Yesterday's Trail

This week flew by! The theme this week was Yesterday's Trail. We talked about things in the past that affect now, and also how we should appreciate those older than us.

Monday
On Monday we talked about different house people lived in long ago, focusing on plantations. We had a blind test to see different crops they may have grown back then. The students felt cotton, smelled coffee, and shook sugar. We then drew and wrote about plantations.

A coffee tree and apples

In the afternoon we made a "me" project. Everyone got a little doll cut out and they could glue or color whatever they wanted to make it look like them! The creativity was awesome to see! We had puff ball hair, yarn smiley faces, construction paper clothes, and curling ribbon hair!

Tuesday

Tuesday started with a birthday!!! Birthdays are always so exciting in class!

Birthday Boy in our birthday hat

In class we discussed the flag and how the past has affected what's on the flag now. We then came up with a design for our own classroom flag!

6 red stripes for the boys, 4 purple for the girls, and a "k" for Kindergarten!

We're still working on home addresses, and any work done at home to help memorizing is still great!

Thursday 

We had another birthday today!

Birthday Boy and cake!

In class we focused on appreciated those older than us, and who better to appreciate than grandparents! We read My Grandma lived in Gooligulch by. Graeme Base. It's a rhyming book (my favorite!) about an adventurous grandma. We then talked about our grandparents and painted little cards for them. 

 Sponge painting!

Thursdays are also our review days, and there are usually some fun review games to with this, I just usually forget to take pictures! For phonics we played hot potato, but if it the music stopped on you, you read a word. 

This picture makes the game look calm, when really it was far from!

In math we raised cars to practice the concepts 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. 

On your mark, get set, GO!!!!

New Things

New sight word: do

New sounds: oo, ou, ow

New endings: _ool, _oon, _ook, _ow, _ound

Coming up...

*Next week is IOWA testing. Make sure your children get lots of sleep and a good breakfast!

*May 19th is the music program at 7:00 p.m

*May 20th is the last day of school and graduation at 7:00 p.m. I sent home letters about the graduation, please return whenever you know how many people you expect. 

In the Garden

Wow, there are only 4 1/2 more weeks of school, and it is flying past! This week was filled with tasty vegetables and beautiful flowers, as we were talking about gardens. (Just a warning, I hardly have any pictures for this week. Sorry!)

Monday
Monday was all about what you grow in a garden, yummy vegetables! So, we had a little vegetable tasting. Now, I was very nervous about how this would go. I know that I didn't like vegetables when I was in Kindergarten! We tried carrots, celery, broccoli, peppers, and cucumbers. Most of the students tried them all, and loved them all!!

In the afternoon we started to talk about upcoming Easter. I won't be there for the program on Sunday, so they sang me all there songs. They had them all perfectly memorized! We then started working on a sheep art projects. With this we talked about how in the Bible people use to have to kill sheep. But then Jesus came and he was our lamb!

 The messier the fingers, the better the craft!

Tuesday

On Tuesday we talked about how a seed becomes a plant. The students became their own plants, acting like seeds and then slowly growing. I've never seen cuter flowers! We then drew a picture about a seed growing; and they wrote a sentence with only a little assistance.

A watermelon field (top) and a combine harvesting (bottom)!

Break out the umbrella (left) and the seed getting ready (right)

We are continuing to work on home addresses. Any extra work at this at home is GREATLY appreciated. I can't spend as much time as I would like to on this. 

Thursday 

Easter is coming quickly, and I loved talking about it on Thursday. We discussed how the Easter bunny, egg hunts, chocolate and how fun these things are, but how that is not why we have Easter. Easter is about Jesus dying for all of us, and He then raised from the dead three days later. To show this we read a beautiful book with pictures that resemble stained glass (so pretty!)

This is the picture where Jesus is raised from the dead. All the students started clapping and cheering. I definitely got tears in my eyes, because of their loving excitement. The joy in their hearts is so amazing to see. Jesus is more than a person in a story to them, He is truly their close friend!

We also made a little craft about for Easter. 

And of course we ended the day with a fun little egg hunt with little toys for prizes! 

I missed so many picture opportunities here, but atleast I have one with an egg!

New Things!

New sight word: some

New sound: er, ur, ir

New sound endings: ern, urn, irt

Walking Where Jesus Walked

Well we started our last unit this week (sniff). I can't believe how fast this school year is flying! The last day of Kindergarten is scheduled for May 20th. So we still have plenty of learning to do! This week's theme was "Walking Where Jesus Walked" and it was all about Bible times.

Monday
We started out our week talking about what it would be like to live in Bible times. To demonstrate this we made our landscape (rocks and sand) and made our own Bible houses!

 He looks so disinterested in this picture!

The houses turned into hotels when they started stacking them!

In math class we started two new concepts, subtraction and counting by twos! Everyones catching on to them so quickly, especially counting by twos! Apparently when I'm countin my students I count by twos, so they already knew from observing how to do it!

In "art" class we made stained glass looking suncatchers. It was so neat to see their paper designs.

These were later cut into crosses

Tuesday

On Tuesday we continued with our Bible times lesson by talking about more differences between now and then. To start we discussed transportation now and then. When I asked what we use to travel now, I got some interesting answers. My favorite, elephants and turtles! 

Next we showed differences in how we dress. They tried on some Bible outfits.

Looks like there ready for Israel!

We also started working on home addresses in the afternoon. We will be working on this for a few weeks.

Thursday

To finish up our Bible week, we painted pictures of anything from the Bible. I love seeing their creativity shine through!

Some of the pictures are Adam and Eve, Noah, Bible towns, and Jesus on Palm Sunday

Because of the home school play we had indoor recess. This is always such a treat for the students! Here are some of the many activities they did.

 Some pretty impressive block buildings!

 Some Jonathon Park adventures!

And of course some coloring!!!

New Things!

New sight word: want

New sounds: ar, or

New word endings: _ar, _ark, _ore, _orn

Spring into a Great Week!

From the title you can probably tell that this week's theme was Spring! We are finishing up the season unit, and heading into our next (and last) unit. This was the perfect week to start talking about spring, because it actually started to feel like spring!

Monday
On Monday we talked about rainbows and all the colors in one. We then made a very neat density rainbow to talk about the color order.
                                              
Isn't it beautiful! Well sadly, it's not ours. We had a slight malfunction and the red blended with the green. So with what started as a rainbow lesson, ended with a "things don't always go as planned" lesson! But the rainbow talk did lead to MANY rainbow pictures hanging on my wall.

2 of 7 rainbow pictures

Also, this is our first week of science class! We finished up our social studies before spring break, so science is replacing it. The students are pretty excited for this class because they get "highschool" textbooks. Don't worry they're kindergarten level! In the science class we will talk about keeping healthy, 5 senses, weather, and many other neat topics!

In the afternoon we also made some decorations for our classroom. And, what's a better decoration for spring but some rainclouds (cheery rainclouds!). We took cotton balls to make the clouds, and then added some rain. 

Now it feels like it's always a cozy rainy day!

Tuesday

Tuesday was a beautiful day out! This worked great with our bird nest theme! We all pulled on our jackets and headed outside to collect some materials that a bird might use in a bird nest. Once back in the students worked in pairs to make their very own nests!

Everyone worked so well together and made some really neat looking nest! We finished up the activity by completing a sentence about their nest and drawing a picture.

Thursday

Thursday was filled with surprises, but we'll get to that in a bit! In the morning we read an adorable book called Tops and Bottoms by. Janet Stevens. It has an important moral of working hard. It also talks about growing plants (perfect for spring). 

We then planted our own plants with handmade terrariums. We started with a 2 liter bottle cut in half. Added stones, dirt, seeds, and then we topped it off with the lid.

I am FAR from a plant expert (I can't keep houseplants alive!) so I'm fully relying on the internet for this project. I'm super curious if it'll actually work, so let me know if it does! 

The library came in today. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE when she comes in. Her activities are so cute! My favorite activity was an instrument song with lots of silly noises!

In the afternoon we had a surprise Birthday party for Mrs. Compton. It was so much to hide and then jump out yelling SURPRISE! Of course no party is complete without some cake and ice cream!

Yum! What a tasty ending to the week!

New Things

New sight word: there

New letter blends: ight

New word endings: _y, _uddy, _usty, _unny, _ight

New Bible verses: Praise ye the Lord: for it good to sing praises unto our God. -Psalms 147:1

                            Quit you like men, be strong. -1 Corinthians 16:13