"Egg-cellent" Easter

We had a wonderful time celebrating Easter on Thursday! We learned about many of the traditional things that people do at Easter such as dying Easter eggs, going on Easter egg hunts, and creating Easter bunny art. Here are some pictures and video from our fun day!

https://animoto.com/play/xQjN5fPvNeIquc9BNOurdw

We also enjoyed participating in several Easter science experiments. After enjoying the story, White Rabbit's Color Book, we had a chance to explore color mixing and see how you can combine primary colors to make a secondary color. Check out our video of this cool experiment:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8X1Z1MktjS204ZkE/view?usp=sharing

Then, we had the opportunity to perform several science experiments with our favorite Easter treat...PEEPS! First, we made predictions as to what would happen if you put a Peep in water, heated it up in the microwave, or put it in the freezer.  We predicted that a Peep in water would either dissolve or float. We observed from our experiment that a Peep in water would actually turn white because all of the sugar would dissolve in the water. Here is a before and after picture from that experiment:

After that, we decided to heat one up in the microwave and see what happened to it. Check out our video of this experiment:

Our Peep that we put in the freezer is still awaiting further observations. We will have to get back to you on the results of that experiment later.

Finally, we enjoyed an exciting jellybean sorting and graphing activity in Math and a fun opportunity to paint an Easter sight word surprise page where our sight words magically showed up as we painted in English Language Arts. Here are some pictures from our activities. We hope you enjoy them! Please leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Music Around the World Week 1--Australia

Welcome to our Music Around the World Club! I am so very excited that your child is joining me in this journey as we travel around the world exploring different countries and their unique music. I have two loves in life—music and children— so I could not be more thrilled to share this experience together with your child. We are going to learn to play instruments and sing songs from different countries. Then, we will share our music with you all on Thursday night, May 5th at 7:00 P.M. Please save this date on your calendar! It is sure to be a night that you will not want to miss! Thank you again for allowing me the privilege to work with your child. I can not wait to share this experience together!

We began our musical tour around the world today by talking about the universal language of music and how it can touch all hearts and help all people. Then, we enjoyed singing "It's a Small World" together before flying around the world to Australia. 

The land down under had a lot to offer us! We learned about everything from koala bears to kangaroos and spent a "day in the life" of a boy from Australia on the Time for Kids website. We were also introduced to two of Australia's favorite instruments--bilmas and digeridoos. After listening to one of Australia's traditional songs featuring these instruments, we made our very own bilmas and digeridoos. Boy were they cool too! Finally, we began learning the Australian song that we are going to perform, Kookaburra. It is a silly song that will make you giggle and laugh, while allowing you to soak up the unique sounds of the digeridoos and the bilmas. Here is a show of our first day together. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about our first week in Music Around the World!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8aXVrLU5NSG8weDA/view?usp=sharing

Interesting Insects

This week we have been studying about insects. We learned that an insect has three body parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. They also have two antennas, two wings, and six legs. Ask us to sing our song about insects. It is sure to put a smile on your face and help you to never forget these facts about insects! During our lessons this week, we read a lot of fascinating books about insects. We were especially impressed with Eric Carle's collection of insect stories. One of our favorites was The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We enjoyed this story so much we decided to act it out for you. You can watch it right here! Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about our show!

https://vimeo.com/159574837

After hearing this story, we also learned about the life cycle of a butterfly by reading some nonfiction stories about butterflies. In order to help us remember the different stages of a butterfly's life, we used pasta to make these butterfly life cycle plates. Aren't they neat!

Finally, we took some time to make our own insect creations. You can see them in the show below! Don't forget to leave us a comment and let us know what you think of our cool creations!

https://animoto.com/play/gvCv2QT70pZbu1H1iWUvTQ

Positional Words, Subtraction Stories, Amazing Advertisements, and St. Patrick's Day!

What a busy week back from Spring Break we have had! This week during our reading lessons we have been studying about positional words (prepositional phrases). Through exciting and sometimes silly games and songs we have been learning about top/middle/bottom, over/under/on, and left/right. Check out our show below and see all the fun things that we have been up to this week. Be aware...you just might find yourself humming along!

https://vimeo.com/159876465

(Featured songs or games include: a rousing rendition of Top, Middle, and the Bottom, a "Roll a Dice" game with Over/Under/On, and a chance to kick along to the "Cupid Shuffle" while learning left/right.) We also enjoyed doing the Hokey Pokey, while learning about left and right. Here we are in action:

After learning all about positional words, we had the opportunity to create our own video using some of these words on the Chatterpix app. We were able to take our own picture and choose a sticker to place on our picture. Then, the app allowed us to record ourselves telling where we had put the sticker. Our show turned out really funny! You should check it out!

In math, we continued our study of the Singapore Math model drawing process. This week we focused on subtraction strategies. We learned that subtraction means that you are removing something from a group and then counting to see how many are left over, after they have been removed. Once we practiced the subtraction model drawing process, we impressed Miss Todd by creating our own subtraction problems. Here are some of our problems that we created and solved ourselves:

In reading, we were introduced to media which includes advertisements from magazines and newspapers. We talked about how an item that is media is something that you can get information from. We also learned how ads use different strategies in their media to persuade you to buy their product. These strategies include the use of a variety of colors, fonts, and engaging pictures. After learning about media, we had the chance to create our own ads and persuade our classmates to buy our products. Here are some of our amazing ads: (Watch out! They may make you hungry!)

Finally, we enjoyed celebrating St. Patrick's Day with our friends this week! We dressed in green and had the chance to sort and graph Skittles in honor of this fun holiday. Here are some sweet pictures of our fun day! Enjoy! Leave us a comment and let us know what you thought about our exciting week in Kindergarten.