Today we met up with our 4th grade reading partners and continued working on our collaborative animal project. Today the 4th graders helped the kindergartners figure out if their animal was alive and how they could prove it. The 4th graders were reading non-fiction books to the kindergartners and helping them research and find more facts about their animal. They also used an educational website to help collect research. Both the kindergartners and 4th graders are enjoying this cooperative project. We are looking forward to the next part of the project. Next week we will meet up with out 4th grader partners and draw the animal they are researching on the Drawing Pad app and then the students will work together to write a script for their animal to explain what they learned.
This morning we learned how to use a new app on the iPads. We started using the app Raz Kids. This app is a reading app that allows the students to hear a story read to them and reread story themselves. The students earn stars for either listening to a story or reading a story. These stars accumulate and then they can spend their stars by building their own robot or designing their own house. The students were engaged while using this app and they asked to play it again this afternoon. At our Parent/Teacher conference this week I will distribute information about how your child can use this app at home.
Last Wednesday was WILD for Pine Glen Students! We started our day by working on a couple turkey pages for Thanksgiving. Then we went to the gym and watched retired Burlington Science Center director Mr. Papadonis and Mr. Musselman perform a couple science experiments with pumpkins.
Mr. Musselman showed us a chemical reaction with liquids and dish soap and he created a bubble volcano.
Mr. Papadonis created a chemical reaction with liquid chemicals, enclosed gas and a spark form a propane torch lighter. It made a huge bang and the pumpkin EXPLODED!
Thank you Mr. Papadonis and Mr. Musselman for an AWESOME science show!
After the science show we went outside to watch the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders run the annual turkey trot. After all the runs we started the Pine Glen Walk-A-Thon. The kindergartners did a great job walking around Pine Glen. There is still time to turn in sponsor sheets.
When we finished our walk we posed for a chilly class picture. All students received participation ribbons from the Pine Glen PTO. Great job Room 101.
We went inside to warm up and to have a snack. We watched The Peanuts Thanksgiving while we ate our snacks.
Then we created snow people and snowflakes for our classroom door and bulletin board in the hallway. We are getting into the winter spirit in Room 101. We made giant candles that are also being displayed in the hallway. When parents are in for conferences next week please be sure to check out our new decorations!
We ended our day passing out prizes for students who took the time and extra effort to complete the Kindergarten Highlights page in the Kindergarten News. We also took a picture with the 20% postcard we received from ST Math. Thanks Jiji for the encouragement to keep us all interested! At conferences we will distribute information about how your child can use this math program at home.
On Monday the kindergarten classes at Pine Glen sang four Thanksgiving songs together and then we ate with different kindergarten friends from Room 102 and Room 103. We had a lot of fun singing and eating with the other kindergartners. We have learned that we have a lot to be thankful for during this Thanksgiving Season. We are thankful that we are all together in a wonderful school with so many friends that we can learn and play with.
This week we created our own board games. We have been focusing on our Fundations and connecting letters and the sounds that they make. We hope to play these games at school and learn how to cooperate, take turns playing correctly and practice our skills as we play! After we play these games at school we will send them home to play for further reinforcement.
We also started a new book about the Nutcracker. We have read a couple versions of the Nutcracker, looked at pointe shoes and we have started listening to the Nutcracker music. We also have a choice station with different Nutcracker finger puppets and real Nutcrackers for students to become familiar with and use their imagination to create their own stories. Soon we will learn some Nutcracker dances!
At another station the students have been using to practice their letter formation is tracing the big "road like" letters with Math Box cars the Kindergarten way.
We read a Lets Find Out on wild turkeys and labeled a turkey.
We also completed our Thanksgiving What will We Eat book by creating our own patterns on the cover.
We also finished our Thanks A Lot book. We illustrated this book to make us more familiar with Raffi's song. We will be singing this song on Monday, November 21st at our Kindergarten Feast.
This week we started working with our 4th Grade partners to start a cooperative project on animals. The 4th graders borrowed books about animals from the Pine Glen library. The 4th graders read the books to the kindergartners and then the students worked together to fill out a worksheet and decide if the animal was living or non-living and how they knew! At the end of this session the partners chose a beanie baby animal and we will start researching about the beanie baby animal. Next week we will read books about our animal and start to compile facts about the animal. Stay tuned for updates on this cooperative project.
We tallied our Presidential Election votes today. It was very exciting in Room 101 as the votes went back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton ended up winning 12 votes to Donal Trumps 8. It was a close race! We wonder what the results will be with the National Election tomorrow! Remember to get out and VOTE. Bring your child along so they can start to learn about this important process first hand!
Miss P. From the Science Center brought us new animals. We now have two, black female gerbils visiting our classroom. Miss P. has given us the responsibility to name these two gerbils. We will be brainstorming name ideas soon, so if you have any suggestions send them into school! We learned that gerbils are in the mammal animal family. The mammal characteristics are- they have hair of fur on their bodies, they have a backbone, they are warm blooded, they breathe with lungs and they feed their babies milk.
On Friday morning the students in Room 101 had a mock voting session. This is the first year Massachusetts has had early voting and there is no school on Election Day, so we needed to have our mock election early. The students found their picture ID (Their lunch card) and brought it to the check in table where they said their name and Mrs. Parnell asked them their street address. Knowing where they live is a standard that needs to be learned by the end of the school year. Some of our students knew their address and others did not. We will continue to work on this throughout the year, but practicing at home can be helpful.
The students voted behind privacy dividers and placed their ballot into the ballot box when they were done. We talked about how voting is a secret and we will tally our results on Monday. We did have a lively discussion about the two major candidates when we worked on our Let's Find Out earlier in the week. We also read Duck for President by Doreen Cronin. We will read My Teacher for President tomorrow and we will share the journal entries the students wrote about what they would do if they were the president of the United States.
When the students finished voting they colored their own badge that said that they voted.
We all posed with our I voted badges in front of our new November bulletin board. The students asked a few times during the school day about the results, but we ran out of time on Friday. We will be tallying our results tomorrow. Stay tuned. We will post our results soon. I wonder if we will be able to predict the United States new President. We will have to wait to see!
