5 senses festival!

 We wrapped up our science unit with a 5 senses festival.  We read a short book, solved some riddles, did a review page, and then freely rotated through some centers

 

 matching smells

 matching sounds

 fun with color paddles

 magnifying glasses

 And one at a time, children went outside for a blindfolded texture walk.  This was lots of fun!

 Reading books about the 5 senses

And here's a preview of tomorrow.  Can you guess what our Bible story will be about?

Super Ss!

 Some centers from this week (sorry for the poor pictures): matching lettered spiders to a corresponding picture, alphabetizing spider webs (I think I got these from Shannon over at the Kinderpond), stamping spiders -aren't they cute? - and some fantastic fine motor skills trying to make spider webs.  We also used scissors to make spirals, and read/acted out The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

 And our favorite: making sparkly spider webs.  Today some children used their center time to make more spider webs...so there may be more glitter headed your way.  And then they asked "Can we do it again tomorrow?"  But I said no (because I don't want all you parents to hate me :), and brought the glitter back to the art closet.

water, paint, glitter, glue, sand, apples

Apple day started with apple math.  We graphed our apples by colors and by whether or not they had a stem.  Then we measured our apple's height,

and weight

 and tested if it would float or sink

 Some apple centers: making patterns,

 making apple fingerprints to match numbers

We did non-fiction writing

 apples are good. they help us grow.

 apples are yummy

In science class we made a diagram of an apple and labeled the different parts.

and at 2:00 we finally got to eat the applesauce that we had smelled all day long.  About half of the class liked it (some could not get past the fact that it was chunky and warm).  Everyone at this table had seconds or thirds despite one of them telling me ahead of time that they didn't like that kind of applesauce.

 No pictures of our awesome apple seasons art - we were too busy with glue, paint, sand and glitter... but since we already had the mess out, we had a messy art option at center time.  

 

See this creation?  It features glue, sand, glitter, crayon, and dot markers as the media.

 And since the water table was filled from the morning, that center was also open later.

Update: here's an apple seasons picture:
 

It was a very messy, very fun day!

Sight

Science explorations are so much fun!  Today we reviewed sight a little, talked about how to protect our eyes, and then just had a lot of fun exploring with color paddles and magnifying glasses.

"It's like 3-D glasses!"

 

Then around 2:15 we finally got to go outside for splatter painting (which was originally scheduled for Ss day - Tuesday, but we changed it so we didn't have to worry about rain).  We read part of a book about Jackson Pollack and then did our own action paintings.

 Some children were very careful, others more haphazard in their approach, but everyone had fun and ended up more colorful than when they began.

I wasn't sure this painting was going to even make it from the ground to the drying rack, it was so saturated, but it made it and the colors swirled together nicely.  Not sure if this masterpiece will be dry enough to go home yet tomorrow...

If we have time tomorrow, we'll try this digital variation of a Jackson Pollack action painting: 

http://jacksonpollock.org/

Recycle Day! (and eating dirt)

Today was Recycle Day (for the letter Rr and to wrap up our theme of Taking Care of God's World).  I put out a box of odds and ends on the carpet, and they started to create.  After a while I told them they could keep creating or go to free choice centers.  Most of them kept working until clean up time - and they cleaned up the big mess really well too!

 "It's me!"

3 boys and their light sabers

 Working on a doll bed carrier

 A sword hand

 Some children made entire outfits for themselves...

 Adding decorative details to a treasure box

We had a lot of fun.  PLUS we ate dirt... Through our recycling unit we have read and talked a bit about composting.  We are in the process of watching a pepper rot.  It's getting nice and squishy!   Today we did some 'composting' in the classroom.  We put 'dirt' (Oreo) in our little 'garden' (cup).  We mixed up some 'compost' (pudding) and added a (gummy) worm to help.  Yummy!

Why does my child come home so dirty?

When you see your child today and ask yourself, Didn't I send a paint shirt to school with my child?  Why didn't they wear it?  The answer is, they did.  You should see the paint shirts.  And the plastic tablecloths.  And the tables (though those are now cleaned)

 

 Here we are painting (around) our initials.

We finished our sorting unit in math at the end of last week, but one of our math centers this week is reviewing the skill.  They had to make up a rule to sort buttons.  These three girls all worked together; their categories were "pretty," "sort of pretty", and "ugly". 

 New free choice centers today: puppets and...

...playdough!  Homemade by one student (and her dad).  I love how seriously they are concentrating on rolling, cutting, etc.

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!