Making Books: Good Morning/Afternoon Dear Earth

One song that we sing each morning and each afternoon is:

Good morning (afternoon) dear earth, good morning dear sun
Good morning dear rocks and flowers everyone
Good morning dear beasts and birds in the trees
Good morning to you, good morning to me.

Aiden had something he wanted to share with us. He had made up his own lyrics: "Good morning dear villagers..." Others started making up their own words too. Pretty soon we had excitement brewing. Everyone had ideas of their own. We decided that we would like to make up our own Good Morning (or Afternoon) songs.

We got right to it! We had books devoted to dinosaurs, animals, family members, classmates...
We used our pink alphabet pages to help us with needed sounds. Some of us sought inspiration from the pictures and words on those pink pages.
We each read our books to our attentively listening classmates.
We shared our stories with friends before taking them home. We promised to read them to moms, dads, dogs, cats, and even pet fish!

Amaryllis Study

Our most recent scientific study began with an amaryllis bulb.
We used pencil to draw the shapes that we saw. Then we painted with watercolors.
We identified the various parts - the bulb, the roots and the stem.

We used Unifix cubes to measure the height and width of the bulb.
Taking measurements helped with creating more accurate representations of the bulb.
We noticed the different colors - the reds, yellows, browns and greens.
We discussed the difference between a scientific/realistic and cartoon/make-believe drawings and paintings.
This science lesson focused on observation, shapes, lines, proportion and colors.

We listened to classical music while painting.
And just for fun, we added a background.
One amaryllis plant is on the windowsill and receives indirect sunlight. The other is in the dark closet. We will be watching and reporting changes.

Update and Tour of our Water-Damaged Building

Such a seemingly little pipe - only a 3/4" pipe. It certainly wreaked havoc in our building! The water damaged carpet, ceiling tiles and drywall have all been pulled out. The building has sufficiently dried out and the drywall crew began on Friday, January 14.

Our Hallway

This is the area where our benches were.

You are now approaching the kindergarten classroom.

Our door

This is the view that you see when you walk through the door.

Here are our cubbies. Thankfully, only the two bottom shelves needed to be removed.

This is our sink and art supplies area.

The back of the classroom where the house center and computers were

It may take 4-6 weeks for new shelves.

Our book area

As you can see, the irises are just a vestige of what they used to be.

Exit

Civil Rights in Kindergarten!

Since the beginning of January, students have been wondering who this man is on the January calendar.

So, in order to provide some context for the upcoming holiday that honors Martin Luther King Jr., we began a week-long series of lessons for social studies. Today's Lesson was focused on Fairness and Discrimination. And it was amazing!
We started by passing out snacks to only half of the class. The boys got snacks while the girls were passed by! Understandably, the girls were upset, confused, saddened and/or angry. I told them that only the boys would be getting snack. Some boys were ambivalent, some demonstrated a jocular superiority, and some of the boys fiercely defended the girls' rights to have snack. The girls were united in demanding to be treated fairly. They were united in their refusal to join us for our upcoming story. Finally, I assured them that everyone would get snacks. And that there was a reason for this...

I introduced Martin Luther King Jr. and told our kindergartners that he and Dr. Seuss had something in common. They both wanted all people to be treated fairly. I read The Sneetches, an incredible story about our basic need to be included. Kids understand fairness, especially when they are the ones being left out.
We are reading The Other Side this week during library time. It is a story about two little girls who live next to each other. One is black and the other white. They are separated by a fence, but find common ground in the middle. The illustrations are fabulous, as is the story.


We will be reading these books as well. Then we will get a little book of Martin Luther King to read together. We'll identify words we know and highlight he and we.

This week's art project will be based on this book to acknowledge the variety of skin colors that abound.

Science Camp

After our classroom got flooded out, we moved to our temporary location. And since it's like camping out we kicked off the New Year with Science Camp Week.

We began with our Goldfish Study.
We met Loretta and Jack - the goldfish that Miss Holly loaned us. We discussed what observation is. We practiced. We observed how the goldfish swam by moving their tails.
We discussed the parts of a goldfish: head, tail, mouth, eyes, and fins.
We talked to each other about what we noticed.
Then we used our magnifying lenses to see so much more. We learned about focusing with a lens.
We were excited!
Then we read color words to color different parts of the fish.

Then we drew was we observed in the tank: the two fish, the marbles on the bottom, and the elodea plants floating in the water.

Sink or Float:
We made predictions about which items would sink and which would float.
We tested our predictions.

After making careful observations, we cut out and glued pictures of each item into the proper category. We wrote the number of how many things floated and how many things sank.


Adopt-A-Mealworm:
We each chose a mealworm to study. We put bran and a carrot piece into each tiny habitat. We began our daily observation and drew a picture for day 1 on our mealworm calendars.

Walking Stick Insects:
So we could see them, we had our three biggest walking stick insects in an isolated tank.
We drew a walking stick insect and what we noticed was in the tank.
We watched their behavior. We noticed:

• that they play dead
• they"dance" back and forth
• they pull their feet close to their bodies so that it looks like they don't have 6 legs (even though they do)
• They have sticky feet and can even walk upside down

So, camping out in our new classroom isn't so bad. We may miss our classroom, our cozy rug, and the familiarity - but we are resilient!