The Night Before Kindergarten

 

 

 

 

                                                                                 

 

I am really looking forward to the new school year which begins tomorrow.  It will be great to finally be back in Kindergarten!



Oviparous Animals

Mrs. Jones brought two of her hens to school today to join our lesson about oviparous animals.  Their names are Fluff and Speckles.  We read books about animals other than birds that lay eggs such as fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects.  Two mammals lay eggs!  They are the duckbill platypus and the spiny anteater. We are really hoping that Fluff and Speckles will lay eggs before the school day is over!

Our Student Teacher

We are so happy to have Ms. Church with us this semester.  She is our student teacher from Salem College.  Ms. Church helped us partition pizza into halves and fourths during our unit on fractions.  We love her!

Picturing Writing

We are really enjoying the Picturing Writing program this year. Picturing Writing by Beth Olshansky is a series of literature, art, and writing experiences designed to enhance writing instruction for students with diverse learning styles.  

Ready to Read

We are working very hard to learn to read our first grade words. Making words with Play-Doh is lots of fun!

Welcome to First Grade!

Here we are on the first day of school.  We have had a great first day!

Mmmm! First Graders!

We had a great time on our recent field trip to the Greensboro Science Center.  We saw lions, lemurs, peacocks, wolves, and many other interesting animals. The Omnisphere Theatre thrilled us with full dome visions of our solar system but at the end of the day, it was a two headed turtle that stole the show!

Plants and Animals

We have enjoyed learning about plants and animals this year in science!  We planted several kinds of seeds including pumpkin, sunflower, peas, and beans. It has been interesting to compare and contrast the plants that have grown from the seeds!

Winter Weather

Where's the snow? It is so unseasonably warm here that we are wondering if we will have snow this winter! We have just begun a unit about weather in Imagine It. We will read literature and informational texts relating to many types of weather including storms such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards. So far, the only snowmen we have made have been made of white construction paper!

Happy Holidays

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Furballs

Is it snack time? Not for us! We have been learning about a variety of nocturnal animals including owls, bats, badgers, hedgehogs, moths, raccoons, red-eyed tree frogs, etc. In order to find out what owls eat, we dissected owl pellets! Owl pellets are the undigested and regurgitated remains of an owl's meals. We found claws, bones, fur and even skulls of the small animals that owls eat in the forest. Bon appetit!

Back to School

What a cute new class! We have nine boys and nine girls this year. More to come!

Soaking Send Off

Have a GREAT summer!

100 Days of School

How long does it take to make one hundred pancakes on the 100th day of school? About as long as it takes students to write one hundred words. How long does it take to eat one hundred pancakes? Not very long at all! It was a very sweet day.

Yes to Yoga

To my delight, this is an incredibly diverse class this year. Nine countries are represented by my students. Children originate from India, Iraq, Mexico, Honduras, Germany, Bermuda, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Indonesia. The children have enjoyed researching and teaching their classmates about their backgrounds using our ActivBoard. This young man invited his mom to introduce us to yoga and meditation. Our attempts at the contortions were quite amusing and the giggling was contagious!

Falling For Apples

This is my favorite field trip. Each September, we travel an hour and a half to the Perry Lowe Apple Orchard in North Wilkesboro. Before the trip, we learn how apples are cultivated. We read and write about apples. We sort apples. We count apples. We compare the taste of different apple varieties. We bake apple turnovers.

So you can imagine the ooohs and aaahs when the bus turns off of the busy interstate onto a quiet, winding, dirt road lined with apple trees laden with apples. We hop off of the bus and Farmer Lowe gives each of us a fresh, cold apple to eat as we ride along on a trailor behind his tractor to tour the orchard. We visit the apple house to learn how the apples are processed. And at the end, we pick our own apples to take home. What a great way to welcome the season of fall!

Sweet Sixteen

We're back! This is our new class of first graders. Aren't they cute? All of them seem happy to be back at school to begin a new school year. They posed for this picture just after our "hike" around the school to launch our schoolwide camping theme. Sparks of excitement are flying as we build a fire for learning!

Tater Time

Green is Great

Guess who wore the most green items on Saint Patrick's Day? We learned all about Ireland in March. Since Ireland makes us think of potatoes, we tasted many kinds of foods made with potatoes. Everyone brought something made from potatoes to share. We had potato salad, sweet potato fries, potato bread, scalloped potatoes, hash brown potatoes, and potato chips to name a few. Can't wait for you to see our potato people on the next post!

Multicultural Munchies

During multicultural week, one of our mothers prepared foods from Ghana in our classroom. We enjoyed a meal of stew and fufu. It was delicious!