Welcome Winter

Well we knew we couldn't avoid winter forever, but considering we made it half way through January before getting any real snow, I was beginning to think we might go straight into spring. Then it started snowing this morning. I figure there's no reason to be sad that our 50 degree weather is gone, instead we can enjoy the beautiful new snow.

The fun we had outside reminded me of a book by our Book Club Author this month "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.  We are reading many books by Keats this month, but we have especially enjoyed these stories:

               
If you would like to learn more about Ezra Jack Keats or have some fun with your child at home I highly recommend the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation website. 

Science Friday

To kick off the new year and the new semester I introduced the students to a new activity today. Throughout the remainder of the year we will have a "Scientist of the Week", one student each week will be in charge of doing a scientific demonstration with the class. To launch our new science program we had a special guest, "Scientist Fawn" (the students all seemed to think there was some relation to Ms. Fawn).  Our experiment today resulted in slime!

 

 We had so much fun today and we are looking forward to many more experiments!

 

 

We're Back!

Happy New Year! So it has been an embarrassingly long time since I updated all of you about what we're doing in Kindergarten and I apologize. We are all trying to get back in the swing of things after our Christmas break.

We started a unit about plane and solid shapes this week. We're having fun creating pictures with shapes and looking at the the things we see everyday just a little differently.

This morning we read with partners. We're reviewing some of our procedures and getting used to classroom expectations again.

This afternoon we enjoyed practicing our handwriting using mini-whiteboards, dry-erase markers, and the Elmo, rather than paper and pencil.

We're also learning about Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad. Our Bible theme this month is Learning to make choices. Today we heard the beginning of Jacob and Esau's story.

I can't believe we are already half-way through the year. The kids are growing so much and I know that the next several months are going to be a terrific adventure!

Veteran's Day

Today we remember and thank all the brave men and women who have served our nation.

For joint worship this morning we sang "soldier songs" and learned about being soldiers for Jesus. We also heard the story of a true hero Desmond Doss. After learning a little more about the meaning of Veteran's Day, we made this wordle:

This afternoon we decorated stars to make a poster showing our gratitude.

If you know a veteran or someone who serves, remember to say thank you. And on a personal note, I'm very proud to be able to say "Thank you" to my dad for serving!

 

Where's Ms. Fawn?

So all the kiddos are at school right now and I'm not not! I'm sure they've asked Mrs. Webb a million times where I am so I thought I'd fill you in.
I am in San Antonio, Texas right now at a training for the new NAD Kindergarten curriculum "Stepping Stones". We're learning about new themes and strategies as well as getting new materials to bring back to our classrooms. The next few days will be exciting and informative, but I miss my kiddos already! Hope you are having a great start to your week, I'll see everybody back at school on Thursday.

Here are a few of the activities and ideas we've already learned about!

Eating Worms

It's been ages since my last blog post, I'm sorry! I meant to post last week, but with Parent/Teacher conferences I got so busy I just forgot. I really enjoyed having the chance to meet with most of you though.
We've been doing lots of great things in Kindergarten the past few weeks and I'm sure you've heard about a few things. One of my favorite parts of October is our author study of Eric Carle. During the past month we've done art projects based on Eric Carle's illustrations, learned about his life (he grew up in Germany during WWII), read at least one book by him every day, and yesterday we even had a special Eric Carle snack! Ms. Wendy came in yesterday afternoon to do a beautiful fall scrapbooking page with the students and we ended the afternoon by eating dirt and worms (pretzels too).

I'll try not to take so long between posts again, see you soon!