Friday News Flash!

Engineering with the High School

On Thursday we had our last trip to the High School to learn about motion. On this trip students worked with their group to build a chain reaction our of dominoes! It was a wonderful chance for students to see how to change their reaction, turn it and to practice working together. What a wonderful community partnership and super fun experience for everyone! Here are a few photos of the kids domino creations!

Working on our Teens!

As we continue through the end of the year students will increasingly practice their teen numbers, and for some continuing into their 20s! This week students had to count out different numbers of objects and used different objects too. This was wonderful practice for students to really become fluent in saying their numbers out loud and to work on their accuracy. If you get a chance please have your students count out loud for you. It is great practice and by the end of the year they are supposed to be able to count to 100! Thank you for your support in this!

Sight Word Sticker Books

This week I launched our sight word sticker books, a way for students to track which sight words they know and don't know. With these sticker books students came up with a goal for the end of the year and each week I will be reassessing them and see how much they are practicing. I am providing students opportunities twice a day to practice these words but please keep practicing at home! If every student meets their goal students get an ice cream movie party! That is what they voted on so that's what they get if everyone meets their goal! This is really helping keep them engaged and improving over the next weeks!

Nine more days until our Ducks begin hatching, a few more weeks until our Music concert, one month until the science/curriculum fair and then 6 weeks until the end of school. Holy moly it is going fast but I am truly enjoying the ride :)

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Friday News Flash

Additional Music with Mr. Johnson

This year our Kindergartners are lucky enough to get 30 minutes of extra music on Monday's taught by the Estacada High School band director Mr. Johnson. He has done some wonderful activities with the kids that compliments what we are working on in class and has been very fun at the same time! This week he did a fun art activity where students were told to scribble with their eyes closed, but their scribbles had to match the music that he was playing! There were moments of frantic lines all over the paper and then moments of calm circles. It was very fun to watch and the kids really enjoyed it! Here are some of their "masterpieces" that they made :)

Plant Writing

To shore up all the work that we did around plants last week, we worked on a writing piece this week that told readers what plants need. Students were also introduced to a new punctuation mark, the comma! As you will see in the photos below some are still getting the hang of it, but now that they know it they point them out everywhere! This was also a great chance for students to use all their writing skills to teach their readers something. They used their picture, labeling and of course their words to convey their ideas. They have come so far in their writing this year!

Right Brain Creative Dramatics

We are so fortunate to have Miss Flinn back this week and her focus was on role playing the varying jobs in a neighbor. Miss Flinn posted a picture of a community and each child got to pick a part to act out! It was wonderful to see kids using their whole bodies to tell a story. The students loved it and are already asking when Miss Flinn is coming back, which is always a great sign :) Here are some photos of the different roles students were acting out:

Two girls who are a swing set!

Students being a fire truck! Sirens and all!

Science with the High School

This Thursday was our second of three trips over to the high school to explore science concepts with the engineering students. This week the focus was on different pushes and pulls that students do in their everyday lives. Students came up with great ideas like pushing in a chair, pulling open a door, pushing a sibling on the swings and more. Next week we are going to finish up our experiments with the high school students. Here are some photos of students working on drawing their examples of pushes and pulls, experiencing some pushing and pulling and of course controlling a robot by pushing a button!

What a wonderful week it was! Next week we will learn more about ducks as we only have 2 more weeks until our ducks arrive! We will also continue working with teen numbers and move into subtraction. I can't wait!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Friday Science Flash!

See what I did there? It is true this week was an all around science week! This is one of my favorite times of year as we are just cruising full speed ahead! Between incubating our duck eggs, growing our beans (which are now huge by the way!) to taking a field trip to the High School to learn about motion it was a week filled with science fun!

Duck Eggs

We are officially beginning our journey of hatching baby ducks. We put them in the incubator this week and are waiting in anticipation for the next 3 weeks while they grow. Hopefully next week we can start candling them to see the veins! Along with our anticipation for their hatch we are starting to study ducks and chicks, their needs and of course their life cycle. This week we focused on responsibility of pets and what we might need once our ducks hatch to take care of them. Students came up with the idea of making them a comfortable home with water and food, and of course love because we all need love to grow :) I even caught a few students reading to them so they would already feel loved! I just love these kids so much :)

We have 8 eggs that we are growing!

Garden Project

This week we finished planting in our garden by adding flowers. Students learned about the difference between treated garden beds and natural ones and why we plant vegetables or things we eat in the natural ones. After we planted our flowers we read to them so our plants would feel loved too! There are some fun photos of kids reading to their plants below.

Also this week our bean plants have taken off! This morning they were sprouting slightly but after spending a whole day in the sunshine they really grew! The kids were so excited we had to take our plants to the office to share! We have 3 more days of recording our plants growth which means Wednesday of next week we will send them home with kids for you to plant at home!

Our bean plants are sprouting!!

High School Science Trip

This week we had our first of 3 field trips over to the High School to learn about motion. Kids did experiments around balance, force, speed and much more. It was a wonderful opportunity to engage with older students in our community and I loved giving the High School students the chance to interact with our kiddos. It was a learning experience for everyone which is always the best kind of trip :) We will be headed back there on the next two Thursdays to continue our experiments.

Students trying to balance a scale with varying objects.

Students learning about the effects of making a taller ramp.

Students experimenting with how much force is need to knock over empty bottles versus full bottles!

Well that is all for this week. Cheers to another wonderful week with your amazing children! Enjoy the sunshine!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Friday News Flash

Can you believe March is over? I can't! But I am also very excited for the next couple months as they are action packed in our class! From hatching chicks, science projects with the high school and growing our garden the next weeks will be full of fun and learning!

Garden Project

This week we finally launched our garden project! First students had the opportunity to weed the garden, which is an important part to helping our plants have the space to grow! Then they got to plant some starts of celery, lettuce, kale and even some herbs! I thought more kids wouldn't want to touch the dirt but everyone was willing to get their hands dirty and help out! Finally students got to plant their very own beans, and boy did they take it seriously. "Miss Adams mines not getting enough sunshine!" or  "Miss Adams I need to water my beans!" They were truly little farmers! Now the fun part begins as we are documenting the progress of our beans every day watching as they grow and change! Here are our bean plants getting some sunshine and a few photos from the garden!

Art Projects

This was a week full of art projects! First to go along with our garden launch we did a project inspired by Eric Carl's 'The Tiny Seed.' We were making a picture of a flower and labeling what elements the flower needed. Students were only given paper and my directions of what they were to make, but they did all the cutting, pasting and drawing themselves. There were many wonderful designs but here are a few examples.

The second art project we did this week was a color mixing project. I gave students circles and they drew the parts to make a bird (wings, tail, beak, eyes). Then students traced their drawings with black marker. Finally we got to the color mixing portion. Students got to mix together the varying combinations of colors to make their own green, orange and purple. I heard many exclamations like "Wow if you keep mixing it makes purple" or "Add more yellow and then it will be more green!" It was so wonderful to see them so excited and they are even more excited to share their pictures with you. I sent home those pictures in their Friday Folders today!

Math: All about Teen Numbers

This week in math we launched teen numbers! Students got to explore the idea of a group of ten and then some more. Students used ten frames to practice counting on (counting to 12 starting at 10 instead of at 1) and they looked at the different ways to make each teen number. Students had fun building their teen towers breaking them into 2 parts and seeing who else in the class broke their towers the same way! It was a great chance for students to build their number sense and look at the different ways to make each number.

Right Brain: Creative Dramatics

Today we had our first lesson with the amazing Mrs. Flinn who worked with kids on controlling and using their bodies in a drama setting. Students acted out parts of a story, practiced their balance and control and even began to learn how to mime! Students had so much fun and loved being able to have creative movement time. I am so excited that we are able to have Mrs. Flinn and I can't wait to see what we do over the next few weeks we have her!

Two students use their bodies to make a tree

Nikki reads them a story about animals balancing in a boat

In a pretend boat on the floor students got to act out the different parts of the animal story we read.

Next week will have many more fun science and art activities as we jump into our next project: hatching eggs! The students already keep asking me when the baby ducks will be here and we haven't even gotten the eggs yet! I think it's safe to say the are as excited as I am!


Smiles,

Miss Adams