Under the Sea

Can you believe it?  It's almost May...ahhh!!  Where has this year gone???  How do we only have twenty days of kindergarten left???  They promise to be fun filled and jam packed for sure, so hold onto your hats and savor every second of the magic!  This week was no exception, as we studied the difference between whales/dolfins and fish.  We learned that whales and dolphins are mammals, just like us!  Mammals have hair on their bodies, are born alive from their mothers (not from an egg), breath air, are warm blooded and get milk from their mommies.  Fish breath air as well.  However, the air they breath comes from the water and they use their gills to breath.  Fish are cold blooded, and are born from eggs.  Fish have fins that move back and forth that help them balance and move through the water.  Their eyes never close, even when they sleep.  Whales tails are called a fluke.  They have prints on them just like we have finger prints.  Their flukes move up and down to help them move through the water.

In centers this week we created a Venn Diagram comparing whales and fish.  We then used a check off sheet to see if we could remember what we learned from our Venn Diagram.  We created whale flukes and added our fingerprints to help us remember that whales have prints on their flukes just like we have fingerprints.  We made a book about whales in our book making center as well.  Our favorite center this week was the cooking center.  Students used graham crackers, yogurt, blue food coloring and fish gummies to make a tasty underwater treat.  Each student had to read the recipe to made the treat.  You can try this at home if you would like.

This week we practiced, practiced, practiced for our upcoming play on Thursday!  We are so proud of how well the students know their lines.  Have your child continue to practice his/her lines at home this week.  Don't forget each child will need a costume. If you need help with this please let me know as soon as possible.  We have our dress rehearsal on Tuesday.  If you would like to send in your child's costume for the dress rehearsal we would love to practice with it on.  If the costume is not ready that is totally okay so no worries.  Remember, our play will be on Thursday, at 11:00 in the middle school black box. We will have a celebration in the classroom afterwards.  Because our celebration is around lunch time we are celebrating with a class lunch of Chick-fil-a nuggets.  Please make sure you send in money to Kim Gozycki for this as soon as possible.  Also, we would love to borrow a few underwater stuffed animals as props for the play if anyone has any.  We promise to take extra good care of these and will return them as soon as the play is over.  If you and your child don't mind us using an underwater stuffed animal please send it in for us to use.  Thank you so much!

In science this week we had a visit from the middle school science teacher, Mrs. Kim Aichle.  She came to talk to us about all the wonderful spring birds we have been seeing around our school.  She showed us pictures of birds that we may see in the area that we live in and around our school.  She also let us listen to some bird sounds of birds that live in our area.  We recognized many of them right away!  Next, we went on a nature walk with her to see if we could spot any of these birds.  We found the robin, Carolina wren, mockingbird and bluejay.  She also showed us some baby bird eggs in one of the birdhouses in our bird garden at school, as well as some baby birds that have just hatched on the playground.  We were very excited to see the mommy and daddy birds feed their babies!  We know to never touch the nests, eggs or babies if we see them in nature.  We look with our eyes and listen with our ears to observe.  We also had some more science fun on Tuesday when we celebrated Earth Day.  Our class got to rotate to each kindergarten classroom to learn about different types of pollution and about how to reduce, reuse and recycle.  A huge thanks to Ms. Betsy, the 4th and 5th grade science enrichment teacher, who helped set up these rotations.

We had so much fun sharing our poems for Poem in Your Pocket Day!  Thank you all for helping your child send in a poem for this.  The children LOVED listening to one another's poems, and of course keeping them in their pockets!  I loved the variety of poems they found!

Assessments...Ms Diane and I will begin assessing your child this week.  Many of these assessments are done one on one, and take a great deal of time.  If your child normally brings a book home to read to you or something special to work on we will not be sending these home until we are able to complete assessments.  Please keep reading with your child at home.  Visit your local library and allow your child to get their own library card!  The library summer reading program will start soon, and it is an excellent program and a great way to keep your child reading this summer.  I will also be sending out some ideas of things to do with your child over the summer later in May, so be on the look out!

Due to our upcoming Kindergarten Screening (screening of new incoming kindergarten students) there are not specific dates for us to conference on the calendar.  However, Ms. Diane and I are more than happy to conference with you if you would like.  We just need to know how many of you would like a conference so that we can request a sub and set up a conference day if needed.  End of year conferences are optional, but if you would like one we are happy to meet with you.  Please email me and let me know so that we can set up a day for this later in May.

Upcoming Events

May 3 - Commotion in the Ocean Play 11:00, MS Black Box (parent event)

May 18 - No School 

May 24 - Bare Book sharing, 1:00 in the classroom (parent event)

May 25 - No school 

May 29 - Kindergarten Water Day! 8:30 am- 12:00 pm (volunteers needed...sign up coming soon)

May 30 - Last Day of School

Under Water Fun

Happy weekend!  We have had a busy week in kindergarten!  We continued our unit on the ocean this week by moving from the sand into the sea.  In  our centers this week we read a book about Sammy Sand Dollar.  We learned that sand dollars can be purple, blue, green, brown or black colored.  Usually when we find them on the shore they are white.  This is the skeleton of the sand dollar and has been bleached by the sun.  Sand dollars have flower shape design on the outside of their exoskeletons.  They usually hide in the sandy seafloor of the ocean.  We created our own sand dollars using paper plates and beans.  Students made the flower patter on the outside, or exoskeleton, of the sand dollar.  We also looked at some real sand dollars from the ocean.  We created an Under Water book in our next center.  Don't forget to have your child read the books he/she creates when he/she brings them home.  Next, we looked at the different layers of the ocean and what animals live in each of these layers.  There are five different layers of the ocean.  They are the sunlight, twilight, midnight, abyss and trench layers.  The sunlight layer is the closest layer to the top and 90% of ocean animals live here.  Our final center was our science center for the week.  We did a salt water density experiment.  We used plain tap water (or fresh water) as our controlled variable.  It did not change.  We found that the jewels we put in it sank to the bottom.  In our next container we added salt.  When you add salt to water it makes the water more dense.  This means it gets heavier.  Many objects that sink in fresh water will float in salt water.  Next, we added some baking soda to the third container of water.  When the baking soda dissolves in the water some of it reacts to form carbon dioxide gas.  We could see tiny bubbles rising from the bottom of the container.  The tiny carbon dioxide bubbles attached to the plastic jewels and acted like tiny life preservers, carrying the jewels to the top  of the container.  Exciting stuff!

If you haven't heard we have become poets in our kindergarten class!  We have been reading lots of poetry, and this week we learned how to write some poems.  We learned how to write our ver own color poems during writer's workshop this week.  I placed several different shades of green paper on the board and then as a group we brainstormed a big list of all the things each shade reminded us of when we looked at it.  I was so impressed with all the ideas they came up with!  After we generated our brainstorming list, I explained that a color poem is fun to write because each line starts out with the name of the color (we were writing about green) and then the word is.  We did a shared writing lesson how to write a Green poem, and I must say it turned out fantastic!  Next, we decided that each student could choose to either add to our class "Green" poem or they could choose a different color and write a poem about that color.  I was so excited to see all the writing these little poets did!  We created a large "Green" class poem that is hanging in our classroom, and then we will type up the other color poems to share on Poem in Your Pocket Day.  Speaking of Poem in Your Pocket Day, we will be celebrating on Thursday.  Below is a link that will give you some more information on this special day.  Each child should bring a copy of a favorite poem to share.  It can be a poem that they write or a poem from a favorite book.  Here is a link that will tell you all about Poem In Your Pocket Day...

https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day

In math this week we continued to work on addition and subtraction.  We played lots of games to help us with these skills.  One idea for home is to play games that have two or more dice and have your child begin to count on when adding up the dots on the dice.  For example, if you roll a two and a three, have the child say three and then count four, five instead of counting all five dots individually.  We want to help children learn to count on, and games with dice provide a great way to do this.  Conversely, have your child practice counting backward from a random number.  If he/she has a hard time with this you say the numbers with him/her, or give him/her a hundreds board or number line to look at when they count back.

We have a busy week coming up...Earth Day, our Community Walking Tour, and Poem In Your Pocket Day.  Lots of things to celebrate.  We are in GREAT need of volunteers to walk with us on the walking tour.  If you are available we would love to have you join us.  We will leave school and begin walking towards Davidson at 8:30 and get back to school around 12:00.  We will visit the post office, library, fire station and police station.  We will also stop for a snack at the park.  Please consider joining us for this walk, we would love to have you!

April 24 - Kindergarten Earth Day 9:00 am

April 25 - Kindergarten Walking Tour of Davidson

April 26 - Poem in Your Pocket Day

May 3 - Commotion in the Ocean Play 11:00, MS Black Box (parent event)

May 18 - No School 

May 24 - Bare Book sharing, 1:00 in the classroom (parent event)

May 25 - No school 

May 29 - Kindergarten Water Day! 8:30 am- 12:00 pm (volunteers needed...sign up coming soon)

May 30 - Last Day of School

Commotion in the Ocean

Happy Sunday!  I hope you all have had a fun filled weekend, and enjoyed the beautiful weather we are having.  I think spring may finally be here!  We jumped right back into things this week after what sounds like some exciting spring breaks.  The students were very excited to share about all the adventures they had over break.  We loved hearing about all the fun things you all did together.

This we week dove head first into our unit on the ocean.  We talked about the fact that there are five oceans in the world.  Our world is mostly made up of water.  We looked at this on the globe and on the map.  We found the Atlantic Ocean, which we determined is the ocean that is closest to us and the one that if we went to a nearby beach or on the east coast would be the ocean that we would play in for some fun.  Next, we located the Pacific Ocean, which is on the opposite side of the United States, or the west coast.  A few of us have seen or been swimming in this ocean.  We determined it was probably the second closest ocean to us.  We then located the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Antarctic Ocean.  We decided if we would defiantly not swim in the Arctic or Southern Antarctic Ocean, as they would be very cold.  If we ever go to India or Europe we might be able to visit the Indian Ocean.  It was very exciting to see our students make all kinds of connections to the oceans that they had visited.  Many wanted to share that they had been to a certain beach, such a s Myrtle Beach, the Outer Banks, etc.  We explained that these were beaches all located on the Atlantic Ocean.

In our centers this week we created a rhyming book called, Sand, Sand, Sand.  Students worked to read and then create their own rhymes in this book.  Please have your child read this book to you at home.  We read A House for Hermit Crab, and created our own hermit crabs.  We learned that hermit crabs carry their house along with them where've they go.  We also read the book Tammy the Turtle.  This book describes the hatching of sea turtles and how they grow and return to lay their eggs around the same place they were hatched.  It also talks about how sea turtles can mistake trash left by humans in the ocean and eat it, and get very sick.  We want to make sure we take care of our oceans by never throwing trash into them, and picking it up and putting it in the trash can when we see it so that we can keep the animals that live in the ocean safe.  We buried pretend sea turtle eggs in the sand and then dug them up to find out what happened to the sea turtle inside the egg. We learned that the majority of baby sea turtles to not make it to be full grown sea turtles due to a variety of reasons.  We had to determine if the reason listed inside our egg was a reason caused by nature or caused by humans.  If we ever see a sea turtle nest at the beach we know not to touch it or dig up the eggs, as this is a safe place that the mommy turtle has left her babies to hatch.  We often see helpful humans rope off areas for the baby sea turtles to hatch so that they are not harmed by humans or predators.  Finally we used puffy sand paint to create and paint our own sandcastles.  We had fun placing real shells from the Atlantic Ocean in our sand castles.

This week we also introduced our play, Commotion in the Ocean, to the students.  We sent home play lines and we can tell that many of you have already started learning these as we practice.  We started singing the songs for the play, and we will have lots of fun learning some fun movements to go along with these.  I sent home an email earlier in the week asking that parents be responsible for creating a costume for your child for the play.  Remember these can be as simple or creative as you like.  You know the comfort level of your child and we want you to be able to decide what they will be most comfortable in since it is many of their first times on a bigger stage.  If you need help don't hesitate to let us know.

In reading this week we introduced our Chicken Soup With Rice April poem.  Did you know that April is National Poetry Month.  We will be reading lots of poems this month.  On April 26th our whole school will celebrate with Poem In Your Pocket Day.  This is where each child chooses a favorite poem and has it typed up and places it in his/her pocket.  We will share these with our friends and anyone that we see on Poem In Your Pocket Day.  More information will be coming about this soon.

In writing we worked in our journals.  Many students were excited to write about their adventures over spring break, or about something they knew about the ocean.  During journal time students choose the topic he/she would like to write about.  This group of students loves to write, write, write! Hooray!

In science we did an experiment where we placed a shell in vinegar and another in water to see what would happen.  We were amazed to discover that the shell that was placed the vinegar completely dissolved!  The one in the water stayed exactly the same.  We found out that shells are considered a base and vinegar is considered an acid.  The acid breaks down the base until it dissolves.  What a discovery!  :)

In math we continued to work on the concepts of addition through the use of our range charts.  We have added in several more materials for the students to work with these on during math workshop time.  We also leaned a game called, Fix It Strips.  In this game a pair of students has a strip with numbers on it.  One partner is the reader and the other is the fixer.  The reader calls out the numbers that go down the strip.  The fixer has to verbally say what he/she is doing to the counters on the table to fix them to make the number the reader calls out.  For example if there are four counters on the table and the reader calls out two the fixer has to say take away two.  If the reader next says five the fixer has to say add three.  They progress through the game until the reader has called all the numbers on his/her strip.  Then the partners trade places.


Upcoming Events

April 17 - Field Trip to the Laurels Nursing Home

April 20 - Jill and Dickie Clark CSD Golf Tournament

April 24 - Kindergarten Earth Day 9:00 am

April 25 - Kindergarten Walking Tour of Davidson

April 26 - Poem in Your Pocket Day

May 3 - Commotion in the Ocean Play 11:00, MS Black Box (parent event)

May 18 - No School 

May 25 - No school 

May 29 - Kindergarten Water Day! 8:30 am- 12:00 pm (volunteers needed...sign up coming soon)

May 30 - Last Day of School