One important standard we need to cover in Kindergarten is comparing and contrasting maps and globes, along with learning what they represent. We save this for the end of the year since it is such a enjoyable unit, a little messy, and a whole lot of fun! Kindergartners spent some time exploring maps of Minnesota, looking for different aspects of a map, we made our very own globes, and we were able to facetime with a real cartographer! Mr. Mike took some time to talk with us about where we find maps, what we use them for, and then explained how he makes maps for his job. If you want to hear a little about what we've learned, ask your Kinder to share our continent song, they couldn't stop singing it on Friday!

With spring testing season here, the Kindergartners used the time to review several key concepts that we learned over the course of the year along with using our imaginations and having a bit of fun! Our room was transformed into Super Mario World and the Kindergartners traveled around the rooms to different levels doing everything from counting syllables with Yoshi to sorting vowel sounds with Princess Peach. It was a great way to review everything that we've learned along with having just a bit of fun!

While finishing up our 3D shape unit, we decided to incorporate a STEM building activity as well! First, the Kindergartners tried to build as many 3D shapes as they could with just toothpicks and marshmallows. After that, they were challenged to create their own building using the shapes. There were buildings of all shapes and sizes when the Kinders were done!

As we learned about oviparous animals, the Kindergartners were given an extremely important and challenging task, to not break it while finishing our "eggs"periment. The Kindergartners each had their very own raw egg and measured the weight, described the outside characteristics, discovered if it could sink or float, along with describing the inside of the egg once the inevitable happened and it broke!

Welcome to Chewandswallow, the land of extreme weather! For the past few weeks, the Kindergarten room was transformed into Chewandswallow while we learned all about weather, meteorologists, and did a book study of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. 
  While in Chewandswallow, the Kindergartners tracked the weather each day, predicted the weather like real meteorologists, performed a few science experiments and rain and wind, and learned about various tools that we use to track weather. We also learned about important aspects of weather like temperature, types of clouds, and different types of weather. 
   During our last week of our time in Chewandswallow, we had our very own NDA Daily News! Kindergartners studied the current weather conditions, recorded them, and shared them with the class in their very own weather forecast. It quickly became a class favorite activity and may be staying in the classroom a bit longer than the falling food! Enjoy a few pictures from our time in Chewandswallow below!

There is no better way to celebrate all we have learned  and the amazing readers we have become when reading Elephant and Piggie books! They have quickly become a class favorite in Kindergarten. To show how much we love them, we celebrated Elephant and Piggie day! We made puppets of some of our favorite characters and learned how to draw Elephant and Piggie from the illustrator and author himself! We also practiced our fluency, expression, and punctuation by finding the missing punctuation in sight word sentences and reading them out loud (with the help of our puppets and some silly voices!) We were also able to act out some of our favorite stories using our puppets. To round off our Elephant and Piggie day, we made hats of our favorite characters and wrote about which book is our favorite. It was a day of reading celebration, squeaky voices, and lots of laughs!

​The Kindergartners have become masters of reading. They are able to identify beginning and ending sounds like the pros that they are! In order to celebrate how far they have come, they were sent on a task. They entered the Kindergarten Hospital and needed to fix some words!
    There were CVC words all over the classroom and each one was sick and missing something important...their vowel! With their doctor coats on and their patient charts in hand, the Kindergartners spent the afternoon fixing each word and celebrating when the patient was healed!
     By the end of the experience, each Kindergartner proved to be an excellent vowel surgeon and all patients were fixed! This was a great way for the Kindergartners to practice their phonics, use their imaginations, hone their fine motor skills, and have a little bit of fun in the process!
     Look below at our slideshow of pictures to see us in action!

​Over the past several weeks, the Kindergartners have been learning all about different animals that live in the Arctic and the Antarctic such as polar bears, walruses, seals, and penguins! We have learned a ton of exciting facts about these animals and how they have adapted to survive in the freezing cold weather and water. One fact that we learned is that these animals have a thick layer of blubber that helps insulate them and keep them warm. We decided to test this and see if blubber really does help keep us warm!
    We filled a container with water and a bag of ice and tested just how cold it was...BRRRR! We then put of our blubber glove (who knew ziploc bags and crisco could help with this?) and then we compared to see if we could feel the cold. 
     After our experiment, we all voted that if we live in the Arctic or Antarctic, we would definitely want to have blubber to help keep us warm! 

   Check out a few pictures of this exciting experiment below!

In Kindergarten, the 100th day school is a huge milestone! It shows just how far we have come in 100 days and it is a great time to celebrate all that we have learned! 
  On our 100th day of school, it felt like we did 100 things! We counted out 100 stickers and put them on remarkable hats, we wrote what we would want to eat 100 of, what we would like 100 of and even what we would do if we had $100!
   We practiced counting all the way to 100 by 5's, 10's, and 1's! We ended our day with a huge challenge. Kindergartners were split into 5 groups and challenged to build a tower as high as they could with 100 cups. The most important thing that was stressed was teamwork, communication, and problem solving. By the end of our time, there were cup towers that were nearly as tall as the Kindergartners building them!
     We officially can celebrate that we are 100 days smarter!

 The Kindergartners have been busy developing their estimation skills and to wrap up our unit, the Kindergartners became detectives...Estimation Detectives! Their mission was to find jars hidden around the room and observe the amount of objects in it to the closest 10. Some of them were mighty tricky and the Kindergartners had to really look and think about the challenges. The Kindergartners loved the challenge, begged me to keep it up the the rest of the week and did not want to put their magnifying glasses down!