Non-Fiction and Counting to 100!

This morning we worked on a shared non-fiction book we are writing: All About Insects to share all that we have learned in our insect study.  Today we discussed what we would include in our book and added the table of contents.  Kindergarten authors decided that we would have a page about the body parts of insects, a page showing the life cycle of a butterfly, a page about bees and a page about ants.  Our cover page and table of contents is finished and tomorrow we will begin working on our "all about" pages as Kindergarteners call them.

During Math we took a look at a 100's chart and Kindergarten discussed what they noticed.  Kindergarten noticed that when you go up and down the first number changes but the second number stays the same but when you go across the second number changes.  Kindergarten also realized that you can count by 10 by starting at any number and we practiced counting by 10's by starting at 6 and ending at 96.   We also played a mystery number game where I chose a number and gave clues and Kindergartners had to guess the number I was thinking of!

A Trip to Fire Station Number 4!

This morning was quite exciting!  Kindergarten was surprised to see that two butterflies have emerged out of their chrysalis!  It was quite exciting to watch them fly around in the net and some student collected flowers for the butterflies when we were outside.

We also had the chance to visit Fire Station No. 4 on North Ave.  Firefighters Tim and Dennis let students sit in the truck, watched them put on their fire gear and what it looks like to slide down the fire pole!  Kindergarteners asked many great questions such as: how much water does your fire truck carry?  how long is the ladder?  why do you need to wear special clothing?

Some AMAZING work by Kindergarten!

You may often hear me say that kindergarteners amaze me every single day. Today was certainly not an exception.  I was truly amazed by the work Kindergarten did this afternoon.  This week we have been talking about maps with the focus being an introduction to what a map is as mapping will be a skill built on in later grades.  This afternoon I read the book Me on the Map a story in which a young girl shows readers herself on a map of her room, her room on the map of her house, her house on the map of her street--all the way to her country on a map of the world.  After reading the book I gave the students a task of creating their own map focusing on something they know could be their house, the school, the woods or their neighborhood.  What I perceived to be a quick activity took the entire afternoon!  Some kindergarteners chose to collaborate and built elaborate maps with local pizza shops, stores, CP Smith and the houses of their classmates.  The work was truly amazing!

We also had the chance to visit with baby chicks in Mrs. Spinner's class and caught (and released) a toad in the woods!

Officer Difranco visits!

This morning we had a special visitor at CP Smith our school safety officer, Officer Difranco.  Officer Difranco brought his police car out back for students to see and then came into our classroom to talk about what he does to help our community.  Kindergarten was excited to meet this community helper and learn more about how Officer Difranco keeps our schools safe.

Map Making!

Kindergarten is excited to look at and learn about maps.  Some students even chose the map as a background when building withe legos and were questioning the location of different places. Today I read Henry's Map a story about a pig who makes a map of the farm he lives on and after we worked together to make a map of our classroom.  Kindergarteners chose an item to draw, drew a symbol for it on a sticky note and then posted it in the correct location on our large paper map.  Later this week Kindergarten will work to make maps of their own.

On Friday we had a special treat - the circus came to CP Smith!  One of our kindergarteners was selected to be part of the show!

This morning I moved the chrysalises into the Butterfly Garden.  Sadly, one of our caterpillars did not make it but this morning we buried him outside under a tree.  Some students decided to add rocks, sticks and flowers over where he was buried.

This afternoon we listened to the book There's a Map on My Lap and Kindergarten shared what they know about maps: they can lead us to things like buried treasure, they help us get anywhere in the world, places look small but really they are big.  We also discussed that there are 7 continents and the continent we live on is North America.  We watched a silly video to help us learn the names of the 7 continents.

A Sunshiny Day

We enjoyed the warm weather and sunshine today in the Woods and on the playground.  There was a lot of wondering about our caterpillars who are doing a lot of moving in their chrysalis.  We discussed how it is hard to be patient and are curious about what is going on as the caterpillar's body is changing.  

This morning I read the Becoming Butterflies by Anne Rockwell and we learned that just like butterflies look different, caterpillars do to!  We looked at photographs of Painted Lady Butterflies and made predictions of what our butterflies will look like.