Pythons and Prairies

Last week was our first full week back after Christmas break and that crazy weather! All the students seemed ready to be back, and I was too! Now, pythons and prairies is a pretty weird combination, but it describes this week perfectly!

Monday
The student's got a special treat on Monday! The zoo came to KA for an hour with live animals! The zoo instructor talked about adaptations (which might have been a little much for kindergarteners) and also brought some neat animals for us to meet. The first animals was a millipede, which are poisonous (I didn't know that!). The second animal was a python, YUCK! But it was cool to pet!

While a few of my students prefered to hide behind me while the snake came around, two brave boy asked if they could hold it! Luckily the instructor said no! The next animal brought in was a parrot (which I was more scared of than the snake). However, I'm not sure how much the students actually learned about that because they were too busy laughing about how it did it's "business" on the carpet! The last animal brought in was an ADORABLE hedgehog!

 I think the hedgehog was the overall favorite of the class :)

Tuesday
The unit we are currently working in is all about geography; and this week was focused on prairies. Tuesday we discussed pioneers and how differently they had to live! One parent from school was nice enough to let me borrow seed to grind into flour to show what the pioneers had to do to get flour.

Okay, sooo I cheated a little bit by using an electric mill, but they still got the point! After discussing differences, we then talked about similarities between pioneers and us. We sang "Pop Goes the Weasel!" and "Yankee Doodle"just like pioneer children use to. We also played "Hot and Cold" which was a game pioneer children use to play too!

Thursday'

Our prairie theme continued by learning about prairie dogs on thursday. We read an adorable book called The Great Fuzz Frenzy, which was filled with alliteration and new vocabulary for them to hear. 

We then cut out and pinned together our own prairie dogs. 

The students decided they should all be named Big Bark (a character in the book). It's great to see them connecting stories to other activities!

New Things!

New verse: "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6

New letter combinations: st (at the end), sp, br, mp

New sight words: was, off (flashcard coming home soon)