Tornadoes in Kindergarten?

Have you ever wondered how to get rid of an enemy???  Well, we read a fantastic book about a boy who wants to do just that.  After dreaming up a disgusting pie to feed his enemy, the boy's Dad follows a different recipe for pie, and the boys end up being friends.  Through this book the kids discovered that the best way to lose an enemy is to turn him into a friend!  We wrote a class book called, "How to Lose Your Best Enemy" based on this book, Enemy Pie.  We focused on the Writing Trait of "ideas" and had fun brainstorming lots of ways to turn enemies into friends.  The kids had some really great ideas, like learning his language, inviting her to your birthday party, helping him with his math, asking if he wants to be your friend, or bringing her a treat.  One of the students wondered, "Maybe they are mean because they don't have any friends.  So, if you are their friend, they might not be mean anymore!"  So much wisdom in these little minds!

One of our "Let's Talk" questions at Morning Meeting this week was, "How do you show someone that you love them?"  This ended up turning into a great class group hug....

Kindergarten entered the District Science Fair with a display of our science unit on weather!  Over the last few weeks we have endeavored to answer the kids' questions about weather... We made rainbows, rain, lightning, learned about the states of matter with freezing and thawing of water and snow, climate patterns of the earth, and even made tornadoes!  Here is our display:

 Here the kids are talking to one of the judges about what they have learned about weather...

We made our own tornadoes in a bottle as a part of our weather experiments this week!

We also really enjoyed looking around at the other science projects.  

The kids' favorite was the oobleck station -- Oh, so gooey and fun!!!

Oobleck went right along with Dr. Seuss's birthday, which we celebrated this week on March 2nd!

We read many Dr. Seuss stories and had a Dr. Seuss party where we ate Yurtle the Turtle Cake (below) and watched the Lorax.  We also learned about Dr. Seuss's life.  It was a very sad moment when some of the kids realized that he was a person, and not a cat.  Darn it, I hate it when I burst their bubbles!

This week we also had the fantastic opportunity to do a virtual field trip to the Sea Life Center in Seward to learn about sea birds!  We joined a marine biologist in Seward who showed us puffins and other sea birds at the Sea Life Center, and taught us a little bit about their special adaptations to living in the ocean.  The kids got to make a clay puffin during the class!  

We performed an experiment afterwards to see how oil waterproofs the birds' feathers.  We waterproofed paper and ran it under the faucet to see the droplets run right off!

Finally, here are a few pictures of the kids during their once-a-week free choice center time.  They have developed socially so much this year.  They are mostly able to work out their own conflicts and are getting really good at playing cooperatively together!

A Presidential Week

We spent some time this week getting to know George and Abe for Presidents' Day.  We are reading a  fascinating chapter book about Abe Lincoln.  Watching the amazement and shock on the kids' faces as they learned about the institution of slavery was so interesting.  Kids just intuitively know that it is wrong to discriminate against other people, and their sense of right and wrong is so innocent and beautiful.  Don't they look presidential?!!!

Here are the kids at one of our daily reading centers, creating letters and words with design blocks.  

"wow"

"mom" with a flower!

I am so proud of the progress the kids are making in writing.  We have had a lot of fun with our Goldilocks unit!  First we read the story and then the kids did a fabulous job acting it out.  Such natural drama queens and kings we have in our class!  Then we began to learn about our "writer's voice."  We combined this with letter writing to reinforce the new letter writing skills we learned in the last unit, and wrote letters to Goldilocks from one of the three bears.  What would YOU say if Goldilocks broke into YOUR house?  The kids each chose a bear, and wrote a letter to Goldilocks as if they were that bear.  There were so many creative letters!  Then we "published" our writing by creating a bear holding the letter.  The kids did such a great job, and once again, everyone enjoyed putting their own unique touch on their creations!

Valentine EVERYTHING!

We took advantage of valentines day to mix up our week a little bit!  Valentine's Day was heart EVERYTHING!!  In math we used tally marks to count our candy hearts, and then we graphed our hearts by color.

We also played the H-E-A-R-T challenge.  Try this at home.  How many words can you come up with from the letters in the word "heart"?

The kids made valentine mail bags and had so much fun sharing their valentines with their friends.  I love how the mail bags were all so unique!  Thank you to everyone who brought snacks for our Valentine's Day party!

We even had a special guest show up to our party... Maycie's chocolate lab and best buddy, Diesel!  

In science we are continuing to explore the weather!  We answered the students' question, "How are rainbows made?"  First, in reading we read some native legends about rainbows and other weather phenomena.  Then in writing, the kids wrote and illustrated their own legends - they were AWESOME!  Some ideas they had were, "There are rainbows in the sky because fairies are having a party and spilled their drinks."  or, "There are rainbows in the sky because the Lego people built a bridge out of Legos."  Then we learned some science about light and rainbows.  Finally, we did experiments to make our own rainbows!  We used glass prisms and water to try to create rainbows a couple of different ways.  We have had so much fun this week trying to "catch" the rainbows all around our room!  We hung up a "magic rainbow maker" crystal raindrop in the window, and it is so much fun to see where the rainbows land each sunny day!

We had so much fun learning about animal tracks with Steve Rudolph from Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge!  First we learned about "reading" the stories of animals through their tracks, and then we created our own track stories with stamps.  

Then we headed outside to look for tracks!  We found lots of squirrel tracks!  Beware that your kids will now be tracking you everywhere you go... 

We did find some very strange tracks on our walk... Big Foot?

We ended our tracking hike with Tiana's birthday party!  It was so warm (actually above zero) that we enjoyed our ice cream outside in the sunshine!  Happy Birthday Tiana!!!

The COOLEST Thing EVER!

Remember playing in the sandbox when you were a kid and pretending to make mountains, rivers, tsunamis, and earthquakes?  We got to do all of that and more this week in the Augmented Reality Sandbox on loan from UAF.  As you hold your hand over the sand you can make it "rain", and as you move the sand around you make mountains and valleys with contour lines and the "water" flows into the low places.  Even the adults couldn't get enough of playing in the sand!  Thank you to our school counselor Tad Dunning for transporting the sandbox and projector to Tok for the school to play in!

In math we are beginning fractions!  Here we are making "toast" and sharing half with our friends.  You may have lots of fun opportunities for practicing fractions with your student at home during meals or snacks!

In science we continued our study of the water cycle, weather, and states of matter.  We played States of Matter Simon Says, made a poster of the three states of matter, and did an experiment to find out what happens to a volume of water when it freezes...

In our endeavor to answer some of the kids' questions about weather this week we learned about what makes lightning and thunder.  We did an experiment to create lightning with a balloon and some foil.  The kids had a great time creating static electricity and then in the dark bathroom we made it spark to the foil!  We also learned how to be safe in a lightning storm!

In writing we began a letter writing unit.  The kids worked really hard to make beautiful Valentine letters for special people in their lives.  They were very sweet letters.  Then we took a trip to the Post Office to mail them and see what happens to the mail once we drop it in the slot!  If you haven't checked your P.O. box lately, you might have a surprise waiting!!!  Many thanks to Greg, Sandy, and our great tour guide Linda for a wonderful trip to the P.O.!

Emma earned a Pet Shop prize card, so she got to bring in her pet husky, Pixie!  Pixie was very patient as she was loved on by everyone.  We got to learn a little bit about sled dogs, which was perfect since we have been following the Yukon Quest dogsled race and mapping the progress of the mushers!  We are rooting for our hometown musher, Hugh Neff!  If you want to check on the race with your kinder this weekend, here is the link!  http://www.yukonquest.com/race-central/current-standings/live-tracking

Friday was our much anticipated monthly Book Buddies event!  We just love our 5th grade buddies.  They had made special Valentines for each of their Little Buddies.  We spent some time in the library reading stories, and then played word games.  Together the buddy pairs did a Valentine word search, played Minute to Win It with candy hearts, and created as many words as they could in 5 minutes with 6 letters of their choice (written with frosting on graham crackers...yum!)  Then they got to "eat their words!"   Happy Valentines Day, 5th Grade!  Thanks for helping us love reading!!!

And THAT wraps up just another week at the office for Tok Kindergarten!!!