Kindergarten is studying trees!

This week, Seabury kindergartners: 

• "Wondered" about trees: ("I wonder if they go deep, deep, deep under the ground until they hit something").
• Went on a nature walk.
• Collected (mostly) fallen treasures
• Made art
• And documented what they learned.

  

The Bumblebees are also working on shapes the first weeks of school!

Examining the Pacific Coast for Animals

Over the past few weeks we have focused our studies on tide pools with animals native to the Pacific Northwest. To give our Bumblebees some handson experience, we took two field trips to Dash Point and Dumas Bay to seek out many of the creatures during extremely low tides.  At the first stop, we came across a "fortune" of sand dollars.  It was fascinating to see them in their natural habitat. You could even see their tiny tentacles moving in the sun as they burrowed themselves in the sand.  At the second beach, we found mainly crabs, lots of seaweed, and a moon snail.  Our hunt for a starfish did not go as we had hoped, but perhaps this summer the kids will be out on the water and have more success!

Reinforcing Skills

As we approach the end of the school year (can you believe it???) I like to go back and reinforce many of the learned skills in math, reading and writing, and continue to dig a little deeper into the concept.  You will notice that more worksheets will be coming home, especially in math to show what we are doing and at what level your child is working on.

This week I have also starting taking the Bumblebees through the writing process as we begin our first formal narrative. Their stories about snorkeling in a tidepool incorporate many new facts about the habitat and animals that live there. I have been beyond impressed with all of them!  I am aiming for about a 6-8 page book, with about 2-5 sentences on a page!  This is above and beyond any kindergarten expectation and with teacher modeling, each child has been so successful! What's even more is that they are incorporating this personalities into their writing through the style and how they organize their thoughts.  I hope the debut will be on May 17 when we are to present at the next gathering.  More to come later...

These pictures were from science this week.  We were testing the effects of salt water and buoyancy (sink and float).

I use games to reinforce many math skills. This game is being done using addition and multiplication for those who are ready for it.

And of course, it wouldn't be kindergarten if we couldn't paint...

Jellyfish watercolors

"Create a Fish" inspired by the book, Hooray for Fish!

Future Marine Biologists?

As we continue to discover many habitats of the world, the Bumblebees have begged me to study the ocean.  So, I am taking a small part of it, an ocean tide pool, and examining the invertebrate animals and plant life within the pool.  The nice thing is that we live near many rocky shores, and have a trip planned in the future on a minus tide day. We will be conducting many experiments comparing salt and fresh water, buoyancy and surface tension. We will be creating models of the animals in the tidepools and discuss the unique characteristics of these animals vs. many in the deeper ocean. Below are some pictures showing us getting a first look at some of the animals to be studied in detail, and begin thinking about what we NOTICE, and what we WONDER.

Learning Parts of Speech through Literature

Over the past two weeks, I have been using literature to formally introduce parts of speech.  To begin, we started with Quick as a Cricket, by Audrey Wood.  This book was a great introduction to adjectives and similes. The Bumblebees wrote their own similes based on the book.

Next, we read Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.  Not only were we creating lists of adjectives to describe the wild things, we also learned about verbs and nouns.  Over the course of a week, we took very boring sentences, (Wild things run.) and added other parts of speech and details to spruce up the sentence and make it more interesting. (Hairy blue wild things run through the forest at night.)  We took these sentences and made them into story problems to share with the prekindergarten class.

A week of Science

We have been quite the scientists this past week!  To begin, everyone did an incredible job on their science fair projects.  I could tell every child was engaged in the project and loved to share it with the other students in the school.

Also, we have comparing different habitats and we are focusing on the desert and how its different from the rainforest. We have been using the ipad app "Kidspiration" to help up compare/contrast with pictures and words.  We will present those on Friday.  We also dissected the inside of a cactus.  This was very fascinating to the students, especially since they hypothesized many different ideas.  We also had all the scientific tools and documented our observations.  Please come see them on the wall in the classroom over the next couple of weeks.

Diary of a (insert animal)

For the month of March, we will be studying the writing of many favorite children's authors, to include Doreen Cronin (Click Clack Moo), Audrey Wood (Quick as a Cricket) and Dr. Seuss.  Today the Bumblebees begged me to read Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin. As I read, I began discussing how we can write about other people (third person) or we can write about ourselves (first person). The students were so excited to start their own diaries. They each chose an animal to "become." Here is a sampling of their work in progress.

AL: After hunting, I took a nap. (Jaguar)

ZK: This poor warthog can't catch a break in his diary!