Butterflies

We were so excited on Friday to see three butterflies come out of their cocoons! 

Our examination station

the children can practice putting the life cycle in order

I ransacked the Washington County library system for all the books I could find about caterpillars and butterflies and the kiddos are enjoying looking at the pictures and reading them to learn more about the life cycle of butterflies!

Our book shelf is fully stocked :0)

I am hoping that by Monday all of the butterflies are out and about. We will have five in all. At some point in the near future, we will release them (on a day that is 55 degrees or more) and send them on their way. With the goal of having both classes get to see butterflies released, I decided to have the AM class join Mrs. Kolb's class or Mrs. McLean's class when they release theirs and then the PM class can release the ones from our classroom. I ordered my caterpillars a little bit sooner than they did, so it may be another week before they are ready to let them fly away!

Snacks

I hope I am not inundating you with requests for snacks, but I tried sending out an email to both of my class group lists and I haven't gotten a single response (usually when I ask for help I have lots of willing volunteers, so I am thinking there has been an issue with the group list emails again).

Anyway, since every child has now had a turn to be the star of the week, we don't have anyone else scheduled to bring in our Wednesday snack. Since the kiddos really look forward to it, I would like to keep having that snack for the rest of the school year. So, I need some help in order to make that happen.

If you want to provide a snack and would like a specific date to send it on let me know, or else just send in a snack that I can keep in the cupboard until needed. Thanks!We now have 22 kiddos in the AM class and 21 in the PM class.

Updates

You may be wondering what we have been up to lately since it has been too long since I last posted! Sorry about that! Here is a look at this week:

Reading and Writing:

Q is our letter this week, so we are working on an alphabet quilt where the kiddos write one word for each letter of the alphabet and illustrate it. This is a fun activity because they get to think of things that are important to them for each letter and make a cool quilt all about what they like. Another Q activity that we will do this week is Q-tip painting. It's always a fun time when Mrs. Toppel brings out paint! We are also working on some non-fiction writing where the kids read information in non-fiction books (mostly about animals) and then write down information that they learned in a "four-square" organizer. This helps them practice writing multiple sentences on a single topic.

I am seeing lots of improvement in the children's writing as they work on different writing projects and in their journals. If your child writes at home, it's always good to remind him/her to use spaces in between the words, to use a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, to use a period at the end of the sentence, and to write down the sounds they hear in the words they want to write. Spelling does not need to be accurate for emerging writers, but I do look to see that they are writing the sounds that can be heard. At this point, the children should be able to hear all of the sounds in short 3-letter words and should be able to correctly spell the sight words we have been working on. Longer words are more challenging, so we will continue to spend a lot of time on different writing activities.

Math:

This week we are focusing on graphing. Each day the children will poll 10 other students in order to find out their answer to the daily question. They will color their graph according to the answers their classmates give and will be able to tell which answer they got the most of and which answer they got the least of. The questions for the week are:

• Which team do you prefer? The Ducks, The Beavers, or a different team?
• Which special do you like the most? PE, Music, Library, or Computers
• Do you have a Brother, Sister, Both, or No Siblings?
• Do you prefer Choice Time or Outside Recess?

The kids did a great job today of asking each other the daily question and coloring their graphs to show the results. They especially loved being out of their seats and active during math time! 

Science:
We have caterpillars in our classroom! We are learning about butterflies, so I got caterpillars from amazon.com so that we can watch them as they change and see the lifecycle of a butterfly in action! It's pretty cool to be able to order live caterpillars from the internet and have them delivered two days later! The children have been really excited to see the caterpillars each day and to notice how they are changing. I am heading to the library after school, so I plan to check out some additional books on butterflies so we can learn lots of interesting information.

Fun Stuff:

Our second field trip will be on Tuesday June 14th and we are going fishing!
Tomorrow night is Family Reading Night starting at 6:30 pm and you can also visit the Book Fair as well! Books are buy one get one FREE! What a deal!

I cannot believe how quickly the end of the school year is approaching! Time has flown by this year and I am just amazed at all the growth I have seen from both of my classes. I was looking back at some photos from the beginning of the year thinking how little the kids looked back then and how grown up they seem now! (I think I will make sure to have a few extra boxes of tissues by my side on the last day of school!).

Speaking of the last day, the last day of Kindergarten is June 15th. This is different than the last day for other grades. There will not be any 1/2 Kindergarten on June 16th even though other children will be at school.

V Week

Hi parents! We have been busy so far this week. Here's a little bit about what we have been doing...

Reading & Writing

So far this week, we have read Stone Soup and two other versions of that story called Kallaloo (which takes place in the West Indies) and Cactus Soup (which takes place in Mexico). We have been making comparisons between the different versions and noticing parts that are similar and parts that are different. Yesterday students did some critical thinking and wrote about whether or not they would share food with hungry strangers coming through town. Today they started writing lists of ingredients for the different soups in the stories. We are continuing to practice sounding out words in order to write down what we are thinking. We also read Tops and Bottoms which is a funny book about a sneaky Hare and a Bear planting vegetables. I borrowed a few other stories and non-fiction books about vegetables from the library for our V week, so we can learn all about them before our vegetable "party" on Friday. Speaking of vegetables, don't forget to send in your secret vegetable Wednesday or Thursday! If you are interested in helping on Friday for our vegetable tasting, please let me know. Or, if you want to come and watch in awe as your child actually eats vegetables you are more than welcome! In addition to the letter V, we are focusing on the sight word from this week.

I have also been snatching up every book by Mo Willems I can find because the kids are loving them! Our latest was Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog as well as several Elephant and Piggie books. We could read those stories over and over and never tire of them.

Math

Yesterday and today we worked with ten sticks and one cubes to show two digit numbers. We practiced counting by tens and forming numbers with the tens and ones manipulatives. This activity builds a foundation for learning place value, which is a math skill that continues to pop up through upper elementary and middle school. For the rest of the week, we are going to continue using pattern blocks to make more complex patterns and we will focus on learning the words hexagon and trapezoid.

Fun Stuff

Next Wednesday both classes will have Art Literacy with Miss Katie. Wednesday is also the last opportunity to turn in cans for the can drive. After the first drop off date, Kindergarten was in fifth place, so please save all of your cans and plastic bottles. If you want to send them in early (if you are sending a smaller amount) please feel free. I will collect them in the classroom and drop them off at the drive next week.

Visitors!

Today our PM class had some special visitors. Mrs. Kolb bought 12 chicks over the weekend for her farm and she brought them to school today since our kiddos have been so interested in the hatching eagle eggs! She brought them over this afternoon so the children could watch them. They each got a chance to hold one, too!

It was really exciting to have real chicks in our room. We enjoyed watching them eat, drink, and huddle together for naps! It was fun to hear all the peeping too.

The chicks will be back for another visit tomorrow during AM Kinder so the morning class can have a chance to see them as well.

Here is some info about our week:

Reading:

This week we are focusing on the letter g and the sight words he and she. Today in the morning class, we wrote a story full of things that start with g. We didn't get to finish our story in the afternoon, so I will post that later this week when it's finished.

Gabe and the Gorilla

By Mrs. Toppel’s AM Kindergarten Class

Gabe met a gorilla at the zoo. The gorilla liked to eat green gum. The gorilla and Gabe had a great time together going golfing and gargling grass. Then they met a giraffe named Gracie. Gabe, the gorilla, and Gracie giggled because they saw a giggling ghoul. Then a gator got grossed out because the gorilla was eating a garbage can. The grass got all gooey from the garbage, so Gabe took the gorilla, Gracie the giraffe, and the gator to do gymnastics at the gym.  Gabe and the gorilla played a guitar and ate green grapes and chewed gooey green gum.

The End

Math:

Today we worked on partners of 10 and both classes did great. They were able to recognize the pattern in our equations and work on their own to finish.  Tomorrow, we are going to work with number partners of 10 again, but this time the students will each get a cup of 10 counters that are red on one side and yellow on the other. Each time they shake the cup and spill out the counters, they will count how many are red and how many are yellow. They will then create a graph that shows how many times each set of number partners came up. Later in the week, the kids will use a picture of a garden to graph how many of each kind of vegetable they see and they will get to explore pattern blocks on Friday. Keep practicing teen numbers at home!

Science:

Since we are focusing on the letter g this week, we are going to plant grass seeds on Wednesday so each child can grow his/her own grass! We will be reading books about plants, gardens, and seeds this week and I know the kiddos will love planting their very own seeds! If anyone is available to come in and help Wednesday, please let me know! Planting will get a little messy, so it would be great to have some extra hands. 

We continued to watch the Bald Eagle in New Jersey today, but we didn't see any babies yet. The eggs look like they are starting to hatch, so we will keep checking in. Hopefully we will see some cool stuff.

School Stuff:

Some Boy (Cub?) Scouts visited our room last week to talk to us about the Can Drive. We will be collecting soda cans and plastic water bottles to raise money for the Caring Closet which is an organization the helps provide clothing for families in need. Each grade level will compete to collect cans and the grade that contributes the most will win a popcorn party. Of course we are excited by the idea of winning a popcorn party, but we are also excited to help a great organization that does good work for members of our community that need help. Please save all your cans for our can drive. You can drop them off/send them to school on either April 13th or April 27th. Cans will be collected at the following times on those dates:

7:45-8:20 am
2:15-3:00 pm
6:30-7:30 pm

 

 

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Yesterday I ran in the Race for the Roses half marathon ( my first 1/2 marathon ever!) and I finished in 2 hours and 3 minutes! It was fun, but I am definitely sore and tired from all that running. I wore my medal today to show the kids.

Eagles

We spent some time today observing this Bald Eagle who is sitting on eggs that are just about ready to hatch. We were hoping we would get to see the eggs actually hatching, but we didn't...We weren't sure how to tell the male from the female eagle, but we did get to see them switch places and take turns laying on the eggs. The kiddos drew pictures of the eagle and wrote about what they observed. I projected the website onto the whiteboard and we kept it up all day as we went about our other activities.

If you want to check in and see if the eggs are starting to hatch, click here.

This weekend I am running in my first half marathon! I hope the weather stays nice. The race starts at 7 am on Sunday-wow that's early! Have a wonderful weekend!