Week of October 24-28

The Monkeys had a great week!  We were very excited about Halloween and got to listen to spooky stories in the library with Mrs. Bamford.  The class really enjoyed acting out the story, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything.  We really focused on main idea during language arts and read wonderful books.  We found the main idea of the books Brave Irene, Three Hens and a Peacock and Spaghetti in a Hog Dog Bun.  We began new personal narratives in writing and will continue those this week after we finish our 50th day of school activities.  In math, we worked on learning about length.  We measured our feet and traced them and cut them out.  We then measured how many unifix cubes long our feet were, how many paper clips long our feet were, etc.  It was a lot of fun!  We will continue with measurement this week.  In science, we enjoyed exploring with magnets in our classroom.  We found items that were magnetic and nonmagnetic.  We will finish up our unit on magnets this week.

The Monkeys are really looking forward to our fun-filled 50th day of school on Wednesday, November 2nd!  Don't forget to dress like someone from the 1950s for our school spirit day Wednesday!

We were excited to learn about our superstar Sophia W. this past week!  

The Monkeys are learning all about the life and interests of C.J. this week.  He is our new superstar!

Week of October 17-21

The Monkeys had a great time last week finishing up our learning about heat, light and sound energy in science.  We used light energy from flashlights to make shadows inside of little tents on our tables made out of manila folders.  We put the flashlights close to the objects in the little tents and moved the flashlights farther away.  We also made tambourines and listened to their sound energy.  We learned that the vibrations from shaking the beans made sound.  The students had an AWESOME time going on an "energy" walk and looked for 3 types of light energy, 3 types of sound energy and 3 types of heat energy.  They observed things such as the sun, cars driving by, the air conditioning units, an airplane, birds, etc.  We will begin to learn about magnets this week in science.

In language arts, we have continued to introduce sight words and we learned "go" and "my" this past week.  The students worked on poetry with these two words.  We also really focused on characters and the reasons for their actions.  Ask your child about the Kevin Henkes books we read, Chrysanthemum, Owen and Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse.  We talked about the characters in those books and the reasons for the characters' actions.

We discussed our culture in Social Studies and made our own little book that was sent home.  We will continue to learn about different cultures in our community that are from around the world.  We will be listening to nonfiction books this week about food, music, homes, celebrations and more in different cultures.

The Monkeys had a great time learning about Clay this past week since he was our superstar!

We are excited to learn about our next superstar this week, Sophia W.!

Making Ice Cream Video

Week of Oct. 3-7 & Oct. 10-14

We have had another 2 great weeks of learning in the Monkey class!  The students are continuing to LOVE science and all of the hands-on experiences that are happening!  We finished learning all about how heating and cooling cause change.  The students got to make ice cream and absolutely loved it!

 This past week we began to learn about forms of energy.  We are learning about heat, light and sound energy.  We were about to explore heat energy and the students enjoyed melting crayons to make art with the heat energy from a hair dryer.

We also explored sound energy by matching mystery sounds hidden in old film canisters and the students explored sound.  They used instruments and fun sound makers.  We explored light energy by making shadow puppets and the kids had a blast making shadows in front of the projector screen.  They also were able to explore light by looking at a Lite Brite and a variety of other fun objects.

We are starting to learn about culture in Social Studies, so be sure to discuss your family's culture and heritage with your child.  We will learn that there are many different cultures in our world and that is what makes us all special.  It also makes our world an interesting place!

During language arts we have worked a lot on the sight words we have learned so far in class.  The students are getting exposure to sight words through poems, activities, flash cards and more.  One fun activity was listening to the story The Biggest Pumpkin Ever.  The students loved the story and got to make their version of a jack-o-lantern afterward.  We have been working on making predictions before reading and identifying the characters, setting and main events in the books we read.  

In math, we finished up our work on sorting and graphing data for this nine week period.  We are beginning to work on exploring 3D shapes now.  The students will enjoy this next fun geometry unit.

The Monkeys had a fun time learning all about our last superstar students, Alessandro!  He was able to tell us all about his life and interests.

We look forward to learning about our next superstar, Clay!

Week of September 26th

The Monkeys had another fun week at school!  We continued learning how heating and cooling can change objects in science.  The students really enjoyed melting crayons.  We used a hot plate, a foil lined pan and broken crayons.  They were shocked at how fast the crayons melted!  We also observed the melted crayons the next day after they had time to sit in the classroom at room temperature.

Melting Crayons

Liquid Form

The Next Day

We learned a lot in language arts by focusing on beginning sounds of words and alliteration.  We also discussed characters, setting and main events using the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Ask your child to retell the story to you.  We learned earlier this year that retelling a story is a form of reading.

In math we discussed number tracks/number lines and learned what numbers come "before" and "after" specific numbers.  We also began to learn about sorting and graphing data.  We used our snacktime drink containers and sorted them.  We then thought about how we could organize our data and made a graph.  We talked about what type of drink "most" students drank and what type the "least" amount of students enjoyed.

We were very excited to learn about our latest superstar of the week, Addie!  We learned about her interests and all about her week with Mr. Monkey!

We look forward to learning about our next superstar, Alessandro!

Thank you SO much to our wonderful room moms for decorating our Kindergarten hallway for the fall!  It looks fabulous!  Make sure to come by and look at it.  Our students will be adding pumpkins and other fun projects to the wall.