Snail Week

Near the end of school we have snail week. We collect enough small margarine tubs for each child to have a snail and a snail house to keep it in. We oberve, feed and clean up after our snails daily. We make paper snails, and do drawings of snails. We also do some math using our snails... we estimated height, length and weight then calculated the actual height, weight and length. We had a snail curcus where we found out if our snail could hang upside down, walk a "tightrope" (pencil), go over spikes (on a fork), crawl through a tunnel (toilet paper tube) and go over sand paper. On Friday, we had snail races. We made visors and banners to cheer on our racers. There were 4 heats with 4-5 students in each heat. The snails started in the middle of the track then moved to the outer circle. I gave a ribbon to each child saying "Congratulations! Your snail earned 1st (or 2nd-5th) in the race! It was a fabulous week!

Getting Ready for Butterflies

So next week we will be diving into learning about other insects. One of my favorite art projects are these stained glass butterflies. An adult traces the outline of the butterfly on 2 12x18 inch pieces of black paper, then cuts out the inside shapes. The students use starch to adhere strips of tissue onto wax paper, then glue the butterfly pieces onto the outside of it. An adult cuts the completed butterflies out when they are dry. I know it is heavy on the adult work, but they look beautiful in the windows!

Bees

In May we enjoy a funfilled insct unit. My favorite week of the unit is when we study bees. GEMS has a FABULOUS unit on bees called "Buzzing a Hive." It is really hands on and interactive, and makes a nice change for us in spring when we are all feeling a little wiggly. The first lesson is to make a paper bee with all the correct parts. We look at real, dead bees and a poster of a bee and then set out to make our bees together. Another day we make paper flowers with stamen that have pollen on them after we have used cotton balls to find pollen in real flowers. Later in the week we make cells for our big hive with things in them you would find in a real bee hive. I use soybeans for an egg, a white pipe cleaner for larvae, waxed paper for wax, yellow powdered tempura for pollen and yellow paint for honey. More in the writing and art area coming soon!

Presidents and Patriotism

One of my favorite units in February is Presidents. We have so much fun learning about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and just our country in general.

One art project that gets them thinking about the whole idea is this....
We color and cut out the 2 monuments (after talking about them and looking at real pictures of them) then we put watered down tempura paint onto the paper where they use a straw to blow on it and make it look like fireworks. The original idea was to use black paper, but you just couldn't see the paint on it, so we switched it. I am not sure where the masters for the monuments came from.

One of my favorite lessons for this unit comes later... we use a variety of pictures to discuss symbols. We say again and again, "a symbol is something that stands for something else". We talk about traffic signs (a review from the beginning of the year). We talk about letters and numbers. Then I introduce some of our patriotic symbols. I have about 15 both national and California symbols.... for example, the Washington and Lincoln monuments, the bald eagle, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Redwood tree, etc. We look at each one and discuss what it is and whether it is a National symbol or a State symbol. On a different day, we brainstorm words that these things stand for... justice, freedom, protection, beauty, strength, honesty, etc. Then we hold up the symbols and say some sentences: "The California Poppy stands for beauty." "Abraham Lincoln stands for freedom." Then, each child chooses a symbol and draws it with a pencil. When the pencil drawing is done, they go over it with a Sharpie marker then watercolor paint it. On another day, we all choose a sentence and write it. This particular example says, "The bear stands for protection."

Snowman Goodness

We are up to our neck in snow here in Kindergarten, even though it has been sunny and 65 degrees this week! We are starting our "Cold Places" unit. This is one of my favorites with so many great activities. The pictures above were taken at the California Kindergarten Conference some previous year. Aren't they cute? I haven't actually made these, but they are on my list of things to try.

Writing Assessment

I created a Kindergarten rubric because all of the primary ones I found did not really apply to the challenges of teaching writing to Kindergartners. My goal for students who come to K with letter knowledge in place is to reach proficient or advanced in all areas: phonetic knowledge, conventions, and idea. For students who start out with no (or very limited) letter knowledge, I am happy to see them progress into the basic category, especially in relationship to "idea". The scaffold of a basic sentence structure seems to help them to write independently and confidently. These samples show the independent writing of one of last year's students. The date the writing was created is written by me in marker.
This one says "pumpkin".

This page says, "I like to count." You can see how much growth was made in just a couple of months. Conventions like spacing and use of lower case letters are not yet present, but he is well on his way to being a writer.
This is the rubric. I am sorry it is hard to read. If you are interested in a pdf copy, you can email me.
Happy writing!

It's OK to be Different!

One of my favorite art projects of the whole year....


First we read the book It's OK to be Different by Todd Parr. Then at my reading group table each child decides what his or her sentence will say. I dictate the sentences on the back of their papers, and they use their pencils to make a drawing. I encourage them to make the drawing fill up the paper. f they finish the drawing, they use a Sharpie marker to go over all of the lines they drew and erase the pencil marks. If they don't get time to do this, I do it that afternoon. I also type their sentences on the computer. The next day, the students use their watercolor paints to fill the whole page up with color. I encourage them to use non-traditional colors like Todd Parr does in his book. They also write their names into the rectangles and paint those.