Chinese New Year

I am so sorry for my lack of blogging lately. Things have been so hectic this month I have had to take a little break from the blog. But, I'm back and ready for 2014!

Today we celebrated Chinese New Year with a parade around the school. The kiddos had a BLAST!! We have been talking about different cultures and traditions in social studies so this was the perfect end to our week.

Students made a mask to represent the animal of the year they were born . Students were either rats (very cute ones!) or pigs. Our fabulous art club and art teacher made the AMAZING lion and dragon heads.

Here are some pictures from the day:

Getting ready in the classroom 

Here we go!

The leaders of the parade from another kinder class

All the other grades came out to watch and cheer us on!

Almost back!

We had such a great time today and loved learning about the Chinese culture. 

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a a wonderful Friday!

Graphing!

For the last two weeks we have been doing all sorts of graphing in our classroom and I wanted to share with you all the fun that has been going on!

We started the unit by graphing our favorite ice cream flavor. The students picked their favorite flavor and then added it to our class graph.

They followed along and did their own graph to put in their math notebooks. 

 Next, we graphed hair color. They made a self portrait using yarn for the hair and then added it to our class graph. They really love these interactive graphs!

How cute!

For the Friday before Thanksgiving break we got to graph M&M's! They kids did amazing with this and of course loved getting to have a little snack :)

First we sorted the M&M's by color.

Then, they counted the number of each color M&M's they had and wrote it on their recording sheet. 

Next, they completed their own graph. They each had a different bag of M&M's so they really had to concentrate to make their graph correctly. 

Look how hard he is working :)

Finally, they got to eat the M&M's! 

We finished up our graphing unit by completing a graph about shoe color. They thought it was so fun to take their shoe off at school!

Here they are completing the graph on their own. 

Well, that just about sums up graphing! I hope everyone stays warm on this chilly snow day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, relaxing, and safe week! We made these cute turkeys on Friday and I just LOVE reading what these sweet kiddos are thankful for.

I am very thankful for all my 18 little turkeys that I get to work with everyday :)

Homework! Makes this teacher so happy :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful week, I know I sure am enjoying it thus far!

Our Thanksgiving Feast!

Yesterday was the school Thanksgiving meal and let me just tell you...we loved it here in kinder!

We have been talking about the first Thanksgiving this week in social studies. We have discussed how the Pilgrims traveled a long way to get here and what happened when they arrived.

Students got to pick whether they wanted to be a Pilgrim or a Native American for our classroom Thanksgiving. The boy Pilgrims made pilgrim hats and the girls made bonnets. The Native Americans used shapes to create a pattern and added feathers to their headdress.

To symbolize how the Native Americans and Pilgrims ate together for their feast, we got to all eat together in the classroom. They LOVED it!

Here are some pictures from our classroom Thanksgiving!

Have a happy Thursday!!

Happy Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day! 

We made these cute flag hearts last week in class. We talked all about the importance of Veterans Day and why we honor these special men and women.

Don't forget to thank all our Veterans today!

Sound Energy

This week in science we have been talking all about sound energy. Science is always a favorite part of the day and this week was no exception.

We discussed the difference between loud and soft sounds. We discussed why when we cover our ears that sounds appear softer. We had fun making loud sounds and making very soft sounds. The kiddos like making the loud sounds and I like making the soft sounds...No surprise there :)

We made a T-chart in our science notebooks and drew pictures of things that make loud sounds and pictures of things that make soft sounds.

Students are really making improvements with their writing and illustrations. We have come a long way in the last 10 weeks!

We have also been talking about how sound energy travels. We learned that all sound is caused by vibrations. We put our hands on our neck and we were able to feel our vocal chords vibrate as we spoke. Today we made guitars using boxes and rubber bands. Students were really able to see the vibration from the rubber bands.  Some worked better than others but I know everyone had fun and learned a lot!

What a sweet group of guitar players!

All About Shapes!

This week we are learning about shapes. We are talking about how shapes are different, where we see shapes, and different ways to sort shapes.

On Monday we talked all about what shapes are and can be. We made this anchor chart together as a class:

Today in class we started this anchor chart comparing shapes. We discussed circles and rectangles. Students loved searching the room and finding different shapes. We will add a shape each day this week and then at the end of the week we will be able to go back and compare all of the shapes. 

It has been quite rainy these last few days so in order to get rid of the rainy day blues I thought we would do something fun and do some painting with marshmallows. Yes, marshmallows!

Students had a great time using marshmallows to paint circles :)

The kiddos loved this, so of course I loved it too!

We also used the eraser end of our pencils to create circles that were a different size. 

Who knew shapes could be so fun?!