Fabulous Friendship Fruit Salad

 This week we participated in an exciting snack activity called Friendship Fruit Salad. We added items to our fruit salad that would make our classroom sweet such as "peachy keen" peaches for students who share and treat their friends with respect, "orange you glad you work hard" oranges for students who always try their best, and "really good apple" pineapple chucks for friends with good hearts who value kindness. We also talked about how we did not want any rotten bananas in our fruit salad (classroom) who would ruin our joyful creation. It was delicious! :) 

Comparing Numbers

  In math this week, we played many different games that allowed us to compare numbers. We began our week by playing Roll and Record where we would roll a dice and write the number that we got. Next, we would record that number in our graph and race to see which number made it to the top first. This game gave us the opportunity to practice counting and writing our numbers one to five. After that, we participated in a game called Cupcake Match. We counted the dots on the frosting cards and matched them to the cupcake wrappers on the cakes. Please ask us about these games at home, while you enjoy looking at our pictures and videos from our fun week together!

Roll and Record

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OM-YEWvCmikxRqzl9yPn2DMlaZraj4jK/view?usp=sharing

Cupcake Match

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ClGGavRwkWa5x-Qb6Dis-UFBSp0e_wYH/view?usp=sharing

Maps and Math Stations

  This week in Social Studies we have been learning about location words. While participating in exciting games such as "Simon Says" and enjoying rousing stories such as "We Are Going on a Bear Hunt,"  we practiced acting out "on top of, " "in the middle," "above," "below," etc. Then, we created a map of our school and shared where things are located using these words. Finally, we added labels as a finishing touch. Here is a picture of our amazing map creation.

We also enjoyed participating in our math stations this week. We practiced counting quantities with game cards and clothespins, played treasure hunt by counting quantities in our treasure chests, and created hats of our new mascot for ST Math, GiGi the penguin. So much fun!

Science Tools Stations

  During these first few weeks of school, we explored some of our science tools during Science Stations such as droppers, clothespins/cups, paper clips/timers, balances, hand lenses, and magnets. Check out our pictures and videos below! Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14g0yWtlx6Gsb4EQGG0ySwaYognsGZG_E/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-b1uKf1kht3mlKIDuVZBuk3_BM7EZfZo/view?usp=sharing

Welcome to Kindergarten

  We have had so much fun these first few weeks of school getting to know our classmates and learning about the special places in our school! One of our favorite activities was hunting for the gingerbread man around our school, as we learned about the different locations we could visit here at Watson. We did not catch him, but we did get to enjoy some of his edible friends that he left for us to snack on. We took some time to get to know our new friends and created a slide show of our pictures, once we each had a chance to take our picture using the Ipad. Please take some time and enjoy our projects from the first few weeks of school. Feel free to leave us a comment and tell us what you think! 

First Day of School

Meet Miss Todd's Kindergartners

https://vimeo.com/748432371

Gingerbread Man Hunt

https://vimeo.com/748434559

Find Your Light Foundation Service Project 2021-2022

 

For the past nine years, my Kindergartners and I have had the special blessing to partner with Josh Groban and his "Find Your Light" Foundation to help raise funds to provide music and instruments to public schools who would not otherwise have these items. In our nine year journey together, we have raised over $29, 500 for Josh's Find Your Light Foundation. 

In addition to teaching Kindergarten, I am blessed to have the opportunity to teach a Music

Around the World class, as well. Our enrichment class provides our Kindergarten-Second

Grade students an opportunity to learn about the different songs and instruments that

countries around our world have to offer. After creating instruments out of recyclable

materials and learning a song from each country, my children present a Music Around the

World Celebration Night for our Watson families. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 we were

not able to host our Music Around the World Celebration Night and our Music Around the

World classes were virtual for most of the year this year. However, our students still very

much enjoyed an opportunity to continue this enrichment program even if it was virtual.

Despite the challenges COVID-19 created, we were able to host monthly events for our Watson Wildcats which benefited our service project, as well. These included a Popsicles and the Playground event, Coke Floats and Coding event, Candy Apples and Cartoons event, Cookies for Quarters event, and Find Your Light Paint Night. While this year has been one full of many challenges, the one thing that I could always point to as a beacon of light for us was our Find Your Light Foundation service project. I could offer our kids opportunities for creativity and camaraderie in a world where there were times where we could not host other events. While most of our events were virtual or outside this year, they were still moments of joy for our kids. Our Find Your Light Foundation service project has always been our opportunity to help others around the world, but this year it also served as a blessing to our Watson Wildcats, as well.  Check out this highlight video of these special moments we shared this year all for a very important cause: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X6DyLpH6tRI5LhEHNy5V8Whn--MjJ207/view?usp=sharing

I am proud to announce that we raised $2, 000 despite the difficulties we faced this year. Because of you and your support for our service project, we were able to continue to make Find Your Light Foundation proud! I would like to thank our Watson family and friends for your unending love that you have shown us and the dedication to help us make this possible. Without you, none of this would have happened, and I am forever grateful for your kindness! 

Through our service project, we have learned about the importance of giving and how little people can do big things to help our world. Thank you for helping us to make a difference in our world by helping a child to “Find his Light!” I can not thank you enough for that! May we continue to make our world a better place through arts education! May we continue to help others to Find Their Light!