Mrs. Hunt’s Kinder Friends

We have been learning about apples!  We read both fiction and nonfiction books and even learned a song.  We learned about the life cycle of the apple.  Did you know that you can see the remnant of the apple blossom on the bottom of an apple?  Ask your kindergartener, he/she will show you!  We also learned about how an apple tree changes through the seasons.  Look for a book that your child created about this coming home soon- they are beautiful!

On Friday, we created a “real” graph with apples that the children brought to school from home.  Each child put his/her apple on the graph.

After each child put their apple on the graph, we learned that most children brought a red apple to school!

Today we had a taste test of three types of apples: Granny Smith, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious.

Most children liked the….

Red Delicious the best!  Ask your child which apple he/she voted for!

This week we learned that we can sort items by an attribute.  Attributes can help you  describe something.  We looked at both blocks and buttons and sorted them in many ways.

Can you tell how these blocks are sorted?

by color!

by size!

by shape!

We also sorted buttons by the same attributes and added number of holes (2, 4 or none).

What can you find at home to sort?!

On Friday, September 17th, we came into school to discover that one of our butterflies had emerged!  We were so excited!  After watching it in the tank for a while… we decided it was time to release it outside in one of the school’s gardens.  However, this was not your ordinary butterfly.  He was extremely friendly and not anxious to leave us.    
The butterfly was so docile, that each child was able to hold the butterfly on his/her finger and have their photo taken.  What a special treat and keepsake!

We’re hoping our other chrysalis produces a butterfly this week.  Be sure to ask your child for updates!

We are off to a great start in kindergarten!  We have been very busy learning lots of new routines and making new friends!  Keep checking back as we will post more of our kindergarten “happenings”.  Here are some snapshots of our first week!

Today we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day!  For each child that wore green, 25 cents was donated to the Welcome House!  We were happy to do our part!

We know that at the end of every rainbow there is a pot of gold.  During math, we created our own “Pot of Gold” story problem.  The leprechaun had some pieces of gold and  we “gave” him more.  Then, we wrote a number sentence to show what happened.

After special, we came back to our room to find this note on the door….

The leprechaun visited us while we were gone and left riddles for us to find clues around the classroom that would lead us to his pot of gold!  The clues brought us to the sink, the vet center, the blocks, the flag, our cubbies and finally the sand table!  Once we lifted the lid we found this…….

Hooray!  We found his gold (chocolate coins that is!).  There was enough for each of us to take a large coin home.  What a “lucky” day!  

This week we noticed that “Maplely”, our adopted tree, had 4 buckets attached to him- we knew what this meant- maple syrup! We talked to Mrs. Ashworth, a science teacher at the high school, who brought 3 of her students to talk to us about tapping trees.   They brought us out to “Maplely” and told us the process of making syrup.

We learned that there are different types of maple trees and that the sugar maple tree is used to make syrup.  You can tell if a maple tree is a sugar maple by looking at it’s leaves- a sugar maple leaf has 5 points- just like the 5 letters in the word sugar!  (A red maple leaf has 3 points like the 3 letters in the word red!)  They showed us how they use a drill to put in the spout to collect the sap.  The sap then runs into a bucket and is checked on every few days.

Then the collected sap is put into barrels.  Once enough is collected, it is brought to the sugar shack (at the high school) where it is boiled (to burn off the water) and what you have left is sweet, sticky syrup!  We’re hoping we can visit the sugar shack to see this process!  A special thanks to Mrs. Ashworth and her high school students for coming to our class and explaining this to us!!

As the clear sap was coming off the spout, we let it drip onto our fingers and taste it.  We thought it tasted like water!!

We have been having a Seuss-rific time in our classroom this week to remember Dr. Seuss’s birthday!  We have enjoyed many of his books- one of our favorites was Green Eggs and Ham.  

To celebrate another classroom favorite, Wacky Wednesday, we decided to have one in our classroom too!  On Wednesday, we all wore our shirts backwards!

After reading the Cat in the Hat and The Cat Comes Back, we made the lovable main character himself!  We also added words using the -at chunk on his hat!

Don’t they look Seuss-tastic?!

Over the past few weeks, we have discovered that we can move balls by rolling, throwing and bouncing.  Today we found another way to move balls- with a straw!  We used our straws to blow a rubber ball and a ping pong ball.  We thought the ping pong ball was easier to move!  Then we knocked down blocks and pushed our ball through a tube.  Some of us, created mazes to blow our ball through!  We had a “ball”!

On Friday, February 12th, we celebrated Valentine’s Day.  To make this day of friendship special, we had a shared snack.   The theme was RED- we wore red clothing (in honor of “Hearts for Haiti”) and had red snacks- red jello (with whip cream on top), sliced red apples (with caramel sauce for dipping) and watermelon cut into hearts!  After we had our snack, we peeked into our Valentine bags to look at the cards given to us by our friends.  There were lots of hugs and “thank you”s as the children excitedly looked at their cards!  What a “lovely” sight!  A big thank you to the parents who contributed to our special day!

Today was the 100th day of school!  Our day was filled with all things “hundred”!  We made  crowns with 10 strips that had 10 stickers on each strip.  We searched for 100 number tiles that were hidden throughout the classroom to complete a 100 grid.  Later, when we  added a straw to our “ones” cup (to show how many days we have been in school) we had to exchange both “ones” and “tens” cup into a “hundreds” cup!  We then counted to 100 by ones, fives and tens.  Then it was time for the Zero the Hero Number Stomp!

In the afternoon, we predicted where 100 steps from our classroom would take us.  Then we counted as we took each step….

… and here is where we “landed”!

We think we are “100 Days Smarter”!  Don’t you agree?!