Mrs. Garrabrant's Classroom: Opinion Writing, Gardening, Earth Day & More!

We had another busy week in Kindergarten. Keep reading to learn about what we have been working on. On Monday we observed and wrote about what our plants were doing. We still have 2 that have not sprouted yet and some of the students sprouts have started to get tall!

We have added some new workstations. One is an addition game using ants.

Next, the students use play-doh to show various numbers on a tens frame.

We also began playing a game called match stix where the students have to take turns moving the sticks to make various patterns. We also added a new book to our listening area that the students enjoyed, "Miss Nelson is Missing". Ask your child to tell you about these new activities.

We have also began writing about our opinions. Below you can see our "In my opinion" paper where the students had to decide and circle which option they like better.

Then the students shared their choices with a partner.

They wrote about their favorite zoo animals. We talked about giving reasons why they like that particular animal instead of just because I like them or they are cool. Below you can see that they like whales because we learned about them, dolphins because they can jump high, and a jellyfish because it stings. We also wrote about their favorite pet. They like turtles because they can hold them, cats because they like to pet them, and cats because they are fuzzy.

Lastly, we wrote about our favorite zoo animals. The students like kangaroos because they can jump really high, zebras because it has stripes, elephants because it sprays water on itself, and zebras because they can camouflage.

On Tuesday, we got 5 caterpillars that we will be observing through their life cycle. Throughout the week they got so big and even began to make their chrysalis but I forgot to take a picture on Friday! I will post one on the next week's blog.

We put the caterpillars in our look closer area and the students really enjoyed observing them and documenting what they were noticing.

The students wanted to vote on what foods we planted in our garden box so we voted. I told them we could choose 3 things to plant.

So we found out that they wanted to plant tomatoes, peppers, and carrots.

We had to get our garden box ready. It had so many rocks in it and the soil needed cultivated. They worked so hard and we will be ready to plant on Monday before the rain comes!

Here is a little time lapse video of the students working.

Wednesday was our official publishing date for our Student Treasures poetry book. They sent me an email with a video describing what was happening to our book and the students were amazed and excited to see the final product. I can't wait to share it with you all!

On Thursday, the National Honor Society from the High School came over and as a part of their book drive they did an activity with the class and gave each child a free book! One student read the day the crayons quit to the class, gave them fruit loops as a snack, and had some coloring pages for them to complete. The students really enjoyed their visit.

They loved picking out their own book.

They also loved the fruit loop snack.

They had to trace and write the color words and color by numbers.

We read a couple books about seeds as well.

We read this book about seeds as a class and then the students got to color their pages.

We also read a book about Earth Day to learn how we can help our Earth.

The students had to complete the last page with what they wanted to do to help the Earth.

Students said they would take out trash, recycle, pick up trash from the sea, and turn lights off.

We shared our Earth Day books, Seed book, Plant journals and opinion writing with our preschool reading buddies.

Friday was our Wright State Observer, Ms. Dupont's last day so we wrote here thank you notes. We discussed words that they would want to include in their letters and I wrote them on the board for them. They wanted to make sure to tell her thank you, that we would miss her and that they hoped she had a great summer. We will really miss her and were so grateful for her help throughout the semester!