Explore, Create, Collaborate!

Last week each of the students took part in exploring paint:  mixing the colors, using brushes and canvas, and just learning how to manipulate paint. Each group worked together to produce artwork for our hallway.  I loved seeing how each group developed the painting, but most of all I liked how all of them worked on working together.  They worked on sharing the materials, the space, and taking turns. They worked on talking and listening to ideas which created a masterpiece together. Who is more proud--the students or their teacher?

And . . .  drumroll, please . . . . The finished product:

Amazing what exploring, creating, and collaborating can do!

The Friday Five--Week Two

Our first full week of kindergarten is under our belts!  Take a look at what we've been up to this week:

1. We had fun learning about the eclipse and then viewing the eclipse either outside with our special glasses or inside on the live-feed.  We had fun making our eclipse headbands, too! Is it just me, or does this seem like so long ago?  :)

2. This week we've spent some time learning how to get along with others. We've learned there are four things to do:  talk, listen, share and take turns, and make good choices. We learned when it is time to talk and when it is time to listen.

I introduced "Turn and Talks" this week. This is where we turn to a partner and then take turns talking and listening about a topic.  Look how we face each other during a turn and talk:

Then we came up with a group plan so that everyone can enjoy our classroom items. We learned to share and take turns.

3. We've read many books this week.  Ask your child about his or her favorite!

4. We continue to learn about shapes and colors.  This week we learned a little about Piet Mondrian. We learned he used line to define shapes, especially rectangles, and colors.  Ask your child what Piet Mondrian's favorite colors seemed to be.

5. Today kicked off our first session with our Fifth Grade Buddies.  For our first session, we had a getting to know you activity with our buddies.  Ask your child about his or her buddy.  Click here for more pictures of our buddy session.

It was a great week two!

Our Fifth Grade Buddies

We get to work with 5th graders this year.  Today was our first meeting.  We got to know each other a little today while making a fun craft.

We'll work with our 5th grade buddies about once a month.  As you can see, we had a lot of fun!

The Friday Five--Week One

Woo hoo!  We finished our first week of kindergarten.  Here are some highlights of what we did this week:

1.  We spent a lot of time learning about procedures and rules.  One of our favorites was hearing the story of a monster coming to school.  As a class we worked on deciding what should happen at school and what should never happen at school.  We had a green line, and we decided which behaviors should be above the line, or the desired actions, and which ones should be below the line. We'll use this as a reference for our own behavior.

We had a little help learning about how not to behave from our friends Pigeon and David:

Today we started our clip chart.  We clip up when we are doing above the line behaviors, and we clip down when we make a choice that is below the line. Look in your child's folder for a description of the behavior plan.

2.  We read a lot of poems and books.  Ask your child which of these was a favorite!

3.  We're making new friends and learning about cooperation.  Ask your child which of these activities was his or her favorite!

4.  This year we'll be learning what it takes to be a leader.  Leaders have certain characteristics or habits.  We talked about Habit #1 today:  Be Proactive.  We read The Little Engine that Could this morning and we were on the look-out for the character who was being proactive. Ask your child which character was proactive. We thought of ways to be proactive ourselves:

Then we danced away to this song:

5. What was our favorite thing this week?  Check out the video we made:

Those are the highlights for this week!  What will next week bring?