A Dime and Some Pennies

A major focus of our math lessons these days has been teen numbers and understanding that they are "ten and some more." We played a new game called "A Dime and Some Pennies," in partnerships to explore this concept. On a spinner, students had to determine how much money they landed on, ideally recognizing the dime as ten and then counting on from there. They then traced the number they landed on. The first number filled up to the top was the winner! Here, my friend explains her thinking as she played the game.

A Seuss-tastic Author Study!

Dr. Seuss had a birthday on March 2nd. What a wonderful excuse to read and learn all about his wonderful books! For the past two weeks, we have had fun with a different book as our theme each day. We read these books, played games based on them, and sometimes even enjoyed a snack to go with the book!

Green Day for Green Eggs and Ham!

Wacky Wednesday had us looking for all of the wacky happenings around our classroom!

Chairs in our meeting area?!

An upside down Morning Message?

Upside down calendar pieces?!

Our sign-in table was all out of sorts!

A wacky mohawk!

Wacky hair!

More wacky hair!

Crazy Sock Day to go with Fox in Socks!

Kindergarten Things!

We did a guided drawing of the Cat in the Hat.

We had so much fun with Dr. Seuss' books. Next week, we will enjoy books by Mo Willems in preparation for our field trip to the Flynn Theater to see Elephant and Piggie!

Force and Motion Fun!

Before February break, we spent time learning about force and motion. We did several investigations in our classroom to build our understanding of forces (pushes and pulls) and what happens to an object's motion when you apply a force to it. As a final activity, we combined science and engineering and designed our own cars. We were fortunate to have some 6th grade students, who also happened to be learning about Newton's Laws of Motion, help us as we designed, build, and tested our cars. On Friday, we had a giant car derby and each kindergartner got to race his or her car to see how far it could move a cardboard block.

Exploring force. How can we move a friend in a basket across the carpet? By pushing them!

How many friends can we fit in a basket?

How can we move the block further?

By adding weight (more blocks!) 

Designing our cars:

Building our cars:

Racing our cars:

Kindergartner Engineers and 6th Grade Helpers:

Our cars:

Building Our Reading Stamina

As we develop our early reading strategies, it is always important to also work on building our reading stamina, or our capacity to read independently for extended periods of time. We are working on that now! We started off with brainstorming what readers look like and sound like, and then practiced for two minutes. We are up to six minutes of uninterrupted, focused reading time! The students are so proud of themselves! I've included some photos and a video of what the classroom looks like during this independent reading time.

100 Days of Fun!

On Thursday, February 9th, we celebrated our 100th day of school! This is always an exciting milestone in the school year! We spent the day celebrating all things 100! Below are pictures of our 100 cup structures, making fruit look necklaces with 100 fruit loops, playing a game called Roll to 100, and our scavenger hunt for 100 hidden pennies. I've also included pictures of all of the students' projects. It was wonderful to see the creative ideas that you all supported your child with! Thank you!