Lovely Ladybugs

Hopefully, you heard about the special guests that we had visiting our classroom during the month of May. It is always one of my favorite times of the year, as ladybugs are a wonderful way to learn about life cycles. Our ladybug larva arrived in the mail from a great company called Insect Lore. We then spent time each day as scientists, readers, and writers, observing and recording what we noticed was happening to these interesting little creatures. After about three weeks, the larva had gone through the pupa stage and emerged as adult ladybugs. We watched them for a few more days and then released them in our school garden, where they can be the protectors of all of our wonderful plants!

The ladybugs about to be released in the garden. Those are raisins in there for them to eat while we were observing them.

The ladybugs were very friendly and crawled all over us!

Liam and Eli watch a ladybug.

Goodbye, Ladybugs! Keep our gardens safe from aphids!

We read the book The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle, and then practiced our grouchiest faces.

I'm sure you've never seen these grouchy faces at home!

Eli, the grouchy kindergartner.

Michaela, the grouchy kindergartner.

We Are Stars!

As a part of our school-wide behavior program, adults throughout the building give students paper "stars" when they are caught exhibiting the desired behaviors of our core values (Belonging, Sharing, Trust, Accepting Responsibility and Respect). This is a wonderful way to acknowledge students who are making good choices and is a way to encourage students who are struggling to make good choices to change their behavior. I am happy to report that every single person in Room 8 has over 100 stars! To mark this impressive accomplishment, students receive their 100 star t-shirt. To celebrate, we all wore our bright red shirts to lunch and had a cool treat! I am so proud of these "stars" and all of their hard work!

Dance Party!

Marvelous Maps!

We have spent the last two weeks learning about maps and how they can help us. We started our study by building a block city and trying to make a map of our creation. Throughout the unit. we learned about directions, the compass rose, symbols, and we rewrote our own version of the book Me On the Map by Joan Sweeney. We ended our unit by becoming pirates and using a map to go on a treasure hunt for a special treat!

Building a block city.

Ahoy, Mateys! 

Sunny Sight Words!

We had such wonderful weather last week, so we just couldn't stay indoors! We took our Fundations outside and practiced write letters and words with sidewalk chalk instead of paper and pencils!

The coolest kindergartners around!

Elephant & Piggie!

We have recently discovered how fun the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems can be! Students love to hear these books read aloud and many students are beginning to be able to read the books themselves! They even used the books in music with Ms. Sertz to practice high and low sounds based on how the characters' voices might sound. If you haven't had a chance to check out these books for yourselves, I highly recommend it! Your child will thank you!

Sawyer and Michaela practice high and low sounds in music

We love Elephant and Piggie!

 

Ruby reads Elephant and Piggie to herself. 

Violet enjoying our favorite characters!

Ava reads There's a Bird on Your Head

Liam reading Elephant and Piggie to himself.

Taking Care of Our Natural Resources

With Earth Day next week, we took some time to learn about our important natural resources, why they are important and how we can protect them.

A list of natural resources.

A fun read aloud about a class that "goes green."

A wonderful book about why we should take care of our Earth. 

Michaela shares her "Earth Day Promise." She promises to "turn off the lights."

Oceans of Fun!

I am sure you have heard by now about our amazing ocean unit! The students have spent the last several weeks engaged in a variety of learning activities as we studied sea creatures and their habitats. Each day, we focused on a different animal and listened to both informational texts and stories about this animal. We kept a daily journal to write facts about each animal and made a craft to add to our ocean mural. At the end of our unit, each student chose an animal to research and write an "All About" report on. I was so impressed with the deep level of engagement and excitement that surrounded our learning. The students did an amazing job of summarizing all that they learned and using their writing skills as they wrote their books. I hope your child shared their "All About" books with you and you were able to see for yourself all of the hard work that they put into it!

We filled this chart in each day that we learned about a new sea creature.

A graph of our favorite ocean animals. 

Here is Harper's "All About Dolphins" book and painting.