Saturday, April 20, 2013

Insect Week!

This week we had another fun filled science theme, insects!  Our class loved learning the characteristics of an insect and trying to stump our families on which "bug" is considered an insect.  We sang many songs about the parts of an insect and identified ones we see outside.  It was another fun week of learning with our friends!
Great teamwork friends! 
Independently, we read our color words on one side of the butterfly and then repeated it on the other side to show symmetry!  We are such smart thinkers. :) 
We love to interview our king or queen of the day and do a shared writing paragraph on what we learn about our friend. 
Can you believe we are writing sentences on our own in Kinder Prep?  Each friend wrote about insects they can see.  I am so proud of these little ones! 
We enjoyed getting new table top centers this week!  Here we are putting together the life cycle of animals. 
Two more new centers...Beading based on the number written on each pipe cleaner and spelling common words 
Water colors are always a favorite center to visit 
We used cotton balls to stamp out a caterpillar.  We focused on making a pattern and wrote the word caterpillar. 
Using the words that we know, "I, can, and" we were able to read this sentence figuring out the tricky words based on sounds and the context of the sentence.  It's really exciting to see little readers take off! 
 
Lately, little writers are taking off all over the room either at the writing center, the big white boards, working with a friend or even making little books at home!  
We've learned to use two finger spaces between our words when we write.
Our king of the day shares his special something from home 
We painted our own insects and labeled all the body parts including legs, antennae, head, thorax, and abdomen. 
Another king of the day sharing-look at these great listeners! 
This little author wrote her own book at home based on the "Brown Bear" book.  WOW! 
Making insects with our own thumbprints 
We used our fingertips, fingers and hands to paint the life cycle of a butterfly!

Friday, April 19, 2013

Space Week

Last week's theme was one of our favorites! We loved learning all about space, stars, the sun and moon and the names of planets.
We are so big now and can put together sentences and read them! 
 
We love to learn about our friends with graphing.  This week we graphed the number of brothers and sisters in our family. 
This friend wrote her own book at home based on stories we read in class. WOW! 
Putting together more sentences using sight words we've studied. 
What a beautiful planet! 
We stamped our numbers backwards from 10 to 0 just like a rocket ship counting down. 
 
Our king of the day took a picture of the class. :) 
We were SOOOO excited to get outside on the new playground!  The weather was perfect and we got to run and play with our friends. 
 
 
Even Mrs. Traci got in on the fun! 
 
 
 
This queen of the day brought her favorite horse to share. 
 
We learned that Earth is made mostly of water and made our artwork to show that. 
It was fun to paint our own planets and name them! 
 
Mrs. Traci reads us a Bible story each day during snack. 
We used pattern blocks to make rocket ships 
One of our favorite activities was pushing a toothpick through points on a paper to make constellations. 
This king of the day brought a pillow with a picture of himself as a baby-so sweet!

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Ocean Week

This week's theme was oceans.  Even though it doesn't sound like any of us got to visit the ocean for break, we brought some ocean fun into the classroom this week!
Our queen of the day shares her new special friend 
Reviewing our color sight words 
Graphing different kinds of ocean shells 
A little ocean fun in the sensory table 
Using our word charts in the writing center to write thematic words. What a smartie! 
These friends are cooking up something yummy. :) 
Enjoying some new books 
Instead of identifying our last names for our table top centers, now we come in and have to find our birth date. 
Nice work! 
This king of the day shared with us his very own camera and even took a picture of our class. Ha!! 
Our new sight word was "you" and this group is rolling and spinning for a color that they will write the word with.  They are playing this game completely independently!  Way to work together friends!
We love seeing our new table top center each morning when we arrive.  This one is making pictures with pattern blocks. 
This queen of the day brought her special "Ted" to enjoy the  day with her. 
We loved singing "slippery fish" and doing all of the hand motions. 
We followed directions by drawing a fish step by step.   
Stamping ocean creatures on our bubble work 
More great drawings! 
Painting on the bubble wrap to get it ready for stamped bubbles on our ocean art work. 
What a great structure! 
I love seeing all of the writing taking place throughout the room. :) 
It was a fabulous week learning about ocean life!  Next up....Space!