Apples, Apples and More Apples

Starting last week and running through this week students have been learning about apples and doing all sorts of apple related activities including labeling, apple counting and even painting (which they were so excited about!) Students will be tasting apples on Wednesday and graphing/analyzing data from our class to decide which apple is the most popular in our room! Students have really been enjoying it! Check out some pictures below!

A student uses finger paints to dot the number of apples.

A student labels the parts of an apple.

A student dot paints the number of apples for each box.

A student colors her apple book.

Dot Painting

Each week students will be exploring a different medium or artistic method, and last week we looked at dot paintings. Given that we are moving into fall I thought it was fitting that our first dot painting be of a fall tree. First we started by drawing out our trees, then we painted in steps. First we painted the trunk, let that dry and then we painted the tree using three different colors. It was a lot of work but they turned out so beautifully! I can't wait to do this again for pumpkins!

After we drew the trees we did the dots on the trunk and branches.

After we drew the trees we did the dots on the trunk and branches.

Then we did dots of yellow, green and red on the tree to make it look like fall.

Then we did dots of yellow, green and red on the tree to make it look like fall.

What a busy few weeks we have coming up as we move into October, but the fun is just beginning and I can't wait to share it with your children.

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Welcome to the Blog!

Welcome to the first blog post of the school year! On this blog I will post pictures weekly of activities and events that your child participates in at school. I will also post reminders, tips about how to help your child at home and more! Please let me know if there is anything you want me to include that I am not currently; I am very open to feedback! Enjoy!

Writing Everyday

In my K/1 class your students will be engaging in Literacy centers daily, and with that I will have them writing or drawing every day! To build early literacy skills I find it is so important for students to be comfortable and used to drawing/writing to communicate their ideas. This week I introduced our writing center and students used the writing prompts on the wall to draw and label pictures about themselves. I am so impressed with their quality of work already! Here is an example of a student labeling their picture of markers! 

 

Learning Tools

After setting our routines and figuring out how the school and our classroom works, your students were then introduced to varying learning tools to help them be successful at school. The first are called whisper phones (which you will see below). These phones allow them to whisper into the device which then magnifies the sound in their ear, so they can whisper read without distracting their peers! The students have loved using them and I have been very impressed with how quiet they are able to be during centers time. The second tool that I introduced are quiet headphones. These are essentially headphones without the cord, but they muffle the sounds in the room. Students are encouraged to use these if they are being distracted by the noise, or if they are trying to focus on an activity. These have been quite popular this week and next week we will continue to practice deciding when we need the headphones to be successful versus when we just want to wear them :)

A student using quiet headphones to focus on her work.

A student uses a whisper phone to read quietly to himself.

Coming Up This Week! 

This week we are beginning our unit on apples and fall. We will be gathering leaves, doing taste testing of apples and doing writing around how apples grow. Pictures will be coming soon!

Also, on Thursday is our school's fundraiser the Jog-a-thon! Please contact me if you have any questions and feel free to come out and walk with your student!

That is all for now but I love every day I get to spend with your children. It is going to be an amazing school year!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Last Friday News Flash!

I can't believe this day has come but today is my final Friday News Flash. I honestly can't believe that we only have 4 days left! Where has the time gone?

Since I did not post last week, so sorry about that, and we have been doing so many assessments this post too will be short!

We have an action packed last week of school but I wanted to take this time to express how grateful I am that I was able to teach your children this year. It has been an amazing year and I am truly going to miss them all!

Curriculum Fair Project: George Washington Carver

Thank you to all who came to our curriculum fair. The students loved getting to see other grades projects and also share their George Washington Carver research! Students shared their fact sheets and their writing about Carver. If you weren't able to attend don't worry I will be sending home their projects in their end of year folders. Here is an example and the wall where we displayed the pieces:

George was kidnapped. He grew peanuts. He was a plant doctor.

Kindergarten Memories

A fun end of year activity that I like to do is to fill our whiteboard with every memory students have from Kindergarten. They had 50 memories and we filled the board! Then once we brainstorm different memories I had students write about their favorite memory and create a picture showing their favorite memory. While I won't post any of their finished projects (those are a surprise for you after graduation on Thursday!) here is the board with the different memories that they came up with!

Headphone Thank You's

I am so excited that we were able to get some amazing headphones donated to our class. These headphones have volume control so students can't hurt their ears by turning up the volume too loud and they are virtually indestructible! They bend and are foam so they are much more forgiving of some rough Kindergartners :) That being said I had students write thank you notes to the company for donating them. One student even wrote: "I love the headphones so much. And they smell like new Nikes." I am sure the notes will be well received! Here are some students working on their cards:

Well, that concludes my final post for the year! Thank you for joining us and reading about the many adventures we have had this year!

Enjoy your summer!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Friday News Flash

Happy Friday! We officially have 13 days left of school! We started working on assessments for report cards this week, hence the short post, but we will really be focusing on our work for the Curriculum Fair and doing more assessments next week! 

Ducks Say Goodbye

This week we said goodbye to our cute but very smelly friends! The kids were so sad that the ducks had to leave, a few even gave them hugs goodbye but boy did we have an eventful last day with them! Since they have gotten so much bigger they have been running around the trough and I decided to let the kids watch them swim one last time. Well let me tell you it ended up being much more eventful than I thought! The ducks were diving under splashing and a couple kids got water right in their face! After the initial shock of getting wet I thought they were going to die laughing! It was a really fun moment that the whole class enjoyed! Here are some pictures of the kids watching the ducks swim.

These 3 girls got the face full of water!

I tried to keep them back from the container but they were too mesmerized!

Story Writing

Your children officially finished their first piece of writing! 4 pages of writing is a huge feat and a tribute to how much your children have learned this year. Using sequencing words like First, Then, Next and Last they told a personal story about an exciting event in their lives. I was so impressed by their work that I told them they should show off their stories at the Curriculum Fair so we will have those available on their desks for you to view!

Measurement

This week we started dabbling in measurement discussing what it meant to measure something and what tools we use to measure items. Then I had students practice ordering items by height, starting with each other of course! I posed a challenge for students to be in a group of 5 and without talking they had to put themselves in order form tallest to shortest. There were many giggles and some muffled voices but I was very impressed with how quickly and efficiently they were able to do this! Next week we will be measuring varying objects in our classroom with different measuring tools! I will post pictures of this next week as well!

Sorry again for the short post but I got so wrapped up in the learning I forgot to grab my phone to snap a few quick photos. Cheers to another great week of learning!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Friday News Flash

18 days! 18 days! I can't believe it! That being said lets jump right in to the busy week we had!

Making our Mural with Larry Verdoorn

What an amazing art experience your children had this week. It all began last Friday when we did what is called a "Color Factory." This was where our class painted pieces of paper and mixed colors to create an array of colors to essentially make our own construction paper. Students absolutely loved getting to mix the paint and it really made our mural more meaningful when they saw that we made it out of the paper they made! Here are a few photos from our color factory:

One student painting his paper.

Our beautiful rainbow of papers!

Then on Tuesday Mr. Verdoorn came back to help us assemble our mural! We went with the theme of the life cycle of a butterfly so we had 4 panels. One for each stage: egg, caterpillar, cocoon and butterfly. Students took turns helping assemble the mural and then they got to make their own personal butterfly to go around the edges of the mural. With the butterflies they made they were working on symmetry and keeping one side of their butterfly the same as the other. The mural turned out so gorgeous and I am hoping to have it up by graduation so you all can see it!

A student working on her butterfly.

Students working on cutting and gluing their butterflies.

Students working on their symmetry.

Finishing the cocoon and the caterpillar.

Putting strips of paper on the wings of the butterfly.

Ducks

I'm sure by now you heard that Tuesday morning we lost another duck. The poor guy tried to squeeze behind the pool we put in the trough and squished himself. The students were sad but I also told them that it is part of life. We try things and sometimes get hurt but they seemed to take it much better when I told them that now all 3 ducks that died would be together to keep each other company. So to keep our last duck standing company Grandma Darla ran to Wilco and brought back our little Indian Runner and it was love at first sight. Our two ducks are bonded and doing great! They are also getting so big! We put in a ramp so they can get into the pool by themselves and they are in their own little oasis!

Here is a student reading to our 2 Pekin ducks, before we lost one...

Here are our two duckies using their ramp to go in the pool!

Story Writing

This week we started making our very own Personal Narratives in class. Students got their own book to write about something they have done in their life. In discussing our writing process we are using the starters first, next, then and last. This is a great way for students to tell a story but also to focus on the sequence that the events happened in. I was so amazed at the details students were using and their writing abilities.

While I don't have any photos at this time next week I will post some of the finished products and I think you will be blown away but the caliber of work your students are creating!

Stay tuned 'till next week to see what other adventures we have in our last days of the school year!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Duck Update!

Hello all!

After such an exciting day Friday I wanted to post more photos of the ducks as they grow so quickly!

Our 2 survivors are doing so well; swimming, playing and of course making messes :) 

This is a photo of them when they were first starting to walk:

Then I took them outside to play in the grass since it was so nice outside!

Naturally they had to play in their water dish!

Finally I let them swim for the first time! They loved it!

Here is a short video of them swimming:

Well that's all for now but I can't wait for the kids to see them in person tomorrow! What a fun week it will be getting to watch them grow and change!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Friday Duck Flash!

See what I did there? It took 32 days and me finally deciding to intervene but I got the ducks here! I kept telling the kids the ducks were helping us practice our patience :) What a busy first week of May! I can't believe it is May and I can't believe that we only have 23 days of school left! Where did the year go?! But we are sure going out with bang, busier than ever and learning every day!

Duck Writing

This week after our study of ducks students wrote about facts they had learned about ducks. This gave them a chance to reflect on what we had learned while also practice their informational writing. In general we are also working on stamina, sounding out things for ourselves before coming to teacher! I am amazed with how well students are doing in their writing and as we continue our amazing writing over these next weeks I know it will just continue to get better and better. (Spoiler Alert: each student is also going to be writing a book in the few weeks!)

I know that ducks eat their yolk.
Grown up ducks are white.
Pekin babies have yellow fur. and they lay 201 eggs every year.

I know that ducks they live in water.

Pekin ducks have webbed feet.
Ducks lay eggs.
Ducks eat in their eggs.

The King of "ing"

This week we looked at words ending in "ing" and I introduced our King of Ing! It is really just a fun way for kids to remember that when you put an i and n and a g together it makes the ing sound. I had kids coming up to me all day saying "I found another King of Ing!" Next week we will be diving into bossy e who tells vowels to say their name! It is an exciting time in their reading development that we are diving into more complicated literacy rules! The best part is that they are fully ready for the rules and are constantly reading in class! It is a glorious thing to see every day!

Tens and Ones

Believe it or not your students are already begging their understanding of place value! In class we have been talking a lot about groups of 10 and strips (which are made up of 10 squares). We have also started using vocabulary like "trading in 10 for a strip!) In the worksheet you see below students had to count how many tens they saw, how many extra ones (as I call it) and then how many squares there were altogether. We are just laying the foundation for place value but it is an exciting time in their math journey!

The Ducks are coming the ducks are coming!

What an amazing journey your students are getting to see first hand. Not only have they been waiting patiently for 32 days but this week we have started to get our reward. Wednesday evening I saw the beginnings of our first crack on on of our eggs. Every minute of the day Thursday a student was glued to the incubator watching the eggs shake (some even got to hear the tiny chirps!) and we saw that 3 other eggs also developed small cracks! One even developed 2 cracks (see photo below)! All I can say is the suspense is killing me! 

Here is a picture of our first crack in our egg:

Then on Thursday this egg developed not just one crack, but two!

Then today after our ducks not hatching, I decided to intervene and help them hatch. We had 4 at first but one passed away this afternoon which I explained to kids sometimes happens. Then this evening another little guy passed away. But 2 are doing very well eating and almost able to walk around now!

I will post a video of the hatching process and pictures later this weekend!

Yay Ducks!

Smiles,

Miss Adams