One of our favorite units in Kindergarten is when we study weather and transform into meteorologists! During this time, we are also transported to the land of Chewandswallow, the setting of the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. During this unit, we forecast the weather each day, make predictions for the next, and even make some of our own weather instruments!
   This year, our favorite was the windsocks that we created. We were even able to test them outside to see how strong the wind was blowing and which direction it was going! Check out some of our pictures below!

Around St. Patrick's day, we always spend some time reflecting on just how lucky we are. We discovered that we have SO many things to be thankful and grateful for, from our families, to our school, to some of our favorite toys! We then decided to write all about it as well.
  We are also extremely lucky for our amazing problem solving skills and our abilities to think like a scientist. On St. Patrick's Day, we did an experiment to see if we could create a rainbow that held an entire pot of gold using just pipe cleaners and play-doh. The results were amazing!

So much celebration had to happen this year. We've made it through 100 days of in person learning. That alone is a massive cause to celebrate (and the 100th day is a big deal in Kindergarten to begin with!) We are beyond blessed to have been able to be in school during this season of life when others are learning from home. 100 days of memories, laughter, Kindergarten stories, books, and so much learning!
  To celebrate our 100th day, there are so many activities planned that we even sent a few home this year since they didn't get completed (those sticker pizzas were a big project!) On our 100th day, we counted to 100 all day, we talked about 100 things that make Kindergartners happy, we wrote all about the number 100, we created a picture using the numbers 1, 0, and 0. We also tried to see how tall of a tower we could build with 100 cups and even searched around our rooms for 100 Hershey kisses (all with a number from 1-100 on them.) We then matched the number on the bottom to the number on our 100's chart. It was such a special day! Look below for so many pictures from our amazing celebration!

One of the big goals that we have in Kindergarten is to be able to identify/learn about nonfiction text features and learn all about the needs of animals! So, the past few weeks...we became rocking researchers! With the help of our guitars, microphones, glasses, and a little bit of classic rock, we researched all about Emperor Penguins! The Kinders learned about their size, habitat, diet, and how they are able to survive in Antarctica. Each day, we wrote about a different part, added labels to our pictures and overall, rocked our research! The Kinders were SO excited to write each day, share what they knew about Emperor penguins, and have a few wiggle breaks with their guitars/microphones of course! Check out the pictures below to see some of our favorite pages from our research along with pictures of us rocking out!

Want a glimpse at the Kinders finished Snowmen at Night books? Enjoy the video below, where each Kinder reads a page from their book. It looks like snowmen are really busy at night!

Has your Kinder told you about the spectacular writing project that we are working on? If not...oh boy! It is such an exciting time in Kindergarten! In Kindergarten, we have been working on building our writing stamina and our writing muscles. In order to do this, we are creating our very own book, based on the book "Snowmen at Night." We read the story, brainstormed all sorts of different things that we think snowpeople do at night and then we are writing about it!
  Not only are we writing a sentence, we are creating an entire book! We have making sure that our sentences have capital letters, punctuation, and even finger spaces. At this time in the year, phonetic spelling is really developing and the Kinders are becoming writing machines. In order to practice our "proud printing/handwriting", we have also started writing rough drafts of our sentences on white boards first. We cannot wait to share our final projects with our families and friends because there are some truly amazing authors in our room!

To cap off our week of Gingerbread stories, the Kindergartners were challenged to complete their own epic escape adventure. A social distanced escape room in a way! In the stories, the Gingerbread person had to escape several different characters on his way to freedom. In our adventure, the Kindergartners had to escape the oven, the house, the pig, the cow, the crowd, and the final challenge of escaping the fox!
   Each character had a special skill that they Kinders had to practice from rhyming to reading CVC words to even writing a sentence! Over the course of 2 days, the Kinders amazingly escaped all the characters and celebrated with their very own gingerbread playdoh and a gingerbread cookie!
   When we they had the cookie, we also compared who liked gingerbread and who didn't along with what they bit off first. We discovered that nearly every Kinder bit the head off their Gingerbread cookie first!
   It was such an epic adventure and the Kinders were able to show off just how much they know!

This week was one of my favorite weeks in Kindergarten! This week, the Kindergartners read SO many gingerbread character books and we compare/contrasted all the story elements in them! The Kinders compared the setting, characters, the main character, and the repeated words together. Then, the Kinders compared the endings of the story in their very own journals!
   We would talk about the ending and the the Kindergartners would create and write a sentence all of their own! After they wrote their sentence, they drew their picture, which showed the ending and what happened. We discovered that gingerbread books have SO many similar qualities but they all are just a little bit different from one another!

Can you believe that we have been in school for 50 days?? Wow! Not only have we been in school for 50 days but we have been in person that whole time. It was clearly time for a celebration!! On our 50th day, Miss Keenan's room traveled back in time to the 1950's! While in the 1950's, we talked about what life was like then and compared it to what we have and use now. We even listened to a few records that Miss Keenan borrowed from her mom from the 1950's and on! The Kinders were so surprised that a record is how they used to listen to music, especially since we just use things like our phones and Alexa now! 
  While rocking away in the 1950's, we practiced alphabetical order with 1950's vocabulary, used our eagle eyes to find sight words in 1950's pictures, and then had a sock hop!
    There were SO many friends saying "This is the best day ever!" You can't ask for more than that on the 50th day! Check out some pictures below!

Things got spooky and monstrous during Halloween week in Kindergarten! On Thursday, the Kinders walked into a room full of monsters! Each monster looked very different and had several physical characteristics that only they had (like stripes, color, polka dots etc). The Kinders spent the day working of describing characters physical traits along with personality traits like scary, huge, and creepy.
   Then, the Kinders switched gears and read a story "I Need My Monster!" We have been talking a lot about needs and wants, so this was a perfect time to review things that we actually need and things that we want. After reading the book, the Kinders wrote about what they needed along with what they really want.
    Lastly, the Kinders each received a "Make a Monster Kit" and they were able to create their very own monsters and described them! What a roaring success monster day was! The Kinders had a blast and learned SO much!