Kind Kids in Kindergarten
See what our brains and imaginations up to!
April 25-29, 2016
This week's focuses were:
-Butterfly Life Cycle
-Meeting our New Caterpillar Friends!
-Fractions: Parts of a Group/Set
-Musical Practice!
Vocabulary of the Week
Bicycle, Recycle, and now Life Cycle of Butterflies and plants... students have heard the word, but what does it really mean? This week's vocabulary worked on building the class's broader understanding of the word and why we can apply it to so many different areas.
Fractions
We introduced fractions as parts of a whole, with the visual of cutting shapes into equal parts. This week we continued to investigate fractions as parts of a group! Simple example expanded into class applications (what fraction of the class has black hair?) and crazier student-thought-up examples! (Aaron asked: "what fraction of the friends on our wall are monsters or Earth's?" :) )
Students rolled a die to generate random numbers to put as their numerator and denominator ...
...then had to draw and shade a group of shapes to match it.
Students enjoyed it so much, they asked to do it during indoor recess!
Meet our New Friends...
This week our class grew in size--by six caterpillars! They're tiny now, but once most of them form their chrysalis, I will be putting them in a large net habitat where they can fly as butterflies. Alongside our hands on example, we've been reading, writing, and drawing all about the butterfly life cycle this week. Ask your child about the different stages!
Chris carefully checks out the new caterpillars...
As you can see in the background, we also named our new classmates! Each student was able to submit one name idea into a hat. Then, I randomly pulled out 10 names to be voted on (each student got two votes). Because there was a tie for the 6th most popular name, I randomly picked out one last "booby prize" name (which is starred: "Red Lego Flash").
Class Caterpillar Journal
As our new friends grow, we have been observing and writing down how they change. Friday we excitedly noticed that there was old skin in the cup--our catepillars had molted! Accordingly, they looked bigger, and students each got a chance to draw how big they thought they looked on our journal entry.
Busy Butterflies
Below, check out Sanvi K, Caleb, and Aaron all happily collaborating (prior vocabulary word) to create their own butterfly life cycle summaries. Students utilized resources available to them: this week's Close Reading passage, books from our class library, class anchor charts...and each other!
Rain, rain go away....
...but we're fine building for today! The less than ideal weather towards the end of this week resulted in a couple indoor recesses. But some of our kiddos enjoy the extra time to use the room's blocks! These girls were quite proud of their "circus" structure using geometric shapes.