What an amazing year we had in Kindergarten. I cannot believe how quickly it flew by! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to teach this special group of Kinders. What a blessing this year was! If you find yourself nostalgic about our Kindergarten year, check out our end of the year video below! First grade here they come :)

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! 

Earth day is a time for the Kindergartners to learn about how special our world is and everything that it gives us. It was also a time for us to go out into nature and fully appreciate it! 
   The Kindergartners partnered up and got ready to experience our world using their 5 sense. They were amazed what they could discover and they picked up a bit of litter along the way when they stumbled upon it. 

After spending the week digging into insect information, we dove into a hands-on experience about pollination. Using our very own bees and "pollen" aka washable paint...the Kindergartners discovered how bees pollinate flowers and spread it all around. The room was buzzing with excitement and pretend bee noises!
   Along with buzzing bees, the Kindergartners took some time to discover what it would be like to have compound eyes like most insects. With our glasses in place, we went around the school, seeing the sights through the eyes of an insect!

When the Kindergartners found out that they were going to study oviparous animals, they looked confused and immediately asked "what are those??"
  Once they discovered that oviparous was a fancy word for animals that lay eggs, they were beyond excited to learn about the different parts of eggs, what different eggs look like, and even get to hatch their own mystery eggs that appeared in our classroom!

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For one of our "Mad Scientist Fridays", the Kindergartners were able to create, experiment, and play with Oobleck. First, we read the book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr. Seuss. We then spent some time brainstorming what it would be like to have Oobleck falling from the sky and all over the place. After talking about it, I let the Kindergartners know that we would be making our very own oobleck. With their eyes as big as saucers, they were very excited and ready to make a hypothesis about what it would feel like and if it would work. 
  With our paint shirts on and our tables covered, the Kindergartners successfully made their very own oobleck (and their very own mess!) They discovered that oobleck is not only a liquid but it can also act as a solid. What an amazing substance it is! Lastly, we packed up our oobleck to bring home and gathered to talk about our observations. Students were describing oobleck as slimy, gooey, stiff, strong, and even stretchy. What great descriptive words. For a few pictures of our amazing experiment, enjoy the slideshow below!

A few times a year, the Kindergartners and the 2nd graders spend a morning together sharing their love of reading and making friends! We spent nearly an hour with the second graders giggling about Dr. Seuss books, sharing our reading skills with our reading buddies, and making great friends! It is such a joy to see all of the older students help the Kindergartners and spend time with them. The Kinders even begged to be with the same reading buddy that they had in the fall when we met. It is amazing what an impact these experiences can make! Enjoy the pictures of our budding readers!

The first week of March is always a very exciting time in Kindergarten, it means that it is Read Across America week! That means a celebration of reading and Dr. Seuss! We spent a week reading Dr. Seuss galore, had guest readers from the school in the classroom to read to us, celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with Things hats, and even had a readathon with our favorite books!
  It was a week full of laughter, silly rhymes, and celebration. Check out a few pictures from our great week of fun and learning!

We have been busy learning all about American symbols and some of our famous presidents. After President's Day, we spent the week studying George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. 
   The Kindergartners then brainstormed facts that they learned about Abraham Lincoln and created a video about him! They worked together in groups of 4 to share their knowledge and create some spectacular videos!

​Enjoy!