Down on the Farm!

Baa, Oink, Moo....Someone is glad this week is through!!!

That's right! Today is my Friday since tomorrow I'll be at the hospital for surgery instead of at school!

We've been working on farm fun for the last two weeks.

We started the first week talking very generally about farms and farmers -

from Deanna Jump's farm unit

And the second week we went more in depth about each animal. The kids have been writing about the animals as we learn and on Monday when I go back I will take pictures of their writing in their Farm books since they still have to finish up chickens with the substitute tomorrow. They will also be making the adorable cow glyphs from Deanna's unit, so I will be sure to take pics of those too.

We compared Pigs and Sheep: 

from Deanna

 And graphed our favorite farm animals:

Some of the books we read this week:

Some of our math journals:

These next two activities are from Fran at Kindergarten Crayons:

Little Reader

Syllable Sorting

And here are our centers from my Fresh from the Farm Pack (unless otherwise noted):

sorting Ch and Sh words

Ending Sounds

sentence order

bossy E words

beginning blends

making tallies

ten frames

missing numbers

number words 21-30

clapping syllables

sorting or/ar words from Deanna Jump

real/nonsense words

counting tallies

addition to 20

counting by 5s

We also finished up our American Symbols unit and I remembered to take pictures before they took their books home. Here's some of their writing and our anchor chart:

When I return to school on Monday we will start our two week study of Ocean Animals using Deanna's Ocean Unit and my Under the Sea Centers:

Then it's one week of pirates and we are done for the year!!! 13 Days to go!!!!

Out in Space!

This week my students learned all about the day & night sky in Science which meant it was time to break out our space centers! Here are just a few we used this week:

Alphabetical Order

Real words vs. "alien" words

noun/verb sort

making words

This one is from Abby Mullins Long I Pack - stamping bossy E words

Even/Odd Number Sort

less/greater numbers

Countdown - Counting backwards

Skip Counting

Tallies 

We also continued learning about American Symbols with the Liberty Bell and the American Flag being our focus points. I will take a picture of our American Symbols book and chart next week after we finish it up with the Bald Eagle :)

We've also been busy learning our song and practicing for our closing ceremonies :)

Next week we are beginning our Farm fun and we'll be using Deanna's  Farm pack. We'll also be using centers from my Fresh from the Farm pack.

Don't forget everything in my store is 28% off until Tuesday for Teacher Appreciation!

Books We Read:

Dinosaurs & Lady Liberty

This week our reading series story was

So we talked a little bit about dinosaurs and what it would be like if they came back. The book gives an idealized version with dinosaurs doing all kinds of fun things to help people. Here's my students thoughts, we tried to make our pictures look like the pictures in the books in which only the dinosaurs were in color.

And here are just a few of the dinosaur centers from my Dinosaur Roar! pack:

sorting nouns, verbs, adjectives

sounding out words

sound substitutions

alphabetical order

word family sort

putting together sight words

spin, graph and count

counting by 2s

time to the hour

fairshare

In Social Studies this week we learned all about the Statue of Liberty. We used adorable ideas from Deanna Jump's America unit. We guessed whether we would be longer, shorter or equal to the statues foot, then graphed our data. After comparing our line to her foot we recorded our findings. We also did a directed drawing and wrote about her in our American symbols book.

Then we did the penny experiment to find out why the statue originally made out of brown copper is now green. (It has to do with the salt water in New York Harbor)

We also finished up our Insects this week. Our Butterflies hatched and after observing them all week we let them go on Friday.

Here's the last page in our insect fact books, about grasshoppers, and our compound eye experiment:

As a wrap up/assessment, we built bugs out of candy. The kids had free reign to make them however they wanted with the stipulation that all parts must be represented - head, thorax, abdomen, 6 legs, 2 antennae, and wings if they want. They did pretty good!

And last but not least, we went to see Chimpanzee on Friday!! For those living under a rock, Chimpanzee is this years DisneyNature Earth Day movie. We go every year! It's my favorite field trip because we get to sit in the air conditioned theater and relax!! The kids loved the film, though I find it a little creepy how human-like the chimps are.

this was before it started, I have no idea why my little sweetie is covering his eyes!

28 Days till Summer!! I am LOVING my new sign from Hadar over at Miss Kindergarten!!

She made it in blue, green and yellow for me to match the colors in my classroom!!

Next week we will be learning all about the day and night sky in Science so it will be time to break out my Reach for the Stars Space Centers!

Books we Read: