Last week, we found out that our second grade buddies had been studying nonfiction stories just like us!  They took their learning one step further and wrote animal reports, which they read to us today. They are awesome authors, illustrators, and readers!

When we got back to our room, we listened to the story "One Bean".  Then we made our own greenhouses!  We "planted" a wrinkly bean seed in wet paper towel and hung the greenhouse in the window.  Now we will wait and observe...we hope we can see the seeds sprout!

Here are a few pictures from our Earth Day activities today.  We had 3 high school students visit our room.  We played games....

and made puzzles out of cereal box covers...

The camera was working today, so we have LOTS of pictures to share!

One of our literacy centers was this tricky game....students rolled a dice 3 times to see what the beginning, middle, and ending sounds of their word would be.  Then they wrote the word and decided if it was "real" or silly.

We've also been paying more attention to the shape of letters to get ready for writing on lines in 1st grade.  This is a sorting center...students had to decide if each letter is tall, small, or "falls" below the line.

This game is like "Sequence".  The spinner lands on the beginning sound, then students find a picture on the game board that starts with that sound.  The goal is to get 3 chips (pictures) in a row.

Our reading lesson today was comparing/contrasting fiction and nonfiction stories.  Then we read for 15 minutes with our book buddies.  The kids are getting SO GOOD at using reading strategies to figure out words!  

Kayla just figured out the words "lakes and rivers"...yay!!  :)

During writer's workshop this week, we will finish our letters to a friend...

We are AWESOME kindergarten writers!!

Just a reminder that our music program is tomorrow (Tuesday) night.  Please bring your child to the CAL Center-at the high school- by 5:45.  We will meet in the commons.  

Today was "moo"velous!  We read 3 nonfiction stories about cows.  Each book included a glossary, labels, and diagrams to help us understand what the authors were trying to teach us.  Then we wrote 2 sentences about cows, and made a cow picture.  Finally, we tasted white, chocolate, and strawberry milk and voted for our favorite!

We also welcomed our new friend Lailah to our kindergarten classroom today!

We were very busy during math centers today!

We used straws and connectors to build 3-D shapes.

We played a fun game to practice our addition and subtraction facts to 5.  

This is a bowling game.  In order to knock down a pin, you had to add 2 dice together and find the sum on a bowling pin.  

Number "top-it"...a card game like "War".  Whoever had the highest number got to keep all the cards.

During our unit time, we've been learning about farms.  On Friday, we listened to a story on chickens and started writing down important facts we learned.  Today, we used our fact sheets to write sentences about chickens.  Then we made a baby chick to add to our writing.  We will also read about cows and pigs this week!

Day 4 of inside recess...please send chocolate...(just kidding!)  :)

Here are some pictures from literacy centers today...

The kids had to use words from their baggie to make a sentence.  Then they copied the sentence onto their recording sheet.  We've been stressing using our "writer's checklist" to make sure we start our sentence with a capital letter, use spaces, mostly lowercase letters, and a period at the end.  

Everyone is getting sooo good at recognizing vowels in words!  Just for fun, one of our centers is adding together the vowels from our friends' names.  

At this center, the kids choose sight words to right in a "fancy" way!

We are also using our mini computer lab to practice building words and blending sounds.  This is a game from starfall.com...super fun!

We start our kindergarten morning with "calendar time."  We meet by the smartboard, with our calendar books, to talk about the date, weather, and how many days we've been in school (today was number 132!).  

Jace was the calendar "helper" today, so he led the group in counting to 4 (yesterday's date), then writing today's number.  

Next, we sing a "days of the week" song.  This month we are learning the Spanish word for each day.

Then, we show the date using coins (today we traded 5 pennies for 1 nickel, to equal 5)...

and tally marks.

We also think of number equations to match the date.

Finally, we graph the weather

and open a box on our number chart to show how many days smarter we are! 

Calendar time is so much fun!!

Happy April!  I can't believe there are only about 2 months of school left!!

During math time today, we started talking about solid (3D) shapes.  We sorted pictures, and then found and colored shapes on our recording sheet.

Our reading lessons have been on nonfiction stories.  We've learned how to identify a nonfiction book, and the role of the author and illustrator (or photographer).  Today we started building background knowledge for our field trip next week by reading a nonfiction book about ponds.  Then we searched for animals in a pond picture.  The kids did a great job of writing the animal names ALL BY THEMSELVES...yay!