With the Kinders turning into amazing readers, writers, thinkers, and everything inbetween, we jumped into our very first research project! The Kindergartners each chose an animal that they were interested in learning all about and then they went to town. They found information, highlighted the important information, took notes, and then wrote a final draft. 
   Their job was to prove that their animals was living by answering 5 questions: Does your animal need air? What does your animal eat? Where does your animal live? Does your animal change and grow? Lastly, does your animal move? 
   They were SO proud of their final projects and after 2 weeks, their teacher couldn't believe how amazing they did as well. It was such a joy to see the engagement and excitement on their faces as they did this. They were begging to work on this each day!
   Take a peek at their finished projects below (along with photos of them sharing their final projects with each other!)

The Kindergartners have been learning all about maps, globes, and our world recently. We were able to explore all sorts of maps from maps of the world, maps of Minnesota, to maps of our school! We were even able to find where our school is on a Minnesota road map!
   One special thing that we get to experience during our map/world unit is having the opportunity to learn from a real cartographer! We had a Google hangout with Mr. Mike last week and he spent an afternoon teaching us all about how maps are made, what they represent, and even showed us a few of his favorite maps that he had made. We were then able to ask Mr. Mike a few questions that we had about maps and entertain him with the excitement and enthusiasm that Kindergartners have to offer!
    We also started a project of making our very own globes. We made sure that there were 7 pieces of land for the continents, blue for the oceans, and will be adding labels to them this week! 
    What a great time it has been discovering our place in the world!