After growing in our class incubator for the last few weeks, our chicks hatched starting on Tuesday! What a great time we have had with these sweet chicks. Everyone that wanted to hold a chick was able to, and everyone wanted to pet them. We learned a lot about life cycles and living things in general. We learned the hard way that not every living thing makes it through a full life cycle as we had four eggs that never hatched. We had two chicks that had to go back early, too, because they couldn't stand up correctly. In the end we had five chicks to talk about, read about, and write about. Now they are back at the farm ready to grow into teenage chickens and then full blown hens and roosters.
We have been reading a lot of poems lately. Our poems have been about St. Patrick's Day, spring, chicks and Dr. Seuss characters. We practice our sight words, different word patterns, vowel sounds, and rhyming. This week in reading, we've been learning that avid readers have to read poems a lot of times! The first time avid readers read a poem, it is to figure out the words. Once the words are figured out, avid readers think of what the poem means. Then avid readers think of how the rhythm or the beat of the poem is best read. Finally avid readers read poems with feeling. How would you read a poem to a baby right before bedtime? How would you read a poem that makes you feel excited? A few students were found singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to our chicks so that the chicks would have a good rest. We can read our poems all together, and we have copies of our poems in our binders for us to read at private reading time.
We got to go book shopping today. It's one of the favorite activities in kindergarten! Each child has a shopping list of types of books to look for, but the actual titles are picked out by the students. This week we picked out a lot of nonfiction since we've learned some of the things avid nonfiction readers do. Ask your child what avid readers are and what they do!
We've written a lot of nonfiction, lately, too. When we studied the objects in the sky like Earth, the moon, the sun, and stars, we wrote about it. We've written about our chicks, too. Lately we've been writing pattern books. In all of our writing assignments, we always practice on sticking to one topic, using what we know about letters and sounds, using the word wall to spell words that we use a lot, and making sure anyone can read our writing. Today a few students read what they were working on. It was fun to hear them read what they have worked hard on.
We have been working on addition and subtraction in math. We've added dots on dominoes, two dice, two ten-frames, and we've worked on telling our own math stories using addition and subtraction. Most of all, we've been working on explaining our thinking, telling how we know and how we got the answer.
Another favorite time this week has been choice time/makerspace time. These are some of the creations students have made this week:
Finally, we have had two students continue reading to get to the goal of 100 books read this year. It's not too late to join!! But the booklets are due at the beginning of May. Spring break would be a great time to read and record those books! Don't forget to practice those sight words, too!
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