Mrs. Garrabrant's Classroom: Pets, Making Purple Science Experiment, and More!

This week in Kindergarten we focused on pets, learned the letters U-X, students drew themselves and their pets, and worked hard in Literacy Lab. They also worked with new workstations, finished the green mosaic and began working on the orange one, and made hearts for Mrs. Schieman for bosses day. We did a color mixing experiment to make the color purple (kind of), shared with our preschool reading buddies, in PAX worked on beat the timer & granny's wacky prizes, and more!

Take a look below for more details on our fun short week!

I forgot to take a picture of our focus wall so I borrowed this from Miss Riggs. I will post one of ours every week from now on! Our focus for Journeys this week was pets and the students enjoyed the books we read about pets, discussing how to take care of pets and getting to write and draw about their own pets or the pets they want to have. We also worked on the letters U-X and the sight word 'the'. With the short week, we didn't get to finish the alphabet so we will finish those up next week!

In writing, the students worked on drawing themselves as well as them with their pets.

For the Quarter 1 drawing assessment, I used student samples from this week. Students drew a picture of themselves with their pets or with a pet they would want to have if they don't have a pet. They added details and some even added labels to their pictures!

Then they dictated their story to me and I wrote it on their paper for them.

Here is the writing checklist I used to assess which writing stage the students were at for Quarter 1.

The students worked hard in their Reader's Notebook to practice identifying and writing the letters.

We also worked on labeling various pets with the appropriate noun such as 'dog', 'hamster', 'cat', and 'bird'.

And matching the animal to what thing they would like:

(dog- ball), (mouse- cheese), (rabbit- carrots), (bird- nest)

The students worked hard in Literacy Lab this week too! They worked on making a fall alphabet book with apples and pumpkins. They practiced their cutting skills by cutting out the lowercase letters. Then they had to glue those lowercase letters under the matching uppercase letters.

In Literacy Lab, students also worked on matching magnetic letters to the same letters as well as matching uppercase to the lowercase.

Students worked with Mrs. Ball on guided reading alphabet books.

Students worked with me on guided reading alphabet books. They discussed and drew pictures that began with the same letters as well.

Students also worked hard on their iReady reading lessons!

I also put out some new workstations for our classroom this week. The students enjoyed working with the new stations!

Here are some of our new Literacy stations: matching upper and lowercase letters to the pictures, and practicing writing letters.

Reading an alphabet book, putting felt alphabet letters in ABC order.

Here are some of our math stations: using shapes to make pictures.

Putting the pieces in numerical order 1-20 to make an ocean picture.

Students worked with me on practicing the number 8.

Students worked hard on our iReady math lessons too!

We worked very hard to finish up our green mosaic and it turned out beautifully.

They they started working on our orange mosaic.

So far we have completed the red, blue, yellow and green mosaics. They look so great so far and I can't wait to see once they are all completed.

Tuesday was bosses day so we had students color hearts for our principal, Mrs. Schieman.

She loves hearts so some of the teachers put the hearts together and decorated her whole office with them. She was so surprised and loved it!

We did another color mixing experiment with Miss Riggs class on Tuesday. Before we began the experiment, the students predicted what they thought was going to happen and documented it.

We did this experiment outside because of the mess! My mom, Mrs. Boxley was there to help too. Students worked in groups of two students and they started with a cup of baking soda in the middle of a tray. One student was in front of a cup of red vinegar and another student was in front of a cup of blue vinegar.

On the count of 3, students poured the cups of red & blue vinegar into the cup of baking soda.

They were amazed with the volcanic like reaction and really enjoyed this experiment!

Science experiments don't always go as planned and this one didn't turn out exactly like we hoped. It turned out more black and maybe that was because of the black tray! As soon as we went inside from our experiment we used blue and red paint and mixed them together in order to show the students that it should've actually made PURPLE!

Students documented on their paper the outcome of our color mixing experiment.

These papers will go in their portfolios.

Students shared their writing stories, documentation paper for our color mixing experiment, and their letter W book with their preschool reading buddies this week.

For our PAX lesson this week, we worked on beat the timer and Granny's Wacky Prizes.

Students passed a ball around in a circle and worked on doing it faster each time to "beat the timer". Students had to stay focused and calm in order to pass the ball instead of throwing it so they didn't slow the time down. They worked hard to pass it as quickly as possible and beat the timer twice!

Since the students beat the timer they got to choose a Granny's Wacky Prize and they loved them! They are just little crazy things like make animal sounds, air guitar or jump up and down for a certain amount of time and then we have to stop. This teaches students great impulse and self control!

Air Guitar

Animal Sounds

We also started reading Charlotte's Web as a class and we will be reading a chapter a day.

Once we finish reading it we will be watching the movie to compare! We have only read a chapter so far but the students have enjoyed it so far.

This week, I gave the class a goal for passing iReady lessons. I hoped this would help motivate students to try their best on each lesson they are working on! We started off with a goal of 35 since it was a short week and the students ended up getting 45! Students will be earning a Granny's Wacky Prize since they met their goal for this week. From now on, we will be doing a 2 week iReady goal and the students will be choosing what they want as their prize!