Friday, September 23, 2016


A Delicious Week in Kindergarten

We celebrated TWO, no, THREE birthdays this week!  Maycie's birthday was Wednesday, and Sawyer shared his birthday with his mom on Friday!  Thank you all for the fun birthday treats!



We finished up our studies of fall and leaves this week with an experiment about veins.  We made hypotheses about what would happen when we put celery in colored water.  Then the next day we checked our results... It was amazing!  The kids were thrilled when they could see BLUE veins all over the celery!  We also found blue veins on ourselves.  We talked about what veins do for leaves, and what veins do for us, too!  Then of course, some of us tasted our edible experiment.



We continued our study of leaf veins by doing some leaf rubbings so that we could see the veins better.




We explored circles, rectangles and squares, and had a yummy math lesson figuring out how to turn rectangles into squares and squares into rectangles with graham crackers.



We had another delicious math lesson when we measured and counted ingredients for our cranberry apple pies!  They turned out great, thanks to Joni Roslansky, who helped us make the crust, and Sawyer Roslansky, who helped us play in the flour, and Loretta Fitting who provided the all-important icecream!  We had a neat opportunity to share our pies with our First Grade neighbors and with staff around the school who help us every day.



In reading we are working hard on rhyming words, and we created some wonderful poetry.  If you are in the school, stop by and read the leaves on our Poet - Tree.  You'll find poems about lizards and blizzards, batman, fall, shooting stars, and much more!  Thank you to our wonderful T.A. Madison Crozier for her help in writing groups!




Friday, September 16, 2016

"Fall"ing into fun!

We were all about popping our popcorn words this week!  Your child brought home a popcorn word folder that looks like this:


Please help them practice their sight words every night until they can "pop" them (say them quickly without sounding out the word).  Each week I'll exchange the ones they can pop for new words!  They earn pennies for bringing it back each day!  (The pennies are used to buy prize cards for privileges in class, like sitting on top of their desks, sitting on a hippity hop, free time, chewing gum, etc.!)

We spent some time being curious about fall, and began making some discoveries.  The students had some great questions, like "Are there leaves in space?  Why do leaves change color?  What colors can leaves change?  Why do leaves flutter?"  We collected many leaves and branches and sorted them in different ways.  We discovered that only quaking aspen leaves flutter on the branch, and we also sorted by color to discover that leaves can turn every color except for blue!  We'll continue our exploration of fall next week.






We've been doing lots of graphing in math.  We graphed flipping a penny, apple tasting, and boys vs. girls in our class!


The kids had a lot of fun this week with Ann Millard, a retired principal and kindergarten teacher from Eagle who is here doing a developmental screening for all kindergarteners in the district.  The kids just think she is here to play lots of fun games with them!  I will be excited to share the results with you.


Friday, September 9, 2016

"Sensing" Fall!

We are learning all about our 5 senses ... and having lots of fun using our senses to learn all about fall!  We tried to read braille, and had a smelling party.  We'll continue to learn about autumn by tasting, hearing, and touching next week!


We celebrated Nolan's birthday this week! 

  

We ended the week with a great field trip to Moon Lake with AK Dept. of Fish and Game biologist Brandy Baker, who traveled down from Delta to teach us about aquatic ecosystems!  We had a yummy picnic lunch, and everyone had tons of fun getting wet and muddy.  Tone asked everyone for their extra mustard packets, and Emma asked everyone for their mayo.  Then they put ALL of them on their sandwiches!  


The kids had such a great time having salmon races....



... and collecting water samples to see what kind of insects live in Moon Lake.  The kids were SO excited to see their water bugs in the magnifying viewers!  I heard things like, "This is AWESOME!!!"(Tiana) and, "Ms. Deb, Look!  I caught one all by myself!" (Ronan). Mrs. Baker helped the kids identify and sort their insects into ice cube trays.  We found scuds, damselfly larvae, and water boatmen, among other things, and we found out that Moon Lake is a healthy ecosystem.  We'll talk more about what that means as the year progresses. The class really came alive and everyone was engaged in hands on learning...which is what I LOVE about outdoor education.  The kids worked together and helped each other.  It was GREAT!  Thank you to Mrs. Alsup and Mrs. Roslansky for coming with us!












Friday, September 2, 2016

Out and About!

Off and running!

This week found us outside as much as possible enjoying the beautiful weather!

First we had lots of fun participating in the Tok School Cross Country meet.  The kids ran a 1/2 mile!



Then we had a fantastic time at Tetlin Refuge's bird banding station.  Thank you to Nick Young and Joni Roslansky for coming along.




Wednesday was just too beautiful to be inside, so we decided to study the native tradition of cranberry picking!  We will do some math and reading in the kitchen later when we make them into something yummy!




We also had a great time doing pottery with Ms. Shauna in art, and doing some bird silhouette water color paintings to finish off our week!