  We used our piggy counting mats and put them in groups of five.

During our farm unit, we played with animals in a tub of rice.  This was VERY popular, but messy.

Look who decided to help clean up!

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