Holiday Celebrations

As close to Dec. 13th as possible, we celebrate Santa Lucia Day. We hear the (abridged) story of Santa Lucia, make pointy hats with stars on them for boys and wreaths with candles on them for girls, then eat shortbread and drink cocoa. It is usually a lovely day. Message to self: next year use cardstock for candles on girls' hats... The paper ones are too floppy.

Visiting Author

Robert San Souci was our visiting author this year. He spent 45 minutes with us, reading and telling stories. We heard Zig Zag, A Tale of Two Bear Cubs and The Talking Eggs. It was hard for the kids to sit so long, but they tried their best and were very engaged in the conversation. Go Kinders!!

Platonic Solids

Our 8th grade buddies came over last Friday and we built these platonic solids with bendy straws. It was super fun!

Friends at School

Our new language arts program has a 3 week unit entitled "Friends at School". In order to supplement the programs ideas, I looked around on the internet and discovered some fun activities surrounding Eric Carle's book Do You Want To Be My Friend?. In this story a mouse unsuccessfully tries to make friends with a variety of animals. After reading the story and acting it out, we made this art project. The students chose an animal to paint with watercolors. The next day (after I had cut the animals out) they glued the "grass" (it is actually a snake), added their animal, and then cut and assembled a mouse. The last step was to add the speech bubble. They all came out really cute.

More recess pictures

You have to admit, they're absolutely adorable!

Sidewalk paintings

On hot days, one of our favorite activities is painting the sidewalks with water. The students are fascinated with their evaporating artwork.

Our Trip to the Pumpkin Patch Part 2

After all our fun at the park, we loaded back into the bus and headed to the pumpkin patch.

We followed our nice guide through the corn maze and over to a spot where we learned all about how pumpkins are grown.
Did you know there are male and female pumpkin flowers?

We were all enthralled.

It was a great day!


If you would like a picture of your child with his or her pumpkin at the patch, just leave a comment or send me an email at nbergenske@yahoo.com and I will send it on to you.

Our Trip to the Pumpkin Patch Part 1

On October 9, we took our first field trip to the pumpkin patch. We started out at the park where we ate lunch, then played.


Playing on the rocking thingy.

The monkey bars are always a favorite.


And the slides...



Climbing...

Digging...

And waiting in line.

Getting Ready

I am trying to prepare myself for the new school year. Here is a list of priorities...
1. Make sure classroom is clean and organized.... with all excess piles of "stuff" cleared away.
2. Put together and label items for students: cubbies, tool kits, seating arrangements, etc.
3. Get "Back to School" bulletin board ready.
4. Learn more about new Language Arts curriculum.... especially phonics component.
5. Figure out if any changes will need to be made to my schedule to effectively use new language arts program and also more "Words Their Way" activities. Print out new lesson plan pages if necessary.
6. Get "RESULTS" assessment binder prepared.
7. Choose first 2 weeks theme... will we do "Bearly Beginning" again or should we change?
8. Try to figure out how to more effectively use the yucky old Math Program we adopted.
9. Buy the new stuff you need, but make sure to get reimbursed right away before budgets are frozen or eliminated.
10. Look at FOSS science and see where the unit on "Trees to Paper" will fit with new Language Arts curriculum.

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!