Kindergartners Can!

Puppets and dialog

     Making puppets using Model Magic is fun and easy!  This year I reviewed characters and dialog using Mo Willems books.  The children formed the dough around their finger then pinched and pulled to make a puppet.  When they were dry, we painted the puppet characters with acrylic paints to make them a bit more sturdy.  We learned a bit about puppetry and how to use puppets.  Then, we thought of dialog that our puppets might say and how they would say it.  Finally, we wrote a line for our puppets.

     You can find details for this lesson and 19 other rich writing lessons for kindergarten students!

Enjoy!      Molly    

Learning about Community

     As part of our unit on "Community Helpers" this year, we made this bulletin board town.  We had some small boxes left over and re-purposed them to be buildings.  Our children painted them, then added construction paper to make buildings for our town.  I was surprised when they asked each other what they were making and tried to make a great variety.  Our town ended up with:

• a few houses
• an airport
• a school
• a doctor's office
• a store
• a zoo
• a hotel
• a bank

  

  

Enjoy!   Molly & Laura

There Was a Little Turtle

     This week, we used the song "There Was a Little Turtle" as a basis for literacy learning.  First, we learned the song:

There was a little turtle,

Who lived in a box,

He swam in a puddle 

and climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito,

He snapped at a flea,

He snapped at a minnow,

and he snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito,

He caught the flea,

He caught the minnow,

but he didn't catch me.

     Then, we thought about how we could change the song to make it our own.  Where else could the turtle live?  What else could he climb on?  What could he snap? catch?  Not catch?

     We had a lot of fun with the possibilities and sang a few of them.  We then talked about writing our song in a song book with illustrations that match the words and help the reader understand the song/story.  We began working on the books by putting the title on the front cover, illustration, and author's name, decorating the back cover, and numbering the inside pages.  This helped get us thinking about our own versions.

     Over the next few days we worked on the other parts of our song books.  We have a free lesson plan and templates to print labels (30 per page) for the beginning part of the stanza. Children complete the stanza with their own word and illustrate the page to compliment the words. You can download this free lesson at our store: 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Literacy-Lesson-The-Little-Turtle-Song-1152041  

     We also worked on making a turtle puppet.  I cut an opening out of opposite sides of a paper bowl.  We stapled it to a paper plate of the same diameter and placed turtle feet where it was stapled.  Children then glued tissue paper squares on the shell using a paintbrush and liquid starch.

     When our books were complete and our puppets dry, we used our puppets to read and sing our songs!  

Enjoy!

     Molly and Laura

All about Sunflowers!

Sunflowers!

Last week each kindergartner planted a sunflower seed in a plastic cup.  We discussed what the seed would need to grow and how we would document its growth in our writing journals.

We read a non-fiction book about the life cycle of a sunflower and then used this fabulous activity sheet to diagram the parts of a flower (could have made it a sunflower if I'd had enough seeds!)  Go here to find the diagram for your class -  http://littlestarslearning.blogspot.com/2012/05/cupcake-liner-garden-theme-craft.html

We then had a discovery center where children could look closely at a variety of seeds with a magnifying glass, comparing and sorting them as they wished.  Those basil seeds are tiny...and garbanzo beans are bumpy!

With squares cut from plywood and some joint compound (both very inexpensive at Lowe's or Home Depot), children used their fingers to carve out sunflowers.  We let these dry overnight and then painted them with acrylic paints.  With a little loop of ribbon stapled to the back, these will make great Mother's Day gifts!

Next we'll look at Van Gogh's Sunflowers to inspire us to write sunflower poems to add to the gift.    

                                                                                       


Sunflower House, by Eve Bunting, is a fun rhyming story about a child who plants sunflowers in a circle to create a place to play.  Children loved this book and imagined their own sunflowers as the beginning of something bigger in their own yards!

Wonderful Worms!

     Oh, my!  After studying about spring weather we just had to include a day of worms!  It was so exciting this year!  We started with learning some facts about worms - I used Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser as the main text with some additional non-fiction books for them to look at on their own.
  
     We wrote facts learned about worms in a small booklet.  The topic or subject goes on the front green page, facts inside on the yellow pages, and how the child feels about the subject on the last green page.  

     Then, each child received a worm to take care of and to observe and learn from using a set of experiments.  I designed 3 experiments for them to try.

1.  Do our worms move toward a dark or a light area?

2.  Do our worms move toward or away from a lemon slice?

3.  Do our worms move toward a wet or dry area?

After the experimenting, we compiled our observations and found that most of our worms went to the dark area, moved away from the lemon, and moved toward the wet.

     Later in the day we read a fictional story about worms, Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin.  I found a really cute packet available from First Grade Blue SKies on Teachers Pay Teachers, https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Worm-Day-Freebie-Pack-229426  We used her story format to write our own fictional stories about our worm!

     All in all it was a slimy, but fun packed day of learning!!!  

Enjoy, 

     Molly

Sorry!!!  I'm not sure why I can't get some of my pictures oriented correctly!

Shapes

     Our lesson book, Kindergarten Geometry, includes so many fun lessons and activities for young learners!  Roll and Build was one of our favorites this past week!  This book containing over 20 detailed lessons about spatial concepts, 2D and 3D shapes is available at Teachers Pay Teachers, https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/A-Year-of-Kindergarten-Geometry-20-Activities-with-2D-and-3D-Shapes-736426 

      This time of year, we are also working on addition and subtraction concepts.  Our Understanding Addition and Subtraction book links shape concepts with several problem types.  This lesson book is also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!

 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/A-Year-Full-of-Kindergarten-Lessons-for-Understanding-Addition-and-Subtraction-1617989

     Here a child demonstrates her thinking to the class about a shape contextual problem.  Later, all students will solve a similar problem in their journals.

     Enjoy!

        Molly and Laura