Our First Cup of Tea

This week our class began looking at our service project for the year. Our entire schools is participating in a year of service and each class or, in our case, grade level, has chosen a cause to support and will be doing various projects for that cause throughout the year.

The Kindergarten classes this year will be supporting Pennies for Peace (www.penniesforpeace.org). We will be learning about the cultures of Pakistan and Afghanistan throughout the year and comparing them to our culture here in the United States. We will also be collecting pennies in our classrooms and at several events during the year such as a booth at our fall festival on October 1st and a free dress day for 100 pennies on the 100th day of school.

Pennies for Peace is a project sponsored by the Central Asia Institute, which helps to provide education, schools, and supplies to children who live in the most remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. For more information about these schools you can check out Greg Mortenson's books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools. There is also a children's book based on his work called Listen to The Wind, which we read in our classroom on Thursday.

After reading Listen to the Wind and watching some of the videos available from Pennies for Peace we talked about what it would be like to live somewhere where we didn't have school. We learned that in Korphe, where Dr. Greg built his first school, the children were only able to have a teacher 3 days a week and did their schoolwork outside with sticks in the dirt. The children realized how blessed we are to have all of the neat things that we have at our school and even how blessed we are to have a physical school building!

We read that 1 penny, which can buy hardly anything in the United States, can buy a pencil and that 2$ can pay a teacher's salary for a day! I was very impressed when we came to school on Friday to have several students bring in LOTS of pennies! I can tell that they are really getting excited about our cause!

On Friday we had scheduled our very first Tea Party. In Three Cups of Tea one of the village elders says to Dr. Greg

The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea.

This quote is the basis of our Tea Parties this year. We are going to have 3 throughout the year to show how we become family over the course of our time together.

Our first tea party was a HUGE success! Our room parents got together and used the "Mad Hatter" theme from Alice in Wonderland! We followed the bunny tracks on the sidewalk over to the church for our tea party and then had wonderful and delicious "Eat Me" snacks and "Drink Me" drinks! We also had adorable cut outs for the children to have their pictures taken as the Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat. The children looked so adorable! We had a free dress day and children were able to dress to impress for the special occasion... and BOY did they!

This was a really fun time for our families to come and join us and for us all to "share a cup of tea" together. It was nice to take the time to foster the relationships in our classrooms and in our Kindergarten community.

We hope, as we get this project up and moving, that we will be able to encourage our children to find ways to give back to their community and to help others in need. We hope that, not only, we can raise money to help out the schools across the world, but that our students will be life-long helpers of those in need.

We're going on a shape hunt!

Today in math we explored rectangles and circles. I gave each of the children a rectangle cracker and a circle cracker. We talked about how they were different and what we noticed about each one. We noticed that rectangles had 4 sides, two short and two long, and four corners and that circles didn't have any! The kids really enjoyed getting to eat the crackers when we were done! Munchie Math is always fun!!!

During our extra lesson time we read the story, The Shape of Things , which describes how different shapes can make things around us and then we set out to go on a shape hunt around our downtown block and look for these shapes that we had learned about. We found TONS! We even found some different shapes like hexagons, squares, and triangles! The children did a great job! We found shapes all over the place!

We found rectangles in many different street and business signs. We also saw rectangles in lots of doors and windows.

We found circles on the trash cans, on gas caps, and even on a satellite dish!

We found lots of squares on the sidewalks, on street signs, and in windows.

I was really impressed when the kids found hexagons on the stop signs and octagons on windows at the church across the street!

This was a really neat way for us to look at the world around us and see how it relates to the things that we are doing in class. Math really is all around us!

Big Buddies

I can't believe that I forgot to post about our big buddies last week!

Last week we had the pleasure of having Mrs. Spicer's fifth grade enrichment class over to our classroom. The big buddies read a story to their little buddies and then they got to play board games together. Everyone had a really great time! Board games build lots of social skills for both groups as well as lots of math concepts. Not to mention how much fun they are!

We are going to try to meet with Mrs. Spicer's class once a month to do some type of activity. Soon we will be able to have the big buddies read a story and then have the little buddies read a story to them!

This week we will have the pleasure of having Mr. Duffey's concentration class from the middle school come and do an activity with us. The little buddies always enjoy getting to meet new big buddy friends and see what they have planned for us! We will also be meeting with this group once a month.

Since we are a K-8 school, this is a great way for us to get to work together. The big buddies love getting to have a day in Kindergarten and the little buddies love getting to meet new friends who are cool big kids and also getting to see siblings, cousins, and friends from church!

Happy H

This week we have been learning about H.

We have had a blast signing about Hannah's Hiccups! The kids liked this song almost as much as One Luscious, Two Luscious, Three Luscious lollipops! We have done all kinds of things with this song. On Monday, we used Wiki-sticks to highlight all of the letter H words that we could find. Throughout the week we sang the song each day and whenever we would hear an H word, we would hold up our sign language letter H. We also point to and read the song while we sing it.

We have also been practicing our numbers using a chart that helps us count to the 100th day of school. This week we did all kinds of things like make a lady bug with 20 spots, make a tower of 21 blocks and see if it would stand, and finally today we had to do 11 hops on each foot to make 22. We are having so much fun learning to count and counting up to the much anticipated 100th day!

Our centers this week focused on activities that we have practiced in class already. At ABC center the students had to sort out picture cards that went in either the letter L or G pocket on our pocket chart. At Puzzles, they had to cut out and glue pictures of things that begin with letter H. Finally, at art center, students made a puppet of a Hippo. We did lots of Hippo stuff this week including reading great books like Hippo's Loose Tooth and Hiccupotomus. I hope these puppets will help them remember these great stories as well as lots of H things!

At Math center, the children used pattern blocks to cover designs. This is something we have been working on in our math time that helps students to solve spatial visualization problems. We will continue working on this through the year. Not only is it great practice, but the kids love it! It is like doing fun puzzles!

This week in math we also began learning about sorting. We sorted several different things in our classroom and the kids did a fabulous job with it! They had great ideas for how we should sort things! This is something else we will continue to practice using different math manipulatives throughout the year.

This week's graph of the week was titled "What do you like to do". Children were able to choose which outside activity they liked best between swimming, riding their bike, jumping rope, and playing ball. Swimming was the class favorite by a landslide with 9 votes! The only other one that got any was riding bikes, which three children liked. We discussed what we can tell from the graph and which was the least. This was tricky today because many students wanted to say that riding bikes was the least, when actually jumping rope and playing ball got zero. This was a great opportunity for us to talk about what zero means!

Finally, we were able to do our five senses activity! This week the kids felt inside the feely box to discover a horse! Then we listened to an H story and put up the last of our letter H things in our environmental print book. For our tasting and smelling today I gave the kids a spoon with a few drops of honey in it. They all said that it smelled VERY sweet. Then we tasted it. Several of the kids said they hate it and didn't want to, but they were good sports and tried anyway. Most of the class liked it, while just a few didn't. We were definitely all in agreement that it is VERY sweet!

Next week Johnny Appleseed and letter T! Should be fun :)

A g-g-g-g-great week in Kindergarten!

This week we learned about letter Gg. We had some really great items to add to our alphabet book- I really love seeing each week what everyone comes up with! I can tell that the children and their parents are putting a lot of effort into this project and I love it. I love it because it makes our book really cool, but I also love it because it means that the kids and their parents are spending time together looking for them. This type of home-school connection is absolutely necessary to keep children motivated and doing their best!

Since it was a short week, we had to combine our math with our five senses. I think the kids had a lot of fun with it and it was a great way to integrate the curriculum :)

To do this, we made a gummy bear graph. We each took turns putting gummy bears we picked out of a bag onto a big graph in the middle of our circle. Then we each picked our favorite two and used our five senses to describe them. The children used great descriptive words like squishy and mushy when they tested them out with their sense of touch. They also noticed with their eyes the different colors, with their noses the fruity smells, and with their mouths the sweet taste!

This week we began working on AB patterns. We have been doing an AB pattern every morning when we do our calendar on the Smartboard, but I have never really called it that. We just put up red and green circles alternating. This week we finally put a name to it. We made patterns using our teddy bears in our regular math time and then at centers the kids had a chance to copy a teddy bear pattern card and then figure out what came next. We will continue to work on this throughout the year.

We also played a neat game this week. We have been learning the sign language letters each week when we learn our letter and so this week we played a silent sound game where I would say a word and the kids would hold up their letter for what the word started with. This is a great tool for us because it is giving children a hands on experience with the letters. It is also neat because it is teaching the kids tolerance of people with differences at the same time.

Next week we are beginning to learn about fall. My favorite time of year! We will be doing all kinds of stuff like learning about bats, spiders, and apples and also going on a field trip to the pumpkin patch at Carrigan Farms! Get excited! It is going to be awesome!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Today we finished up a project we have been working on that focuses on Bill Martin's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Each day we have read the story and then the students have worked on their very own Brown Bear Book. They have colored the animals to match what they are like in the book.

This activity has been great for helping the children learn to pick out the different colors in our world around us. It has also been an introduction into reading. The very first day that we read the story, we talked about some of the different things that North Carolina defines as "book-print awareness". We found the title of the book and then looked for things like the front cover, back cover, and the spine.

Now that we have finished up our Brown Bear Books, I want the children to take them home and practice "Reading" them with their parents. The story is a very predictable text that the students can remember. This will help them to practice how we go through a book from left to right and turn the pages. Even though there are no words in our Brown Bear Books, we can still practice the way that we will read once we are a little more ready!

Kindergarten: Week Two!

I can't believe that we have already been in school for 13 days. It seems like only yesterday that we started!

This week has been a great week!

We learned about letter O this week. The children (and their parents!) brought in some really great things for our environmental print book. We found out there are a lot of animals that start with letter O like Ostriches, Orcas, and Otters and even a little dog named Otis! We didn't realize there were so many! I love hearing and seeing everyone's creative ideas!

Today was Friday, which is Five Senses day. Today we looked around the room for as many letter O's as we could find. The children amazed me by finding some that I hadn't even thought of! Then we read a story called Olive Octopus's Day of Juggling. We heard lots of O words in that one! The children were very brave and tasted Olives for letter O. Only a few liked them, but I was very proud of them for at least trying! We were able to decide that the Olives tasted very salty and even a little sour! In our feely box this week I had hidden a toy octopus. A few of the children guessed it, but some others had no idea! Finally, to smell letter O we smelled an orange. The kids really liked how it smelled and since they were so brave with their Olives I let them taste it too and they could definitely tell the difference between the salty olive and the sweet orange!

In Math this week we have explored several different kinds of manipulatives that we will use this year. We learned 1-1 correspondence using teddy bears counters by sitting each one in a "chair" made by pattern blocks. We used linking cubes to make towers of 1-5 and to begin looking at AB patters. Math is so much fun!!!

Our graph of the week this week was "Which is your favorite ice cream?" We reviewed why we make graphs and what we can learn from them and then each child was able to place their little person on the graph for their favorite between chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, and other. I was very impressed when I asked what we could tell from the graph and one student pointed out that we had the same for other, strawberry and chocolate when I asked which one had the most!

This week at centers the children had the opportunity to do a lot of fun and interactive activities! Center time is a time where students are asked to complete a variety of activities and then they are able to choose a free center where they would like to play with their friends. This a way that we can incorporate lots of different activities into our week without having to spend whole-group time on it. Children are able to work at their own pace to complete each activity.

This week's Centers included:

Play Doh: Children used cookie cutters to make their names out of play doh!
Art: Children made an Octopus puppet to say letter O words with!
Math: Children used linking cubes to make towers showing the numbers 1-5!
ABC: Students cut out pictures of words that started with O and glued them onto the Oval!

Kindergarten Week 1

Last week we learned about the letter L and how to write the numbers 1-5. We spent a lot of time reading books that had L words in them and even making our own "environmental print" book where the children brought in words and pictures that they found in magazines or around the house that started with the letter L.

On Friday we used our five senses to learn about the letter L. The children took turns sticking their hand into the "feely box" to try and guess what was hidden in there that started with letter L. They had no problem figuring out that it was a lollipop! Then we did a letter hunt around our room to use our eyes to try and find the letter L and things that begin with it. We sang our L song, "One Luscious Lollipop" so that we could use our ears to hear letter L things. Finally we used our sense of taste to try out letter L. The lemonade was sweet and delicious!

We also learned about pictographs. We learned that we can use graphs to organize information and to answer questions. We used little people die cuts to make a graph that showed the number of boys and girls in our classroom! We have seven of each!

We have had a great start to school and we have a really great class full of amazing and talented little people! They are all so great and I can't wait to get to know each one of them better!