Jingle Bell Rockstars!

I was so proud of my little kindergarteners this week when they performed at the Christmas Concert without an ounce of stage fright!  Here we are practicing one morning for the Jingle Bell Rock!

We also sang a rousing rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the First Graders!

We broadened our horizons and learned about another wintertime celebration, Hanukkah!  We made latkes (Jewish potato pancakes), candles, colored Menorahs, and played the Dreidel game!

We had a visit from a very special guest.  No, not Santa..... Emma's new baby brother Miles! He is so handsome!  And Emma is a wonderful proud Big Sis!

In between all of the holiday festivities, the kids got to participate in a Mini Dribblers scrimmage!  It was a very entertaining game, with a final score of 2-0.  The kids all played with a lot of heart!  One of the best moments of the game was a jump ball.... when they uncovered the dog pile, it turned out that the jump ball was between 3 members of the same team!

Pets, pets, everywhere!  Our most popular Prize Card was earned by several members of our class, so we had special visits from Aiden and his dog, Taiga, and Sawyer and his dog Woody!  It is always an exciting treat for us to get to hang out with pets at school, so thank you for sharing!  The dogs were in doggie heaven, too, I believe!  

Last but not least, we had a great Book Buddies Christmas party!  Our Buddies happened to stop by the office and pick up some mail addressed to the Kindergarteners from Santa's Elves!  We had written to Santa a couple of weeks earlier, and the return letters got here just in time!  Our Buddies helped the kindergarteners read their letters, each from their own special elves!  We got letters from elves named Cookie, Diddlebob, Jingles, Macaroon, and Kiki, among many others!  It was SO exciting!

We spent some wonderful time in the library reading Christmas stories together....

... and then played a letter matching gingerbread man game that our 5th Grade Buddies had made for us, and had some reindeer chow treats.  There were lots of hugs to go around... we love our Book Buddies!!!

I was too busy running around trying to find the presents that some sneaky elves hid in the school to take any pictures... but we had a great time at our Christmas party Friday afternoon.  Thank you to Loretta Fitting and Madison Crozier for staying to help, and to all of the families who brought yummy treats to share!  

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Break!

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can!

This week we did a reading and math unit based on the Gingerbread Man story.  At the end of the week we made our own gingerbread people!  Thank you to Joni and Sawyer Roslansky, Madison Crozier and Joetta Colquette who all helped with our baking party!

 But while the cookies were baking.....

they jumped out of the oven!  Those naughty cookies ran all over the school before we caught up to them!  At least they left us notes along the way....

They even went to the 5th grade and read stories with our Book Buddies!

We finally found them playing with Eragon, our class pet!

We had so much fun chasing the cookies all over.... I even heard one of my kids say, "Leave the door open during recess!  I want them to run away again!"  But we closed the door and kept them in the classroom so we could decorate them.

We practiced and practiced our doubles facts so that we could make our own rap music video!  The kids also busted out some great breakdancing moves...

You can watch our video here:

One thing that we really enjoy in Kindergarten are the morning and afternoon snacks provided by the school.  We often have exotic fruits and veggies for the kids to try.  One day this week we got to try kumquats, which most of the kids really loved, but I just had to capture some of their sour faces as they ate them!

Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge brought in a snowshoe maker from the village of Ruby.  We got to visit with him and learn all about making snowshoes from natural materials.  We had a great discussion about how the Natives used the natural materials around them to help them survive.

This week we also got to go on a tour of the school's greenhouse.  We were surprised to find things growing inside even at this time of year!  We had a great time visiting with Ms. Bonnie, learning about the greenhouse, and making Christmas ornaments!  

Last but not least, Happy Birthday to Tone!  Tone had also earned a Pet Shop card, so he got to bring his dog Lady to his birthday party!  Thank you, Tone, for letting us meet your special dog!

Bouncing into Christmas!

This week was full of excitement as we began counting down to Christmas!  December first was a big day, as we changed months and put Christmas on our calendar.  We also made count down pattern chains and Count Down Christmas trees!

The week we had a special PE class to participate in Native Youth Olympics.  We learned eskimo games such as the seal hop, the seal crawl, the kneel jump, and the stick pull.  The students learned why the eskimos would have needed these skills to help them be successful hunters, and then got to practice.  It was so much fun!  

This week in science we did an experiment to show that the sun is really just a star that we are very close to.  We used a light close up to simulate the sun, and as we got farther and farther away from it, it looked less and less bright, like a star.  We watched a slide show of some beautiful images of objects in space, and got our creative juices flowing about what it might be like to visit some of these places.  The kids wrote some FANTASTIC stories about exploring space!  We focused on coming up with great ideas, and having a beginning, middle, and end to our stories.  

I just need to include here, once again, how much we enjoy having Ms. Madison come to our class and help during reading time.  Here she is helping students in a reading center blend sounds together to make words.  We love our Ms. Madison!!!

We wrote some new winter poetry to decorate our Poet Tree.  Our class really enjoys writing collaborative poetry.  The kids get really creative and it is quite hilarious!  If you are in the area, stop and read these kindergarten gems!  You'll find poems like, "I went to the beach in a bikini, and ate a zucchini!"  Or "I slice the ice", "The Christmas lights are wearing some tights", and, "The snow is blowing.  It keeps going and going!"  The last one describes our chilly weekend very well!  

The class earned a party for good behavior and hard work this week by making our rocket blast off all the way from Pluto back to the sun, one planet at a time.  SO.... we took a trip to the moon on Thursday, where there was very little gravity!  I had a big bouncy house set up in our classroom first thing in the morning as the kids walked through the door.  Watching their faces light up was like Christmas morning... They had a blast jumping, and can't wait to earn another party!

Friday was birthday day in our classroom, as we celebrated not one, but two birthdays on the exact same day!  Happy birthday to Aiden and Rylee, who turn 6 on December 4th!

DEEP Space

There is nothing like studying space with kindergarteners to make you think deeply about your job as a teacher, and about life in general.  Let me share with you a few moments from this week.  First of all, as we began this unit, the kids thought of questions that they had about space.  One of them was, "What are the planets like?"  This week we delved into what it would be like to stand on each planet and created a book about the planets.  During one of our discussions about planets, one of the kids asked, "Ms. Deb, are planets REALLY real?" Several other kids chimed in, "Yeah, are they?"  I answered, "Yes, they are REALLY real.  I promise I will only teach you things that are real."  And they all said, "OK, Ms. Deb.  We believe you."

When you think about it...great big balls of rock or poisonous gasses that are multicolored and spinning around somewhere out there too far away to see... it does sound a bit far fetched, doesn't it?  So do so many of the things that we take for granted as facts.  I was honored by the trust that my students have in me, and reminded of the responsibility that accompanies that trust.

I was thrilled to find that one student was continuing to be curious at home, and obviously having conversations with her parents about space when she came back to school one day and said, "Ms. Deb!  I found out the answer to my question!" I said, "Oh, what was your question?"  She said, "My question was, 'How far does space go?'  It goes for EVER!!!!!!"  This led to a discussion about getting LOST in space.  To which one student replied, "You can't get lost in space.  You just keep going down, down, down until you get back to Earth!"   😊

We worked on a LARGE mural of space, which you can see in the hallway to our classroom from the lunchroom next time you are in the school.  And we will continue our study of space for a few more weeks, as we incorporate it into our math, writing and reading as well!

We celebrated the Super Moon on Monday with a great Moon Party!   The moon was in and out of the haze, but we did get some opportunities for some very clear, beautiful views.  The kids enjoyed looking at the moon through binoculars provided by Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge for a short time, but then mostly enjoyed playing on the playground by moonlight!  That was an opportunity not to be missed!  When everyone got cold we headed inside for hot cocoa and Moon Pies to warm up!  Thank you to everyone who came and to Steve Rudolph from the Refuge!  It was so much fun!

We have had several fun hands-on explorations in math this week, including weights and balances, and adding numbers using dice.  If you have board games at home that use dice, playing them would be a great opportunity to help your child learn to "count on" from the larger number using dice!

In writing this week, I introduced the kids to the district's writing curriculum, The 6 Traits of Writing.  We will use the metaphor of building to help us learn how to build great writing!  The 6 Tools we will use are:  Organization, Ideas, Word Choice, Voice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions (periods, question marks, capitals, etc.).  We began by looking at tools and building our own houses out of blocks.  They were very elaborate!  We had everything from a house powered by a generator to an RV!

We have been studying the tool of  organization in our writing, and what comes first, next, and last.  We worked on this by making a fruit salad and writing down the steps we used to make it.  Then the kids wrote their own recipes for how to make their favorite foods.  It was a yummy way to learn about writing!!!