Pine Glen Room 101

Monday, January 16, 2017

The Mitten

On Wednesday, January 11th we reviewed the story The Mitten by Jan Brett. We went through the order of the animals as they entered Nikki's mitten. We talked about how the animals were living things. The students were able to prove how they knew this! We found out that 7 of the 8 animals in the mitten were mammals and one was a bird.

Later in the afternoon, Ms. P. from the science center came and did the hedgehog show. Ms. P. reviewed all the animals in the book and highlighted the hedgehog. At the end of the show we were able to meet Pearl the hedgehog.

We received some sad news over the weekend. Ms. P. emailed to tell us that Pearl had passed away. We knew that Pearl wasn't well when we saw her, but we were hoping that she would recover. Ms. P. told us that hedgehogs have very short lifespans. We were lucky to have met her!

We made it to 40% on ST Math!

Great Work Room 101! We received our 40% complete postcard from JiJi. We worked really hard last week on ST Math so we are hoping to receive our 50% postcard this week!

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Keeping Warm in Kindergarten!

During the month of January we will be keeping warm in Room 101. This month students have each been assigned a day in the month to bring in a special blanket, quilt or afghan. A trash bag will be sent home a day or two before it is the student's turn to bring in their special item. Please put your child's special item in this bag. We asked the students not to talk about their special item so we can have more fun with this project!

Mrs. Parnell and Mrs. Kearney started the month off and shared yesterday and today. To start the sharing we play a game of 20 questions to see if the class can figure out what is inside the bag and what features the special item may have. The students will be practicing our oral language skills by formulating their question and asking it in a complete sentence! The students need to listen to each others questions to try not to "waste" any question by asking something that has already been asked. Yesterday we had 2 wasted questions but today they did not waste any questions! That is a great accomplishment for only the second day of this game! After the 20 questions have been asked the special item is revealed and we compare and see how many things were guessed!

Then we are on to the math part of this special blanket project. The students will take turns measuring the special item using the base 10 rods. We have instructed how to measure accurately with these rods so our calculations are correct. The students will be measuring the length and width of the blankets, quilts and afghans and then we will be using nonstandard measurements to find out the area of the special items. Depending on how big the item that is brought in is the students will decide how the kindergartners will use their bodies to calculate the area. The choices are having the kindergartners stand on the blanket, sit on the blanket or lay on the blanket!

Mrs. Parnell brought Lindsay's baby quilt to kindergarten.

The area of the quilt was 6 kindergartners sitting up.

Mrs. Kearney brought Olivia's blanket into school.

Mrs. Kearney had help measuring Olivia's blanket.

The area of the blanket was 7 kindergartners lying down.

We are looking forward to seeing what our students bring in to share with us. Here is the blanket Calendar for January.
Please mark your child's day on your calendar.
Thank you for your help!

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

K & 4th Grade Animal Project Viewing!

On Friday, December 23rd we had an amazing Animal Video viewing party with our 4th grade partners. Hopefully soon we will be able to post the youtube videos. We had a great time watching and learning about all the animals that were researched, wrote about and created scenery and masks about. It was a multi-faceted project. The results showed tremendous growth in learning, engagement and multi-aged friendships!