Ms. Shelley came to make music with us today. We learned a new song and got to sing old favorites. We also got to use the rhythm sticks today.

Our buddies came to visit us today. We spent time enjoying good literature with our buddies.  Our buddies have been learning about the states of matter. They sang us a song about the three states of matter.  We discussed the differences between solids, liquids, and gases.  Then we watched as water changed from solid into liquid. We also did an experiment about condensation.  We put cold, green water in a cold cup.  We watched as condensation formed on the outside of the glass. To our surprise, the condensation was clear instead of green like the water inside the glass.  The water droplets did not seep through the glass as some of us hypothesized. Instead, the water vapor from the air condensed and became liquid after making contact with the cold glass. The scientific concepts of states of matter and condensation are rather abstract concepts. Our buddies did a great job giving us an introduction to these difficult scientific concepts.

Brendan recently went on a beach trip to Lincoln City. Today he showed us some neat treasures he found on the beach. His family found a beautiful blown glass ball and several different types of rocks and shells. We enjoyed examining these objects and asking Brendan questions about his beach trip. 

Joaquin brought in plastic cups last week for our 100th day celebration. We are still enjoying finding creative uses for these cups.  Several students worked together to create this pyramid structure with the cups. We had to use teamwork, balance, and precision to create our pyramid.

View more photos from today in our Feb 22-26 Photo Gallery

Today Mr. Mark visited our classroom.  He went with us on a tour of our secret garden and showed us all the work he’s been doing to get our gardens ready for spring. ELC students worked together last year to create the secret garden and plant a variety of fragrant plants. We discussed how the plants in the garden are still alive, but they are “sleeping” during the winter; similar to how some animals hibernate. The plants will be ready to wake up in the spring time, but in the meantime we need to keep them safe.  We posted sleeping plant signs in our gardens to remind friends to use care around our sleeping plants. Thank you for all your help, Mr. Mark!

Today the Sharks’ buddy class from the community school visited our classroom. They did a short skit about the Pennies for Peace drive we are starting this week. We read Listen to the Wind (the children’s version of Three Cups of Tea) last week and discussed how some children in Pakistan do not have school buildings or supplies. We are working together to collect pennies for schools in Pakistan. Please remember to send in your pennies this week if you would like to be a part of the penny drive!

View more photos from today in our Feb 22-26 Photo Gallery

This week we got to celebrate Lily’s birthday. We presented her with a handmade card and sang happy birthday. We ate yummy treats and got to play outside with our friends. We are so glad that Lily is a part of our classroom community!

We continued learning about what animals do in winter. We also began discussing ways that humans impact animals and how we can help animals during the winter time.  We went on a nature walk to collect data about the ways humans impact animals. We noticed that buildings built by humans decrease the amount of nature left for animal habitats. When humans leave trash on the ground it can hurt animals. We also noticed ways that humans help animals by putting up bird feeders and by preserving nature areas.

We discussed ways that squirrels adapt to winter weather. For instance, squirrels store up acorns and other food to eat during the winter months. We did a mapping activity where we hid acorns around the classroom and marked their locations on a classroom map. We are learning how to read and use maps for a variety of purposes.

We spent time engineering and designing structures out of a variety of materials.

We had a Lego Club meeting this week.  Several engineers had noticed that there were some problems with Lego usage in our classroom. Lego structures were getting broken and pieces were missing. During the meeting the engineers decided to reorganize our classroom shelves and give each engineer a larger, more easily accessible space on which to store his/her Lego structures. We decided that we would try having engineers save their Lego structures for as long as they want, as long as the structures fit on each engineer’s “save spot”. We will meet again in a week to see if these solutions are working for everyone.

Of course we also spent time outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine and enjoying our special friendships this week.

View more photos from this week in our Feb 16-19 Photo Gallery

We have been diligently recording and keeping track of how many days of school we’ve had.  Today we got to celebrate our 100th day of school! Can you believe that we’ve been in kindergarten for 100 days now? To celebrate we got to do a variety of fun centers, all involving the number 100.  At one center we were using our art skills to decorate 100th day hats while at another center we created Fruit Loop necklaces using our skills to count by 10s to 100.  We served ourselves special snacks, carefully counting out 100 pieces of food.  We also did different exercises in sets of 100. 

Several friends brought in collections of 100 things from home.  We had collections of Legos, cereal, pennies, cotton balls, cups, berries, and more.

We ended the celebration by eating our yummy snacks and watching a slideshow of 100 pictures from our first 100 days of kindergarten. We look forward to many more fun memories this year!

View more photos from today in our Feb 16-19 Photo Gallery