B, b, b, BEARS!

This week is all about the letter B! It’s our letter and we are learning all about real bears including Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears and Panda Bears!

Happy Feet!

We spent last week learning all about PENGUINS!

We labeled penguins.

Brainstormed what we already knew, what we wanted to learn and what we did learn about penguins! SO MANY FACTS!

We wrote about penguins...

Hard at work!

Check out those finger spaces! Good job!

Miss Holcomb, our CLU student, working with Waylon.

WOW!

Of course with any theme, we incorporate all of the subject areas. Here we have penguin math! Those penguins sure were hungry!

Then we did a fun penguin relay! This was hilarious and SO much fun!

Avery waddling!

Cheering section!

Go, Siena, Go!

Penguin Carson!

You can do it, Cody!

Neck and neck!

And, of course, after filling up our class Lego jar, we watched a little bit of Happy Feet! 

Our Super STAR Avery

Our very own Avery was in the Talent Show on Thursday, accompanied by her dad on guitar. We LOVED seeing our friend singing up on that stage! She did GREAT and was so brave!

MLK Celebration

We learned all about Martin Luther King, Jr. today in honor of his recent birthday. We started the time off with kids sharing anything they had ever heard about MLK or things their parents shared with them yesterday. The kids brought up that he was special, went to college, had a birthday, but more importantly they were able to share some of the most important things that made Martin Luther King Jr. so special. One student said that MLK had a dream for love, caring, and peace. Some knew that he stood up for black people when they were not being treated fairly. 

We watched this video which was a great historical lesson about MLK’s life:

In addition to learning about MLK, we read this book and discussed how each of us, special in our own way, make up a unique group of students in Room 1. I love the special message this book had about how different the world would be without all the colors that make our world so beautiful.

Each student made their own crayon that makes up the “Room 1 Crayon Box”.

Letter F

All About Winter!

We had a great first week of 2016. When the students returned on Monday one of the many things we discussed were New Year’s Resolutions. The kids each got a chance to write something they want to learn or do in 2016. They did a great job ringing in the New Year!

Madylan wrote “In the Near Year I want to ride a two wheel bike."

Cody wants to be a better artist.

Auden wants to become a better soccer player in the New Year.

Eddie wants to count to 100 this year.

The kids also got a chance to write about what they did over winter break as well as sharing what presents they received for Christmas. 

“I have a new gum ball machine. I went to a sleepover.” Their journal pictures are my favorite :)

“I went to San Francisco.” (And as you can see the golden gate bridge and the ice cream shop Noah went to... for dinner ;) )

“I have a new Razor. I went to Hollywood."

On Tuesday we read this book to go along with our weather unit:

We learned all about the TONS of clothes that are worn in snowy weather. 

We each made our own winter paper dolls decked head to toe in winter garments.

On Thursday mornings we do reading rotations called Daily 4. The four centers consist of reading, writing, working with sight words, and iPads or some sort of listening to reading. One of our centers was to use an App called Educreations to write our sight words and record their voices saying the sight words. They LOVED making their first movies! Here are some snip-its of independent writing during Daily 4 about their favorite type of weather:

“I like winter weather because it snows."

Here’s an example of a fun sight word activity that we did during class. The adult at the table would read a sight word and the kids had to use a clothespin to put a cotton ball (snow) on the snowman. 

To go along with our weather/seasons/snowman week, we read this book:

After reading the book, we made snowmen that will be displayed at the Winter Art Gallery on Thursday, January 28th in the MPR. We are VERY excited for you to see them there.

Since the book Snowmen at Night talks about what snowmen do while we are all sleeping, the first graders... I mean Kindergarteners wrote what their snowman does at night. Can you believe these kids’ writing?! Three lines!!!

“Here is my snowman. At night he likes to play hockey and dance under the stars."

“Here is my snowman. At night he likes to drink snow and likes to go snowboarding."

“Here is my snowman. At night he likes to go sledding and drink cold cocoa.”

Now that we all have our first names down, the kids learned how to write their last names. They created “last name snowman” topped with pictures of themselves during centers this week.

I just love this project.

For Art on Friday we did a snowman directed draw. I gave them step by step instructions and they each created their own unique version of a snowman.

Hard at work coloring.

You might be wondering Wow, Mrs. Roll really took a lot of pictures this week. Well, as your Kinder might have told you, I finallllllly got a new phone for Christmas (I was still using a non-picture taking, 8 GB iPhone 4 with a shattered screen commonly referred to as my “spider man edition") and I am finally able to take pictures again!

Rainbow writing last names. 

Practicing teen numbers.

More teen numbers! We have to get those down because we are learning the basics of addition now!