Out of this world!

We are continuing our study of Space in science.  We completed our book about the planets, and learned what it would be like to stand on each one... if you could stand at all!  Some are just giant balls of gas!  Most of all, we learned that as amazing and beautiful as each planet is, we sure are glad to be on Earth!  We also painted huge planet murals that will be a hanging solar system in our hallway!  Ask your kinder to sing you the planet song! (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter.....)

We had a school supply store in Math to help learn about money!  Mrs. Kranenburg helped the kids "buy" the school supplies and see how much they could get with the coins they were given.  On a side note, the kids discovered that "Mrs. Crayon" (Mrs. Kran) is a perfect name for someone running school supply store!  😊

Finally... the long awaited Book Buddies January event was here!  On Friday our 5th Grade Book Buddies came down to help us celebrate SNOW!  We read Snowmen at Night, a great book by Caralyn Buehner that explores the question we all have wondered...."One wintry day I made a snowman, very round and tall.  The next day when I saw him, he was not the same at all!  His hat had slipped, his arms drooped down.  He really looked a fright!  It made me start to wonder, what DO snowmen do at night?"  The kinders and their buddies had free reading time in the library, and then created their own versions of what snowmen do at night we we aren't watching!   Later that day in writing the kindergarteners wrote captions for their pictures.

We ended our Book Buddies celebration of snow with some yummy snow ice cream!  We love our Book Buddies!

Don't forget about the change to the school calendar coming up next week.  NO SCHOOL Thursday and Friday, Feb. 1 and 2, for teacher inservice.  And make sure not to miss Monday, February 5th!  This special day marks the 100th day of school!  We will be celebrating all day...stay tuned for details!  February 5th is also the exciting kick-off to our Idita-Read elementary read-a-thon contest!  Students can win fabulous prizes, attend fun reading events, and see just how fun reading can be as we read to earn miles along the Iditarod Trail during February and March!

Snowflakes, hockey, and all things winter!

January is in full swing and here are few of the things that kept us busy this week! (There are many more, but this is just the fun stuff!).

Thank you to everyone who contributed coins to our Food Bank coin drive!  We sorted and counted all of the money in math, and found that we have $38.59 to contribute!  We are going to be taking a field trip to the bank soon to deliver our donation and learn about banks!  Stay tuned for details!

We got gloriously messy with puffy snow paint as we made polar bears in science.  

And to finish up our unit on how animals survive the winter we made plaster animal tracks.  Some of the tracks we used were grizzly bear, beaver, wolf, lynx, and porcupine.

In writing we worked on rhyming with the song Down By the Bay!  If you haven't heard it before, take a listen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1czlnCUCg.   Your kinder will love to sing along.  Then we made up our own Alaskan version!  "Down by Moon Lake, where the blueberries grow, back to my cabin, I dare not go!  For if I do, my mother will say..."  And then we came up with lots of silly Alaskan animal rhymes for each verse, like "Have you ever seen a lynx saying "jinx"? or, "Have you ever seen a caribou getting' a hair-do?"  We had lots of fun making and singing our song!

We are beginning to prepare for the 2018 Battle of the Books!  This is a really fun event that will be held this year on March 13 at 9am in the Tok School Library!  (Everyone is invited to attend, so mark your calendars!).  Here are the four books that will be in the Kindergarten Battle.  We read and study these books, memorizing the titles and authors and every detail we can think of.  Then on the day of the Battle we answer questions about the books in teams, competing with schools around the district.  Past trophies are up in our room, and we hope to earn another one this year!!!  

We are continuing to work on hockey skills in P.E., and had our first scrimmage game on Thursday.  We had a learning opportunity when the First Graders obliterated us 8-0.  When we figured out which net to shoot towards it helped some.  But, good sportsmanship was had by all, and lots of fun.  We even had cheerleaders at our game!  I think maybe we'll mix up teams next game.  :) . 

"Gimme a T, gimme an O, gimme a K... Gooooooo TOK!"  (We were non-partisan in our cheering.)

The kids learned how to line up and "high five" after the game to practice sportsmanship.

We finished up the week by making snowflakes to decorate our room in art.  Watching the kids' faces as they unfolded their snowflakes to discover the beautiful designs they had created was just the best!  By the time we were done, it looked like it had snowed in our room!  But we turned ourselves into human vacuums and had it cleaned up in snow time.  We did get a bit flakey, though.  

Inflation... in Kindergarten?!

The kids came back to school after the break to find that severe inflation had hit our classroom economy!  Now, instead of prize cards costing 5, 10 or 15 cents, they cost 25, 50, or 75 cents!  BUT, on the flip side, now the kinders earn nickels instead of pennies: a nickel for each day they bring back their folder, a nickel for bringing back their reading blue slip, and a nickel for each Popcorn Word they pass off!  Along with a mini lesson on inflation, we also worked on identifying and counting dimes and quarters, in addition to pennies and nickels that we have been using all year!  Here the kids are playing a game to see if they can identify coins with their eyes closed... noticing the rough edges and the size just using their sense of touch.

We made number sentences with coin stamps, discovering different ways to make equivalent amounts of money!

Thank you to everyone who helped their kindergartener collect spare change to donate to the food bank drive.  We will continue to collect coins until next Thursday, when we will sort and count our coins, and then take them to the bank to buy a "Helping Hand" from kindergarten to donate to the Food Bank!  This is a great way for our class to learn about coins and help our neighbors in Tok at the same time!!!

We began a new unit on hockey in P.E. this week!  The kids are working on puck handling skills, shooting, and passing, and soon we'll have some scrimmage games!

In music Ms. Fastenau brought out lots of instruments for the kids to hear, touch, and try to play.  They were SO excited!  They got to play 3 kinds of drums, the xylophone, tuba, trumpet, flute, violin, ukelele, guitar, and cello.  They also were able to compare sizes and sounds, learn about low and high sounds, and discover how the size of the instrument affects the tone of the notes.

In science we learned that one way arctic animals like whales keep warm is to have a thick layer of blubber to insulate them against the cold!  So if you're like me and gained some blubber over the holidays, just look at it this way... you'll be a little bit warmer now!  We made beluga whale pictures, and did an experiment by putting both hands in ice water, but one was in a bag insulated with blubber (shortening) to see how much the blubber helped us stay warm!

Continuing our study of arctic animals, we watched some cool videos about polar bears and learned some interesting facts about them.  We read The Polar Polka by Fairbanks author Cherie B. Stihler, and then we tried being polar bears ourselves!  We played a polar bear version of musical chairs:  The kids hopped from iceberg to iceberg, but each time the music stopped, some icebergs (blue paper squares) melted away.  Then they had to try and catch fish while staying only on the icebergs.   The kids found that it was VERY challenging to reach the fish in the ocean when most of the "icebergs" had melted!  But they had a great time hopping from iceberg to iceberg, and it was lots of fun.  We talked about what we could do to help slow down global warming and help the polar bears, like walking, riding our bikes or using public transportation, turning of lights, and finding other ways to conserve energy.

We jumped right back into the swing of things  this week, and had a great start to the New Year! The kids were happy to be back at school, having fun and being with their friends.  It always amazes me to look back and see how far they've come in just a few short months since the beginning of the year.  One of my favorite questions to ask them is, "Could you do that when you first started Kindergarten?  Look how much your brain is growing!!!"