New Year New Beginnings

This is the start of my seventh year teaching kindergarten and I am excited about this new year. This past week was full of getting to know each other and learning about our room and school.  The students have been a joy to have and I cannot wait to see them grow as the year goes on. This week we started off learning how to use our math manipulatives. The students were given a piece of construction paper and some manipulatives and were told to explore with them but stay on their paper. They definitely enjoyed this free time.  

As the week went on I started introducing our centers. We started with some of our daily five centers like our word work, work on writing, listen to reading.  Later we learned about our afternoon centers that consist of our home center, computer, puzzles, blocks.  The students definitely enjoyed center time. 

Friday was probably everyone's favorite day. We Learned to sort M&M's by colors then we got to eat them. Yum!

But I think the most fun came with our gingerbread hunt. We read the book The Gingerbread Man Loose in School. Then we made our gingerbread man, put him in the oven and when we went to get him out he had taken off in our school.  We made our missing posters to show people what he looked like. Then we went back to where we last saw him and noticed he left us a note.  So we read the note and then went to where it sent us.  We went ALL over the school, to the cafeteria, music room, art room, PE, the library, office, nurses office, and back to our room where he was sitting on my table. Silly gingerbread man!  We snagged a picture with him then we ate him up. 

This is one of my favorite activities to do with students. They get so excited when they find the notes. 

Dinosaurs

This week we are learning about dinosaurs. This is the first time we have taught dinosaurs at school. We have need had time to fit in a fun unit like this before but I am glad we found time. The kids LOVE dinosaurs!!  Today we read the book Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Bryon Barton. Then we discussed the different types of dinosaurs and what makes each one special. I had the students draw and write about which dinosaur they would want to be and why. I love reading their explanations. My students this year are so creative.

The Moon

After taking some time away from our space unit to work on Mother's Day stuff we are back to space!  The class read a book about the moon by Gail Gibbons. Then they wrote two sentences about the moon. And just like the sun we painted our moon. Here are some of their work. 

 

(The moon is made of rock and dust. The moon is big.)

The Sun

To continue our study of day sky we read a nonfiction book about the sun. We shared with each other things we learned about the sun. Most students were excited to learn that the sun is a star. They were also surprised to learn how big the sun really is. After sharing, we wrote two sentences about the sun. Then we had fun with the paint and painted the sun. 

Space boy...and girl

The next day we read the book Space Boy. We discussed what we think it would be like if we were on the moon. Next, we discussed what fun things we would do on the moon. Here are some of their work.