Polar Bear Day

We had our polar bear day today, which is always so much fun!  Our morning started with polar bears themed stations.  

We had a polar bear snack station where each component stood for one of the polar bear's senses, the kids got to learn about how incredible polar bears sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing are.  

At the polar bear paw station, students learned how a polar bear's paws adapt to the cold weather.

We had a science blubber station where students felt the difference between placing their hand in ice water with a bare hand versus placing their hand covered in blubber (shortening) in the water.  We made a scientific drawing at the end. 

Our final two stations were a polar bear write the room and a polar bear dot art station.  

 

Pig Decorations

Part of our school fundraiser for Children of the Nations, is to bring in coins for a piggy bank in our classroom.  Each room gets to decorate and name their pig for a school wide contest at the end.  We voted on a name and I let the class go crazy on decorating him however they wanted.  This is....

Fireball the Pig

Giant Spirograph

We had our 90th day of school this week, which meant zero the hero needed to bring a fun activity for us! He brought us materials to make a giant spirograph with our arms!  Students laid on their stomachs and made "snow angels" with their arms as they used their feet to spin around.  It turned out to be a giant zero!

Here's our inspiration picture from http://www.myrtleandeunice.com/2011/07/friday-night-in.html

Ice Dramatic Play

This was a new addition to our ice sculpture day, and it was a huge hit! I cleared out our loft play area and covered the floor with blue butcher paper.  I added plastic winter animals, cotton ball "snowflakes", snowflake cutouts, fake ice cubes for building and markers for them to draw on the paper.  They had so much fun pretending they were in Antarctica!

Ice Sculpture Day

We had our ice sculpture day today, which is a Brighton kindergarten tradition.  I learned some tricks from last year and modified our morning a little for this year.  Instead of doing a whole class ice sculpture activity, I made ice sculptures a station.  All the rest of our stations were ice themed and the kids had a blast!  I loved that instead of it being a 20 minute activity, we were able to do a whole hour of STEM ice activities. 

Ice Caves: We discussed what happens when salt is poured over ice, then the kids tested it out.  They poured salt and dropped liquid watercolors onto ice to make tunnels and caves!

Oil and Ice Painting: We learned that water and oil do not like each other! We painted paper with oil, then spread a ice cube made with paint on top.  The paint puddled on top of the oil and slid around as a result. 

Ice Sculpture: We learned that salt lowers the freezing point when poured on ice, that is what makes two pieces of ice stick together.  We had fun playing with brightly colored ice and stacking them up.

Vowel Sounds

We are starting to introduce the concept of short and long vowel sounds to our class.  We've done a lot of practice with "Vowel Bat" which covers the short sounds and we talked about "bossy e" which lead into a talk about long vowels.  Here are a few examples of station work that we've been doing to start thinking more about vowels and middle sounds in words.  

I have some pocket chart activities that include word sorting cards for many different sounds.  It's very similar to our spelling sorts that we work on!  This time we sorted 'short a' and 'short i'.  Students placed all the word cards into the right category.  After sorting, they got to choose a pointer and read all the words to double check that they were in the right spot. 

I have some little figures that all include middle vowel sound words. They pull a figure out of a bag and then place it in the right category to match the middle vowel sound.  These were all short vowel sounds as well. 

Math Measuring

In math we worked on measuring objects around the classroom using connecting cubes.  Students got a great chance to use great math vocabulary like bigger, smaller and the same.  We also got to practice counting, some students measured objects that went higher than 100 cubes!

Winter Animals: Bears

Our next animal in our winter animals science unit was bears.  We learned all about how bears prepare for their hibernation in the winter.  For this unit, Mrs. Albrecht and I team up so we can set up different activities in each room and have the classes swap halfway through.  In my room, we learned about bear caves and made our own snowy bear dens out of paper bags.  We talked about the habitat that surrounds a cave and drew that onto our plates.  In Mrs. Albrecht's room, the kids made bear headbands and acted out hibernation under the tables.  

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

We had our Martin Luther King Jr. assembly today! Our kids did a fantastic job performing the song "See Me Beautiful" in sign language.  We saw presentations from the other classes and got to hear from a speaker with cerebral palsy who spoke using a computer system.  We learned so much more about accepting others and what it means to be a great friend.  

More Math Stations

In the afternoon we will usually do a mini-lesson together and then practice skills at stations around the room.  This gives me an opportunity to practice our new skill from the mini lesson in a small group while the rest of the class works on stations. Here are some of our recent stations:

Hot Dots are a fun tool to practice a variety of skills, there is a question in the middle and then the student picks the answer from the choices by touching it with a special pen.  The pen will light up green and make a noise if it's correct and turn red if it's incorrect.  These are math Hot Dots that practice addition, we use our bead counter manipulatives to show the addition problem and check our answer.  

 Addition city building is when a student gets two different colored dice and colored blocks that match the color of the dice.  They roll the two dice and make a "skyscraper" that matches the dice color and numbers.  When their "skyscraper" is built, whatever total number it added to it's "plot" which is its spot on a number line.

My inspiration picture from Pinterest is on the left and our class in action is on the right.

 Ladybug addition is when you spin a spinner and put the matching number of ladybugs on the leaf.  Then you spin the next spinner and do the same.  At the end you add up both ladybugs to get the total.  

Whale Hats

We are starting our science unit on winter animals.  Our first animal we picked was whales because they migrate in the winter.  To study them, we read a book about migration and then started our first winter animals book page.  Then we made whale hats and went outside to a giant map of the US to "migrate" with our pod.  It was so fun!

Colors of Us

We read the book Colors of Us today by Karen Katz. It celebrates that we all have our own unique skin color that is different from anyone else.  After reading the book, we all picked our own food item to describe our unique skin color.  We made a list, drew a picture and wrote down our item and a few friend's descriptive words as well.