Field Trip- MCRC, Countdown A-D, Healthy Fair & More!

This week we had another busy week! The students have continued to watch our caterpillars and have been anxiously awaiting butterflies! Literacy Lab has ended because they have started testing all of the students for the DRA. During our Literacy Lab time, we worked on our end of the year countdown activities. We also took our field trip to the Montgomery County Recycling Center, had our ECC healthy fair, shared our work with our reading buddies, continued reading about dinosaurs, and more! Read below to see more details about our fun and exciting week!

Our class has continued to watch our caterpillars and hoping they will turn into butterflies soon! We read a butterfly book about the life cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly. 

All 5 of our caterpillars turned into a chrysalis over the weekend so when the students came in Monday I put them in our butterfly house and they were very excited! We were hoping they were turn into butterflies before the weekend but they continued to take their time throughout the week. I have a feeling that we will come back Monday to 5 beautiful butterflies in our butterfly house.

While I was moving them to the butterfly house, one of chrysalis' started shaking. They do this when they feel threatened to get rid of predators. Here are a couple videos for you to see, it was very cool!

We have been documenting what has been happening to our caterpillars in our "Butterfly Observations" books. As you can see below we have written, "They are little.", "They are big.", "They made a J.", "They made a chrysalis.".

Tuesday was the first day of our end of the year alphabet countdown. Every day, we will be documenting what our activity was for each letter in our Alphabet Memories book which the students will take home at the end of the year. They also completed a page at the beginning of the book about our school and another page about themselves. 

Letter A day was on Tuesday and the students exchanged autographs with each other in an autograph book that they took home.

Letter B day was blue and bubbles day. The students wore blue and enjoyed blowing bubbles at recess time.

 For our letter C day, the students used sidewalk chalk on the playground to draw pictures and write words. They really enjoyed the chalk and filled the playground with beautiful illustrations. 

On letter D day, we had a dance party! Alena brought in the soundtrack for Elena of Avalor and the students enjoyed dancing to the songs. They even made a tunnel where the students took turns dancing through. They really enjoyed our dance party!

On Friday, the students shared their alphabet memories book and butterfly observations book with their preschool reading buddies. 

On Tuesday, our class & Mrs. Sanner's class took a field trip to the Montgomery County Recycling Center. The students were so excited to ride the bus there!

We had a great time touring the building and the students couldn't believe how much trash they saw on the tipping floor! We took a class picture in front of the river mobile (a normal one, and a goofy one of course!)

Ms. Lorelei gave us a great tour and we learned so much! The students learned how important it is to recycle and what else they can do to help the earth.

Thank you to our parent volunteers who came to help on the field trip, including my mom, Mrs. Boxley. In the group picture below, our tour guide Lorelei took the picture and cut out some people. I'm sorry!

After the tour, the students explored different stations. Below you can see them playing a game where they sort the trash into different recycling categories as quick as they can in order to win.

Below, the students were looking out the window and using binoculars to see the landfill across the highway and how much trash is there!

They worked hard to light up different lightbulbs in order to see which one takes less energy to light up. They also guided a ball through a maze to see our water running through the system.

They gave us coloring books and pencils for each student to take home. They also gave me a recycling challenge paper they I sent home with each student as well where you have a chance to win free tickets to a Dragons game. 

 On Thursday, we had our ECC healthy fair about how we can keep our mind, body and soul healthy. The students learned about bike/scooter safety and the importance of wearing a helmet, pool safety, and the importance of looking both ways when crossing the street. You can also see in the bottom pictures that we learned different breathing and calming techniques. 

They taught the students about the importance of hand washing and about our bodies. 

They also worked on stretching, working out our bodies and balance. It was tricky when they were trying to balance with their eyes closed!

 Here are some of the new workstations that we have been working on lately. In the top pictures, the students were working on finding cards around the room, solving the addition problems, and writing the answer next to the matching number. In the middle picture, the students also had to go around the room and find cards with different items on them, count them in the tens frames, and write the correct number next to the matching picture. In the bottom picture, the students have to open the eggs, sound out the words, and record them. 

 Here are just a few of the dinosaur books that we continued to read this week!

You should've gotten this letter last week about our school's collection of money to help pets that are in local shelters. If you have any loose change that you would like to donate, please send it in. We will be collecting until Friday, May 12th.  

 Thank you for checking in. Stop back again next week to see what we are up to next!

Have a great week!

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant

Caterpillars, Plants, Earth Day, Math Carnival & More!

Of course we had another busy week in Kindergarten! We worked hard in Literacy Lab, read books and wrote about dinosaurs, shared our writing with our Preschool Reading Buddies, learned about Earth Day, recorded observations about our caterpillars, continued our TeachTown social skills lessons, had a wonderful Math Carnival, observed our growing plants. 

In Literacy Lab, we continued to work on building sight words, practice reading, sounding out words,  and listening to Rumpelstiltskin in the listening center.

 As the students worked with me, we read the story "Little Duckling is Lost", retold the story and put the pictures in sequential order, and discussed our connections to the story. 

 We continued to read stories about dinosaurs and the students wrote what we learned. Brianna wrote, "Dinosaurs are eating trees", Alena wrote, "Dinosaurs are tall", Terrance wrote, "Dinosaurs are a creature", and Tommy wrote, "Dinosaurs can fly".

We read a few stories & watched videos to learn about Earth Day this week.

We talked about how we could help the Earth as well. The students wrote, "I can turn off the water", "Turn the water", "I can throw away garbage".

I received an email from Student Treasures on Thursday saying they received our pages for our book and are currently working on publishing it. They sent a video to show the process of what our book will be going through and I shared it with the class. They were so excited and can't wait to get our Poetry Book back and see our finished product! 

 We continued to work on our Teach Town social skills lessons. This week we focused on how to be a good listener. We watched the video every day and discussed how we can be a good listener. The students used puppets to act out the video and we also put a comic strip in sequential order.

 Thursday evening we had our Math Carnival and it was so nice to see so many families enjoying the math activities that were planned! I was down in the music room at the estimation station and helped the students make estimations on how many crayons, popsicle sticks, erasers, and mints were in the different jars. Whoever was closest got to take the items home on Friday!

The students shared their writing about dinosaurs with their preschool reading buddies.

 We continued to watch our plants throughout the week. The students have been responsible for watering them and have really enjoyed seeing new sprouts and watching them grow. The picture at the bottom of the pot all by itself is one of the sprouts on Monday and in the picture of them all you can see how much bigger the sprouts were on Friday! We still have 3 that haven't sprouted any yet but hopefully they will sprout this week!

When we came in on Monday, our caterpillars had grown so much from eating over the weekend! The students really enjoyed observing them and seeing how much they changed each day. I wish I would've gotten a picture on Friday before I left because 3 of the caterpillars were in the 'J' form at the top of the cup which means they are almost ready to make their chrysalis. 

We began to document what we were noticing with our caterpillars in our 

"Butterfly Observations" Book.

One of the other classes was having problems with kids stepping in their garden so they made a video for all of the students to watch about staying out of their garden as well as made a sign for it. The students were really concerned about helping Mrs. Myers class watch over their garden and help keep other students from stepping in it. It was awesome to see them helping so much!

Thanks for checking in this week. Have a great week! 

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant 

Finishing Poetry, Caterpillars, Dinosaurs & More!

We had another busy, fun filled week in Kindergarten! We practiced our reading and literacy skills, worked on our listening skills, started a new chapter book, read many dinosaur books, finished our poetry book, shared poems with our preschool reading buddies, worked with new workstations, and explored caterpillars! Take a look below to find out more.

In the listening center the students listened to the story "Corduroy". They worked with Mrs. Boyd on making sight words and Mrs. Arnold on sounding out words. 

When students worked with me, we practiced reading three different books this week. Mrs. Roland's group also worked on reading books.

Like I mentioned, we started piloting a social skills program called TeachTown this week. We focused on Listening when the teacher talks this week and watched a video that discussed this skill. The students had to show their knowledge of the rules to listening when the teacher talks. 

The students had to find and circle the pictures that showed times when the students should be quietly listening to their teacher. They also had to cut apart a comic from the video we watched and put the pictures in sequential order. We also used character puppets to act out the situation as well.

 The students voted on what chapter book they would like to read next and this is what they decided. We began reading it this week and the students are really enjoying it! 

 We also read many dinosaur books. Here are some of them. 

 We also worked hard to finish our poems for our Student Treasures poetry book this week. The students all worked very hard and their poems look amazing! I mailed everything out Thursday after school and now we wait a couple weeks for them to come back in. I can't wait to share them with you all at our Poetry Cafe next month!! 

Here are the pictures we took for the meet the authors page as well as for a poem I wrote to the students. They will both be in our Poetry Book as well!

The students were very excited to share their poems with our preschool reading buddies on Friday.

 We worked on some new workstations this week. Below you can see an Easter egg graphing paper. Gabriel is also working on a survey to ask his peers what their favorite insect is and then he counted the tallies for each one. Also below, you can see Dakota and Lauranna building with styrofoam cups as they read the sight words. 

 We also worked on putting pictures in sequential order based on what happened first, next, then and last. The students also played Sight Word Candyland. I made sight word cards for them to use with the board game Candyland and once they read the sight words, they were able to move those colors on the board. Below you can also see Alexander and Elisa working on putting together addition and subtraction puzzles and then copying the number sentence onto a dry erase board. 

This week we also received caterpillars in our classroom to watch and observe over the next couple of weeks! The students are excited to see what will happen to them and have already made some guesses on what they think will happen. They have enjoyed observing them so far.

Some important papers that came home this week are pictured below. The first one is asking for volunteers for our field trip coming up in a couple weeks. If you are able to volunteer please return it to school as soon as you can so I know who all will be joining us. Thank you!

You will also need to send in a t-shirt for field day. Please send them in by Friday, May 5th so your chid can tie-dye them in art class in order to wear them for field day!

Thanks for checking in this week. Check back again next week to see what we are up to!

Have a great week!

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant