Frog Life Cycle with K3

For about 8 days I traded classes with Mrs. K, the 3 year old teacher, so that she could teach K5 as part of her early childhood certification. These cute kids were a lot of fun! I taught them the life cycle of a frog, we played some leap frog of our own and even made cute frog life cycle hats. I came up with the idea for the hats by combining two different ideas I found online and they turned out super fun for the kids to wear!

Urban Ecology Center

Group pic with some of my crazy kiddos

Urban Ecology Center is an awesome organization in Milwaukee that leads environmental education field trips for local schools. Unfortunately our trip to the UEC is not my best memory of teaching K5, due to a lot of embarrassing behavior issues. However, in light of everything, there were still some great moments I was able to capture throughout the field trip. Here are a few of those...

Students searching for all 3 stages of the dandelion.

Scavenger Hunt: Find a tree that takes more than 2 students to hug!

Plant Parts

For this lesson I used this craft as a model to teach the different parts of a plant. As I taught each part we learned a new verse to this fun song: (to the tune of "Hi Ho the Derry-o")

The seed makes the plant. The seed makes the plant.
With soil, rain and sunlight the seed makes the plant.

The roots find the water. The roots find the water.
With soil, rain and sunlight the roots find the water.

The stem holds it up. The stem holds it up.
With soil, rain and sunlight the stem holds it up.

The leaves make the food. The leaves make the food.
With soil, rain and sunlight the leaves make the food.

The flower holds more seeds. The flower holds more seeds.
With soil, rain and sunlight the flower holds more seeds.

I also had my students pretend to be flowers. Our roots were our feet. Our feet keep us planted on the ground the same way roots keep a plant in the ground. Our bodies were the stem, they hold us up nice and tall the same way a stem does for a flower. Our hands were the leaves because we use our hands to make food and our faces were the beautiful flowers. The students loved playing "Bees and Flowers". Half of my class pretended to be flowers while the other half buzzed like bees. The bees visited the different parts of the flowers as we reviewed what each did.

Then of course the students got to make and label their own plants. Here is a glimpse of our K5 flower garden:

Golden Rule

 Instead of copying a morning message, students made gold coins with the golden rule printed on them. We talked about what the golden rule means and made the words into a song.

More Centers

Alphabet Mystery Box: Students pull items out of the box and place them on the letter they begin with.

Boggle Junior: Students work to spell words.

Geometry Patterns

Letter Puzzles

Random

This week the Kindergartens had their vision screenings. The company sent us fish to copy onto construction paper for the kids to decorate and cut out. The students used these fish to cover up each eye as they took their exam.

For Secretary Day each class was given a stack of note pages for the kids to decorate, leaving one side blank so that our secretaries could use them as a note pad. Each paper had one thing in common: a sun. Students met in the gym to sing "You Are My Sunshine" to the secretaries as they enjoyed their candle lit lunch. Unfortunately, my class missed the singing. It was a super busy day for K5 and kids were being pulled from my class for Title 1 testing. Next thing I know, I look at the clock and we're already too late! So, a few of my girls and I made sure to drop off our note cards to the office, thanking our secretaries for everything that they do! These are just a few-- the kids really did such a nice job!

We got a nice surprise from the 2nd grade class one day, when they asked if they could stop by to do a reader's theater. It was really nice for my Kindergartener's to see the older students reading so well!

Easter Bulletin Board

I was responsible for the April bulletin board upstairs in front of the K3 classroom. I'm not really sure why we rotate decorating this board. I have almost too much space outside of my own classroom including a bulletin board that I have to keep up with. I never realized how quickly student work can seem out dated. For example, the life-size leprechauns the students made for St. Patrick's day seemed out of place by only a week later. Therefore, I try to rotate student work hanging outside of my classroom on a regular basis and that takes enough time to keep track of.  But anyways, I was assigned this board and really had no idea what to do. It being a Catholic school, I knew to concentrate on the  true meaning of Easter. Having never done a religious bulletin board I went searching online for ideas and that is when I came across this photo

http://www.boardsgalore.com/RobinW.html

I liked the look of it but knew I wouldn't have time to make such an elaborate cross. It honestly wasn't my top priority with the zoo field trip, grades, report cards, conferences, etc. all falling within that same week. Therefore, I decided to do my own version of this bulletin board:

Once a month, the 5th graders, which are K5's "Spirit Buddies" come to our classroom. This time it happened to be just before Palm Sunday. Therefore I told the story of Palm Sunday and how people used palm leaves to worship Jesus. We then brainstormed a list of ways we can show Jesus our love today whether it be by loving others, singing praise songs, going to church, reading the Bible, etc. Then the 5th graders helped my K5 students to make and decorate their own palm leaves. This worked well and the students all seemed to really enjoy themselves. Plus they would make the perfect backdrop for my Easter bulletin board. I then made a very simple cross and added photos I had taken of some of my students. Not everyone's picture made it on the bulletin board but everyone's palm leaf did. It had to be up by Monday, April 2nd and I was sick all weekend. I managed enough energy to go into the school Sunday and hang it all up. Unfortunately just a few days later this board was taken down so that painters could come and paint the main floor hallway over break. However, I was glad to find that my efforts didn't go to waste as the bulletin board did get hung back up soon after break. As you can see it is very simple and the idea is totally stolen but it didn't look half bad after all.

Egg-cellent Work

A fun little morning message substitute to start off the month of April.

Here is a little Easter egg poem booklet that the kids colored. We talked about the rhyming words in the poem and students did a great job recognizing their color words. Of course the best part was decorating them to match the words.

Addition Practice: Students colored their eggs according to the answer of the addition problem.

Fun coloring in our "Early Finisher" work bins.

** A special thanks to Mrs. Boor for sending all these worksheets!!!

Zoo Field Trip

Though it was cold and drizzly all day my students had a blast at the zoo! Lots of zoo babies including lion cubs, foxes and a calf, for the kids to see this year! We also had the pleasure of seeing quite a few of the animals using the rest room (hippo, cow and giraffe). But, by far, the best part was how much the kids were learning. As we went along there were so many opportunities to teach them little facts like what it means to be nocturnal or camouflaged, why camels have humps, how to tell if a peacock is male or female, etc. While of course it's no where close to being true, it made my day when Amber enthusiastically said, "Miss Popkey, you know everything!"

Lion cubs fight over a stump to chew on

This calf is only 2 weeks old!

Elephants!

Male peacocks are the ones with the pretty feathers.

Giant tracks

Noah's silly shark mask

Life-Size Leprechauns

Another fun holiday craft idea from retired Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Boor!
I'd say they turned out pretty cute :)

S is for Shaving Cream

Here students who worked hard and finished their morning message early got to practice the letter of the day (s) in shaving cream!! It's really not as messy as it looks and wiping it away really cleans up the tables :)

Bowling for... Science?

Okay, so our Science unit for the month of March is called Pushes and Pulls. We started off the unit by taking a tour of the school and even went outside in search of things that were moving. We drew pictures of things we saw moving and then put them into two groups, living and non-living. We then learned that living things like people and animals can move on their own. We drew pictures of our partners faces and bodies and circled all the parts that we can move (ex. eyebrows, arms, hips, etc.). In this lesson we learned that non-living things need a push or a pull in order to move. I thought a fun way for the kids to see this was to do some bowling. The bowling pins obviously do not move around on their own but with the push of a bowling ball they can go flying! Obviously the kids loved it and made the science connection too :)

Math: Addition

Math: We've been learning how to add up to 10! We love using manipulatives to add!

This is a math center called "Slide and Count". Here students put the correct number of pegs in each box and then slide them down, using a foam comb, to the answer box to count them all together.

We are also memorizing our addition doubles up to 10! These are some posters I made to give the students a visual. We recite them every day during our morning meeting.

I also had the students make doubles booklets. The covers say I Love to Add! Inside students made pictures of things they would like to double. For example, I love cupcakes so adding more cupcakes is always fun!

Science: Magnets

Science: We've been learning about magnets: Types of magnets, their poles, what they do/don't attract, if they are strong enough to travel through different materials and where we can find magnets around our house!

In this center students were able to experiment with magnets and how they work through materials like plastic... and even water!