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