Holiday Week in Kindergarten

Cookies and caroling were highlights in the days before break. We made book to book connections with gingerbread stories and loved making our own cookies. On Thursday we ate our cookies and graphed "where we took our first bite". The rest of the classes at Bendix enjoyed our caroling through the halls in our tree hats! We made a few holiday class books that will be coming home soon. Happy 2012!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone found their New Year's cards in their Round Trip Folders last week. I was surprised they came so quickly in the mail! I am working on a project to share all our videos and and pictures from our holiday week at school. I will post it soon. Enjoy the last few days of break!

Twinkling Snowflakes Holiday

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Grinch Day 2011

Last Friday our classroom was bursting with Grinchy green! We loved our grinch stations, games, stories, poems, and snack. We all had time with our stuffed Grinch and Max the Dog...who decided to stay in our room all week! We like to read and write with them! Take a look at the Grinch Day pictures below.

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Fruit Feast

Fruit Feast, Fruit Feast
Yum, Yum, Yum!
Which fruit is your favorite one?

Whoo, Whoo, Whoo Knows about Owls? We do!

We have been conducting more research in our classroom...this time on owls. After charting our new learning, we painted and drew owls according to all the new facts we learned. 

Is that a Turkey?

I think our turkeys outdid themselves this year. They are pretty tricky! We have enjoyed them in our hallway all month. We will send the turkeys home tomorrow so they can add some decoration to your Thanksgiving dinner. Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

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Scarecrow Day

Scarecrow, Scarecrow,
How scary can you be?
You scared the kindergartners,
but you didn't scare me!

Cheering on the Cardinals

A big thanks to the Cardinal football team for bringing us such excitement this fall. We loved cheering you on! The send off on Friday was such a special community event.

Bat Facts

Our schema for bats has become very large! We discovered new learning about bats through books, magazines, and websites. Each kindergartner chose a "bat fact" to illustrate. We read our facts in the video below.

Care Center Sing

I know we "made the day" of many Care Center residents this afternoon as we sang some of our favorite kindergarten songs to help celebrate their November birthdays. We made birthday cards this morning that we hand delivered to the residents as well. I was very proud of our caring and mature kindergartners. I also added  a little Cardinal pride photo below to go along with our exciting "Go Cardinals" kind of week. Look for more Cardinal pics later this week along with a slide show of our disguised turkeys.

Imagination Day

Imaginations were soaring last Friday on Imagination Day! We explored "imagination" stations and after writing the recipe steps all week, we loved eating our "Yuck Soup" for snack. Look for an Imagination Day classbook to be coming home soon.

Go, Cardinals

What a big weekend for Cardinal sports! To show our support we made our own little Cardinals cheer below. Note that this posting isn't as wonderful as I had hoped....I seem to have deleted all my pictures from Cardinal Pride Day back in September. Many of you know something like that will take me a while to get over!!! So be prepared for another MEGA Cardinal Pride Day when these teams win. Now we just need to find someone with an "in" with the Cardinal mascot.

Fire Station

Thursday we made our trek to the fire station. Before we left, we were lucky enough to have a fire fighter as our Mystery Guest Reader! Thank you to Owen's dad! You really got us thinking about fighting fires before our trip. At the station, we listened to the fire fighters share information about fire safety. One of the fire fighters put on their protective clothing so we could see how they stay safe when putting out a fire. We also learned not to be afraid of fire fighters in all their gear - they are here to help us. Next we visited the garage where all the trucks are stored. We got to go inside many trucks and even an ambulance. A big thank you to all the volunteer fire fighters who guided us on our tour. We learned a lot!

Our Forever Books

We loved checking out each other's Forever Books last week. We remember strong readers read books over and over!  We read our books with our book buddies and then shared our thinking about our book through writing and drawing. You can take a peek at our thoughts hanging up in the hall outside our room.

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Writing Celebration

Last week we held our first of many "writing celebrations". We began by sitting in a circle and each of us shared one page from a special "star story". We chose a "star story" from our own folder full of books written in the past month. We fixed and fancied our "star stories" to make them the best they could be. After our circle share we had a toast of juice to celebrate the books written so far and the many more to come this kindergarten year. Cheers!

Fair Haven Farms

The great fall weather followed us to Fair Haven Farms last Friday. What a perfect day! We used our 5 senses to explore the many sights, sounds, and fruits of the farm. We didn't lose anyone in the corn maze and loved bringing home our own gourds. 

Our First Weeks Together

Our first weeks together were filled with bubbles, watermelon, new friendships, and learning the routines of kindergarten. Check out some of the highlights below.

Ground Breaking

Seeing dirt moving around the Bendix grounds is just about one of best sites we have seen all year. Two more years and our new elementary will be complete.  Tuesday morning we had a special "Ground Breaking Ceremony" and one of our own Beach Buddies, Morgan, was chosen to represent kindergarten. We couldn't be more proud! Great job, Morgan!

SMARTboard

We were so excited to have our SMARTboard up and running again! After almost 2 weeks without it, we were anxious to get our hands on it today.

Explore Kindergarten

Thanks to all of you who attended Explore Kindergarten Night last Tuesday. The kindergartners sure loved showing you around!  The slideshow shared that night can be found below.

Meet the 2011-2012 Beach Buddies

A new school year is upon us and new Beach Buddies gather to learn and grow. With only 8 days in, our routines are improving with leaps and bounds each day. We have sure loved getting to know one another and now it is definitely time for YOU to get to know the 2011-2012 Kindergarten Beach Buddies. 

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." 

Tug of war at Ball Olympics....we look pretty tough in his picture, but not quite tough enough to beat Mrs. Smith's class! 

On Tuesday morning we were lucky enough to have Ben's mom read us a book through Skype all the way from Becker! You can see us below watching her on the SMARTboard. What a treat it was! Thank you, Anita! 

What a great day for a walk to the library! The rain and wind held off as we made our way downtown. Karla, the librarian told us all about the summer reading program and read us some neat poems and books. Afterward, we loved exploring the wonderful books there. We found many we want to come back and check out this summer! Click on the link below for hours of the public library as well as some great summer programming. You will also find some pictures below from our visit. 

Annandale Public Library

It is sure hard to believe these Beach Buddies are almost first graders! Wow! We took advantage of the first grade field trip on Friday and visited a first grade classroom. We read Nancy Carlson's book, First Grade Here I Come. It was refreshing to see many similarities between the first grade room and our kindergarten room. We also found some differences that we are excited to explore. We loved reading their word wall and felt good about all the words we could already read! We are ready for first grade!

"Pixie" has become one of our favorite programs on our laptops for creating. Below are some original pieces from the Beach Buddies using "Pixie". 

 Thursday was our "Writing Museum" where other students and staff from Bendix were invited to stop by and listen to our "All About" books. The kindergartners were spread out around the classroom. Visitors met with students individually and even shared a written comment with them. What a treat to look around and see kids sharing stories with teachers, book buddies, cooks, social workers, speech teachers and even Mrs. Reimer and Mr. Niklaus. I know our amazing authors impressed our visitors! 

My heart is warmed every time I hear one of the kindergartners talk about "what they should research next". Their strong reading and writing still shine through during this process. While we enjoy our individual research topics, we also continue to do some class research. Below are some of our findings on pigs and animals that come from eggs. Most recently, we have been learning facts about worms, flies, and spiders. 

As explained in the note sent home, we are working on our "Your Three Words" videos. Below is a link to a "Your Three Words" video on youtube that has some nice examples. You can also google "Your Three Words Good Morning America" and find tons of videos. Remember to send your "three words" and any props to school next week. Thanks for your help! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecRkSSNpSKc

Flower pots, milk jugs, an old croc, string, fruit boxes, buttons, water bottles, lots of tape, and many, many more donations helped us with our exciting Inventions Party on Friday. Our creative juices were flowing as we were "going green" and reusing lots of items to make something new! I am certain you are now enjoying those inventions at home! :) Click on the link below to view footage of our day. 

Inventions Party Video

With the help of books, websites, and our book buddies, we have been completing our research. Topics vary from football to manatees to bodies to dentists to spiders! We checked out books from the library and our wonder center and are working on creating research questions. We are recording our new learning in our science journals. Stay tuned for more about our special projects. 

Birds by Kevin Henkes helped us not only make mental images, but also learn some new facts about birds! Check out our mental images and new learning below.

Aloha to you, Aloha to you, Aloha, hello, Aloha to you. 
Aloha to you, Aloha to you, Aloha, good-bye, Aloha to you. 

Happy Birthday, Dr, Seuss! We enjoyed several of his books last week and even learned some fun facts about Dr. Seuss. Ask your kindergartner to share his REAL name! We graphed our favorite Dr.Seuss book and made Cat in the Hat hats. 

Did you know we won third place in the "Coins for Kindergarten" contest? $93! Thanks to the Bendix Student Council, we received a popcorn party! A big thanks to YOU, kindergarten families, for helping us fill our coin bucket! We know the money is appreciated to help fund kindergarten scholarships next year. 

 

"I Love to Read" week brought lots of excitement! Between Hat Day, 80's Day, Wacky Hair Day, and PJ Day, there were many photo opts! It was a fun way to celebrate all the reading done during the month of February and all year! 

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Our classroom just wasn't quite the same today...we were missing Miss Burbach! We are so very thankful for all she shared with us in the 8 weeks she was in our classroom. She brought more joy and learning to our 100th Day, Valentine's Day, Family Reading Night and taught us about penguins, mental images, ellipses, bucket filling, estimating, measuring, and much, much more! We wish Miss Burbach lots of luck in her next adventures! 

We went on a pattern search around the school way back in November. I was playing around on a website called Prezi.com and added our pattern pictures and comments. It turned out too neat not to post here. Once you press play, the word "more" should appear. Then choose "auto play" to enjoy the show. 

Last Friday, author Julia Cook visited Bendix. We learned about the many steps Julia takes to get her books published. Just like us, she revises her writing and works on one story for many days, weeks, or months. Her books helped us learned about  important school behaviors such as personal space, respecting others' words by not interrupting (controlling our "volcanoes"), and even reminders about not picking our nose! :) We are posing with Julia and her dogs below. 

Miss Burbach has been helping us research penguins. We asked questions, read many nonfiction penguin books, and made a chart of our new thinking. Then we each chose a fact, illustrated it, and read it for the slide show below. Maybe you will learn something new about penguins too! Waddle, waddle, waddle!  

A big thank you for the many thoughts, well wishes, and donations for Sommar's benefit this past Saturday. Last week our class created a framed picture to donate to the silent auction. We studied the illustrations of a favorite author, Todd Parr, and thought we could draw and paint like him too. We used a black marker to draw and then filled our drawings with bright paint. Our small paintings were put together in a collage-like fashion and framed. It looked awesome! I know someone special is enjoying it at home right now. Our class felt good about doing a little something to help Sommar and her family. 

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! After reading Snowballs by Lois Ehlert, we worked in small groups to paint large snow "characters" (both people and animals). We collected "junk" from home and added details to our creations. We were amazed with some of the things that actually "stuck" by just using glue!