Instant Challenge!

Towers, tools, fruit salad, Dead Bug, and a snowshoe hare!  Just another eclectic week in Kindergarten at Tok School!

We started the week off with an Instant Challenge!  This is a virtual learning opportunity for us to connect with other schools around Alaska and work on an engineering challenge all together!  This Instant Challenge was all about building a tower using no more than 12 pieces of paper and 12 inches of tape that could withstand the wind of a fan. The kids had fun seeing other students from around the state working on the same project!  We learned about the design cycle of engineering: "Find out more, try an idea, make it better."

However, we ended up learning just as much about working together in a team and persevering as we did about engineering!

After our Instant Challenge was over, we headed next door to Ms. Sara's First Grade, who also participated in the Challenge, to watch their fan tests!  I think the Kinders were inspired by what the First Graders built!

We continued the building theme in our writing lesson for the day...introducing the Six Tools of Writing by using tools to build a Story House!  After we had lots of fun using drills, hammers, screwdrivers, and pliers, we learned about the tools we use to build great stories!

In math we are working on number words, and sets of 10.  The kids are learning to use an abacus to picture what adding looks like, and to help count by 10's, among other things.

We had fun following a recipe for Fruit Salad in reading, and then writing a recipe of our own.

A big thank you to Mrs. Kranenburg who came in to help us, and taught us about composting!

In science we dissected a snowshoe hare to see in real life what the body parts we have been learning about look like!  There were mixed reactions... but mostly lots of "cool!", and a kind of grossed-out fascination.  We cut open the heart, brain, spinal cord, muscles, tendons, eyeballs, and looked at the stomach, intestines, bones, joints and bladder.  These guys have learned a LOT about anatomy this year!  On Monday we have a field trip to the Tok Clinic, and we'll end our unit with nutrition and healthy eating next week... just in time for Thanksgiving!!!

Are you still wondering what Dead Bug has to do with our week in Kindergarten?  It was a really fun game we played in P.E.!  Ask your kinder how to play...  Here they are being Dead Bugs!!!