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 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!

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 put 100 things 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 even wrote our numbers all the way to 100. 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! The Kindergartners enjoyed all of our 100th day centers and activities, from stringing 100 beads on a necklace to trying to complete a 100 chart puzzle. 
 One of our favorite 100th day activities is going on a scavenger hunt around the room, trying to find 100 Hershey kisses, all labeled with a number from 1-100. The Kinders then had to identify the number and match it to the same number on our 100 chart. What a challenge and exciting activity it was!
     We officially can celebrate that we are 100 days smarter!

​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!

Kindergartners walked into school Friday and discovered that the room had been transformed into the Serengeti! With zebras, giraffes, elephants, and many more African animals around the room, we decided to go on a Shape Safari!
    On our safari, we searched high and low for all kinds of animals. When we found an animal, we recorded the number on the picture and then flipped the picture over to reveal a shape!
     We then recorded our findings in our field journals and wrote the number of sides/vertices the shape had. It was such a busy and fun way to celebrate our learning and test our 2D shape knowledge. Check out some pictures below to see our safari in action along with some photos with our giraffe visitor, Twiga!

In our new math module, we are busy comparing lengths of objects. This past week, each Kindergartner was given a piece of string, each a different length. They were then challenged to find 5 things in the room that were shorter than their string, 5 things that were longer, and 5 things that were about the same length. The Kinders were mighty creative, measuring everything from their legs, classmates, Miss Keenan's coffee cup, and just about everything else in our room!

Throughout the school year, the Kinders are challenged to use their problem solving skills and engineering/math skills to create. When we were studying winter weather and snow, the Kinders were each given a cup of toothpicks and a plate of mini marshmallows to share. They were then challenged to create a 3D snow fort! 
   Using their understanding of 3D/2D shapes and imaginations, the Kinders created some truly amazing structures. Look through the pictures below to see some of their creations.

​​A highlight of Kindergarten is our time spent traveling the world on the Polar Express! Every December, we pack our suitcases, make our passports, grab our tickets and adventure around the world, learning about how other countries celebrate Christmas and comparing their traditions to ours! 
  Throughout this adventure, we learn how to say "Merry Christmas" in the language spoken in each country, discover a few special foods, toys, or traditions that they have, and read several books from each of the countries. It is such a magical time, full of exploring new things and opening our eyes to the world around us! This year, we were able to travel to countries like Mexico, Sweden, Australia, and England to name a few!

   Take a look a a few pictures from our adventure around the world! 

One of my favorite times of the year in Kindergarten is around Thanksgiving when we dive into gratitude and thankfulness. Each Kinder could list 100's of things that they are thankful for and they are always so excited to share. One project that we always create are our very own thankfulness turkeys. The Kinders had to think of only 6 things that they were thankful for and stretch out each word on their own and then write it on a feather. After that, they colored, cut, and glued. Lastly, they got to use a Sharpie to trace over their words. If you want to experience pure joy at its best, tell 20 Kindergartners that they get to use a Sharpie! It was a huge project and they were beaming with pride over how they looked!

​Welcome to the Kindergarten Pizzeria! 
The Kindergartners took one day to celebrate all of our hard work with number sense, number recognition, counting, and finishing the first module of math! When we walked into our classroom, we discovered that it had transformed into a pizzeria!
   This was no normal pizzeria! At this pizzeria, it was the Kindergartners' job to add all of the toppings- no more and no less than the order stated. 
    Using our recipe cards, the Kindergartners spent an afternoon creating pizzas galore. Mama mia! What a fun time we had practicing our numbers and exploring our imaginations!

​Towards the end of our pumpkin unit, we read the book Pete the Cat and the 5 Little Pumpkins. There was an opportunity to connect our literacy lesson to a STEM challenge, and we couldn't pass it up!
  Kindergartners were each given 5 pumpkins and were then asked to create a gate for them using 3 materials: clothespins, popsicle sticks, Keva planks, and Jenga blocks. The Kindergartners easily created several gates and were then given an even bigger challenge...create a gate/structure that holds a real pumpkin! There was building, redesigning, problem solving, and giggles galore during this great STEM challenge. We ended up with some truly amazing structures and the end and some very proud Kindergartners!