Today we learned about Chinese Dragon and Lion dancing. We watched a few dances online with Ms. Cooper's class then headed down the hall to the gym as one line of Fire Dragon Dancers. One of our friends is from China and he taught us how to say Happy New Year in Mandarin. He taught the rest of our friends how to write It and turn it into a work of art. We also had a visit from our school counselor, Ms. Meyers. We learned some more ideas for solving big and small problems we may have at school. We started our time with Ms. Meyers in the "Rock" Yoga pose to center our bodies and brains for our lesson. We had our second parent visit today. Thank you Miss Leah for coming in and sharing with us how your job as a Physical Therapist positively affects our community. We added you to our "Members of our Community" books.
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We had our first parent visit today. Thank you Ms. Attard for sharing with us your role in our community. After you left we talked about how you help the community and we decided that you definitely make a difference in the people's lives that you work with each day. We started our "Members of our Community" books and you got to be our first page. After each visit, we will be adding to our books. After we wrote in our books we snuggled at the carpet with our stuffed friends and listened to more of our favorite books from home. We only have a few more to read. After lunch we had time to work in our Inquiry Learning Centers while I pulled groups of kiddos for literacy instruction. Most of the following photos are taken by the kinder students. They sure are getting good at taking photos with my iPad. Everyone brought in their favorite book from home. We began the day reading our books and sharing them with our friends. We read half of them today. We will read the other half tomorrow. In our afternoon Inquiry Learning Centers we also had a chance to share our books from home with others. Here are some more photos from our center time. Thank you Lewis and Clark PTA for putting on such a fun event. Here is a slide show of some pictures from the evening! We learned about the art form of making Mosaics. We then made a collaborative mosaic using our bits and pieces of treasures, and mirrors as our canvas. We first went around the circle and each placed a piece onto the mirror. Afterwards we discovered that it didn't have a pattern or purposeful design. So we decided to take our pieces off, we made a plan to create a spiral, and we each took turns adding to our masterpiece. In the afternoon they had the chance to visit this Inquiry Learning Center and create a masterpiece of their own. This afternoon we explored our new Inquiry Learning Centers for the week. Definitely some amazing work happening here!
We began our new unit of study today by learning about a prominent member of our community, Julia Galloway. Julia is a very famous artist that lives right here in Missoula. She is the dean of the Fine Arts Department at The University of Montana. She is a world renown potter and one my grad school teachers. The past two summers I took clay making classes with Julia. My first summer I learned how to make a large pot called a vessel. Using the coil technique I learned in grad school we made our own classroom community clay coil pot. Each kiddo got a piece of clay they first formed into a sphere. Then they placed the sphere on the table and used both hands to roll it just enough to create a cylinder. Then with a firm, but gentle repeated roll of the hands they formed it into a "snake", also known as a coil. After all the coils were made each kiddo came up and added their's to our community piece of art. After admiring our masterpiece we made the connection that our pot was amazing and beautiful because everyone contributed their piece to it... just like our classroom community! We all play a positive role in our community which makes it the beautiful, welcoming, fun place to be! Boy do we love kindergarten!!!
Although most of our afternoon was consumed with learning about the artist and community member, Julia Galloway, and the technique of coil clay pot making, we had many amazing moments the rest of the day. In the morning we practiced our sight words, also known as "popcorn words" because they pop up in everything we read. We set out 15 words around the carpet area, turned on some music, danced through the open spaces, and when the music stopped we found a word. Then we read the word to our partner and then out loud altogether to the group. Even though they are all different words, it worked out that I could hear and monitor their reading. Then the music began and we repeated multiple times. We had a blast moving to fun music but were challenged by trying to find a new word and a new partner each time. And of course, our finished community clay pot. We will fire it soon and put a finished polish on it. Then we will decide how we will use this masterpiece. They have already said they want to use it as a vase but we will brainstorm other uses as well! Just recently we have switched our Friday morning library visit to an afternoon visit with our big buddies. What a great way to spend some time together, strengthening our relationships with one another. Thanks Miss A for the orange slices for snack. We loved creating orangey smiles before heading to specials.
We had a great lesson involving "doubles" in math. We used our body parts to help solve math problems. Then we joined up with a partner to form an octopus with 8 arms. After our math lesson we used our writing time to add finishing touches to our Disco Hop invitations. We wrote a persuasive sentence about why we should go to the Disco Hop. Hopefully everyone can come and have some fun! In the afternoon we enjoyed our Inquiry Learning Centers. We began our day together with a group challenge. We each chose one wood block out of our newly organized block center and brought it to the carpet. We brainstormed ideas of what we could collaboratively build. We made a plan to create a tower. We made a rule that the blocks must be touching and one of our goals was to not knock it over. Check out our masterpiece. After our structure was complete we chatted with our partner about what it looked like to us. We talked about using our imaginations to be creative with our thinking. We had many ideas: the Eiffel Tower, a race track, a bridge, a castle, a juice factory, the twin towers, a train track, the Statue of Liberty, a rocket ship. Our next challenge was to incorporate our structure into their writing for the day. After recess we discussed why we had the day off yesterday. We talked about the holiday and how important Washington and Lincoln were to our country. Then we read about the American Flag and decided to create our own flags. After studying the flag the kiddos worked collaboratively to create their own. After lunch the kiddos were introduced to our new Inquiry Learning Centers for the week. Check out some of the kiddos in action. Another great day in kindergarten! We began our day with a community building game called "Zoom, Errrrt". Ask your kiddos about it. Then we had a visit from Nurse Kathy about the importance of good dental hygiene. The kiddos reported learning that they must brush at least twice a day, floss every day to get rid of sugar bugs, and limit slow and stop foods to help keep teeth healthy. Thank you Nurse Kathy. After recess we had a few minutes to get together with our groups to work on adding any last details to our graphic organizers about how animals survive winter. Then we got up in front of the class and presented our work. We each got to share what we added to the web and why. (I wish I would have gotten it on video because it was truly amazing!) After lunch we worked at our Inquiry Learning Centers. At my center the kiddos answered the question, "How do animals survive winter?" in their science journals. They drew a detailed picture and then dictated their ideas to me. They all did great! Our biggest surprise today... They earned a warm fuzzy party. We had a delicious, healthy snack thanks to two of our friends and watched the PBS show Peg Plus Cat that focused on learning the 3D shapes. |
by Mrs. WinterKindergarten is truly the BEST and that is why I want to share our world with you! Archives
September 2017
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