Marvelous Math and other activities

 Some very studious girls hunting for the letter h, or any words they know.

Not the greatest picture, but a fun game: roll the die, read the word, move the car in the corresponding lane.

 My favorite Samuel picture, uploaded sideways though.  At first the speech bubble by Samuel was empty because, as the artist put it, "He was scared.  He was like this-" and she stood really still and made her eyes really wide.  "Then he said ___" (Sorry, I don't know how to spell a gasp, but apparently it is spelled with an H.)

 Today in math we took flat shapes, like a rectangle

 and then worked together

 to make rectangular prisms!

 Math is so much fun!

 A few groups joined forces during center time to make an even bigger prism

 But it got too tall, so they built it horizontally instead.

twin day!

Above: some 'twins' in pink and wearing their beautiful brown curls down
Below: some red and blue clad triplets

 gray-shirted twins

 Someone had a twin in preschool

Here is the Venn diagram from yesterday.  Today we had it set up to ask if they were dressed as a twin or wearing our color of the day (gray)
 
Our bulletin board is full of beautiful pictures (thanks to a donation from a Sunday school) to help us remember what we have been learning about Moses.

The Story of Joseph - Sort of

For your reading entertainment, here are the Bible retellings of the story of Joseph.  Also, a good reminder of why children need to hear these stories at school and church and home - they don't get it all the first time!

All I remember is that he was sold to Egypt.  He went to jail.

Joseph were jealous because he had like these dreams that everyone would buy him.  And Joseph got threwed in the well.  And one of his brothers got him out.  Then they worshiped him, then they slaved him, then they put him in prison.

He got into the well and the brothers said they will kill him.  Then these people got him out.  Then they selled him.  Then this guy buyed him and liked him because he took his animals and he did everything for him.  And then some girl said "Kiss me, kiss me" and then he runned away out the door.

His brothers got so mad that their dad gave him a rainbow coat.  Then they got so mad.  When they came by, their plan was to kill him and when he comes by to get ready to throw him in the system - sister [cistern] and see if there's a ferocious animal that will eat him.  And later another guy came by and he got tooken.  And another guy said "Wait, how 'bout we throw him down the system and then see what happens?"  And they all agreed.  And then later an army somebody came by and took him and he got tooken by this guy.  And he got sold to be a slave in Egypt.

He got throwed into the thing and then he went to the new state and then he wanted to go home.

First he started as a baby.  And second he grew to be a man, and then he had a dream.
He got in prison because somebody else's wife told a lie and then he got in prison.

Joseph made a plan.  He got somebody to help him.  And he got people to help him run away from being a slave.

Bible, art, much math

'Abraham' came to tell the Bible story today.

 We had a dad come help us with a cool art project... pictures tomorrow probably.  At least half the class did an extra project because they had so much fun!

 In math today we worked on translating patterns (showing the same pattern several different ways).  We started with links and everyone could choose what type of pattern to start with.  Then we made the same pattern but using different objects (stickers, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, beans, sequins, noodles...).  Then we made the same pattern by drawing shapes.  We actually had quite a good variety of patterns.

AB patterns:

 

 AAB

ABC

 

 AABC

 AABB

 AABCD

I heard a comment that "Math is so fun!"  It made me smile.

"Miss Vis, I'm sorting my Chex mix!" and other connections

Our math corner is nice and bright!  Earlier this week we sorted by shape.  You can always really tell that a child understands a concept when they transfer their knowledge to another situation, like at snack time when someone told me "I'm sorting my Chex mix!"  Math - snack - art... they're connected.

It's important for children to see how things connect and that each lesson or subject is not an entity all on its own, apart from other things.  Today we learned about Day 4 of Creation, when God created the sun, moon, and stars.  Then we took our learning outside and melted some crayons using the sun's warmth.
Science - Bible - art... they're connected.

I don't know if I dare write this, but I wish it had been hotter today, or at least sunnier, because when I tried this out before school started it only took about 20 minutes for the crayons to liquify, but today was a little overcast and after an hour and a half some crayons were still semi-solid.  Oh well.  We had fun trying to squish them around anyway!

(And oops - the sidewalk is a little more colorful than it used to be :)
One of the new center choices today was the very popular easel (with paint pens and finger crayons)

Day 3 of school, Day 2 of Creation

 We got a brand new carpet!  Isn't it beautiful?  I love it!

In Bible we learned about day 2 of Creation, when God created the sea and the sky.  So during centers we played with the water table.

And during science we focused on the air God made.  We learned that air moves things.  We had lots of fun with experiments: trying to move a ball from one cup to another without touching the ball, and trying to keep a feather afloat.  Science is so much fun!  Here are two really short video clips so you can see what we did.

First Day of School!

At the end of the day today we reinforced our school's theme, Follow in His Steps, based on 1 Peter 2:21 ("To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps.") 

It was an ambitious idea - and actually an original idea - for the first day of school, but I was impressed with how well it went.  The water got pretty dirty pretty quickly.  Sometimes Kindergarten gets messy, but it is lots of fun!  No more painting though, until everyone has their paint shirt at school, because next time we will paint with our hands.  :)  If you want to see the final product, it is hanging outside the front office.

We did some initial writing samples today, so I have a baseline of how children write their names, draw pictures, and write.  This child's picture shows he went to Mount Rushmore this summer.

This child drew a turtle and wrote the letters TR - great Kindergarten writing.  I'm so excited to see how their writing grows over the year!

We also did a 3 minute number writing assessment.  We'll do this once a month.  At the end of the year you will get them all so you can see how much growth and progress has been made (the quantity of numbers, the quality of them, even things like learning to write across, instead of down...)

Side note: don't forget that next Wednesday is Peter Piper Pizza Night - show up and help the school raise money.  The money goes to the school Auxiliary and helps us buy wonderful new things for our classroom, like the above ink pads (yes, more messiness is coming up tomorrow!)

 We had a great first day and I'm sure we'll also have a great second day!

Graduation!

 Memory verses above, watching the slide show below

 Plant song

 Penguin Dance!!!

 The official stuff

 Just plain cute

 We're done!  Time for a party :)

All pictures courtesy of Tom Bakker

Bible quote

Today we started talking about parables (which we defined as stories Jesus told to teach people about the Kingdom of God) and we began with the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  First of all, parables are somewhat abstract.  The class had a hard time understanding that this story did not actually happen, it was just a story Jesus told to teach us about our neighbors.  But I digress. 

The story went something like this:

A man asked Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Do you know what that means?  [insert blank stares intermingled with children shaking their heads and saying "no."]  He meant, "What do I need to do so I can live in heaven with God?"

"You have to die!"

Jonah Game

I love the story of Jonah for several reasons. It's really familiar, and it is a really dramatic, fun story to tell. We did a craft yesterday and each child used it to act out/retell the story. Then today after hearing the rest of the story, we reviewed the main events in the story by playing the Jonah game.

In case the video does not work for you there are a few pictures and here is the gist of the game: everyone yells "Go to Nineveh" but Jonah goes the opposite way and gets in a boat (upside-down table). Then he's thrown overboard into the sea (crawls under a blue table cloth) and is swallowed by a fish (cardboard box). Everyone counts to 3 since Jonah was in the fish for 3 days and 3 nights, then Jonah gets spit out onto dry ground and this time he goes to Nineveh.

Jonah is thrown off the boat and into the water.
Getting swallowed by a big fish!
Going to Nineveh now