Ms Aja's Classroom

Music Makers

2010-03-10T04:30:35Z

Today we got to have a music makers session with Ms. Shelley! We sang Ladybug, This Train, Lil’ Eliza Jane, and This Little Light. We also got to play together as a rock and roll band. Each of us played a different instrument as we rocked out!

John Michael lost his first tooth this weekend!

View more photos from today in our March 8-11 Photo Gallery

Star Wars Art

2010-03-10T04:17:33Z

Jack, Joaquin, Ronin, and Leo worked together yesterday and today to create an intricate Star Wars scene complete with pictures and words.

We started learning about bugs this week! In the atelier we examined and held walking stick bugs. We began discussing what camoflauge means. We also started examining both insects and bugs and we are in the processes of figuring out what characterizes an insect.

John Michael’s Story

2010-03-10T04:12:17Z

Enjoy this story written by John Michael

A little squirrel was trying to get some food.

So I wanted to help.

So I got him some food.

Then when Ms. Aja said it was snack time, there was no animal crackers.

So we went to get some more animal crackers.

Last Week Highlights

2010-03-10T03:55:04Z

Last week flew by! We have been working on using kind words with our friends. We have developed a close-knit community and we love the time we get to spend with our friends each day.

We have also been discussing calendar concepts. We have been talking about the months of the year and seasons. Last week we worked on creating our own March calendars. We are working on writing our numbers all the way up to 31 and beyond. We love to label important days on our own calendars, such as buddies, spring break, soccer practice, birthday parties, etc.

During morning sign-in we are working on writing our first, last, and sometimes middle names.

During small groups and circle time we have been working on addition concepts. One of our favorite ways to practice addition and subtraction facts is by playing the Sum Swamp math game with our friends.

View more photos from our March 1-5 Photo Gallery

Happy Birthday Petey

2010-03-01T23:54:18Z

In addition to our Dr. Seuss celebration today (see previous post), we also got to celebrate Petey’s birthday today! We gave Petey a beautiful card that we made and we sang to him. We ate yummy Cheez-Its and drank orange juice and chocolate milk. Happy Birthday, Petey! We are so glad that you are a part of our classroom community.

View more photos from today in our March 1-5 Photo Gallery

Dr. Seuss Day!

2010-03-01T22:40:27Z

It was such an exciting day at school today! Most of the whales wore their pajamas to school to celebrate Dr. Seuss Day. Buddies from the Community School came to join in our school-wide celebration. There were five different activity centers set-up around the school. Kinders and Preschoolers stayed in small groups with their buddies to rotate to the different activity centers every 20 minutes. In the Creative Play room our buddies read beloved Dr. Seuss books to us. We got to hear a lot of old favorites and even some Dr. Seuss stories that were new to us.

In the atelier Ms. Rachelle read Bartholomew and the Oobleck to us. Then we got to make our own oobleck by mixing corn starch, water, and green food coloring. It was fascinating to explore the properties of oobleck. Sometimes oobleck behaved like a solid and sometimes it behaved like a liquid.

In the Dolphins’ room we made green eggs and ham for snack and we decorated Dr. Seuss hats.

One of our activity centers was playing outside with our big buddies. Our last center was in the Sharks classroom. We got to play Dr. Seuss word games and a Cat in the Hat board game.

In the afternoon we got to snuggle down with blankets and pillows and watch Horton Hears a Who.

View more photos from our celebration in our March 1-5 Photo Gallery

Book Sharing

2010-02-25T22:35:48Z

Each week every student takes home a bag full of books from our classroom library. Throughout the week we spend time enjoying these fiction and nonfiction books with family members. On Thursdays we return our book bags to school and have our book sharing circle. In the sharing circle everyone has an opportunity to share a favorite book from the week. Students give book recommendations to their friends and show specific parts of the story that they like. Sometimes students share interesting facts that they learned from nonfiction books they read. Then students get to choose new books for their book bags for the upcoming week. Of course students frequently choose books that were recommended by their peers. The book sharing circle encourages students to discuss favorite books and characters. This is just one more way to help students share their excitement about reading. We have a whole classroom full of readers!

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

Counting Pennies

2010-02-25T02:22:45Z

We have been collecting pennies for our Pennies for Peace drive. We are partnering with the Community School to raise money for schools in Pakistan. Collecting pennies has proved to be an authentic math activity. Each morning we count the pennies as we add them to the jar. Today we decided that it would save time to count the pennies by 10s instead of by 1s. Several students worked together to put the pennies in stacks of tens. Then we were able to count by tens to figure out that we brought in 357 pennies today. That’s $3.57!

Today we also spent time reading, drawing, writing, painting, building, playing, and collaborating. Ask your child what he/she worked on during classroom centers and creative play time today.

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

Music Makers

2010-02-24T02:26:36Z

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

Sleeping Plants

2010-02-22T22:45:18Z

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

Happy Birthday Lily

2010-02-21T04:05:39Z

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

100th Day Celebration

2010-02-17T03:50:09Z

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

Valentines Day

2010-02-17T03:31:00Z

On Friday we had a special visitor in our classroom. Brendan’s grandma came to visit all the way from Michigan. She shared information and books about Michigan with the class. We learned that Michigan is similar to Oregon in a lot of ways! There are also some differences between the two states.

Friday morning we finished writing valentine cards to our friends and we decorated individual envelopes that we could use to collect our valentines. Then we passed out our valentines to all of our friends.

In the afternoon we had our friendship/Valentines Day celebration. We started the celebration by decorating the sugar cookies that we baked for the Dolphins’ class. We put a lot of care into decorating our yummy cookies!

After decorating our cookies we gathered with the whole school community to watch a Charlie Brown movie. Then we presented our sugar cookies to the Dolphins. The Sharks gave us some chocolate chip cookies. Thank you, Sharks!

We ended our valentines celebration with the friends in our classroom community. We enjoyed eating the chocolate chip cookies from the Sharks while we read all our special valentines from our friends. Each valentine we received was handmade and contained a personalized message from a classmate. Ask your child to show you his/her valentines. The valentines contain wonderful compliments and memories that classmates wanted to share with your child!

We have developed some great friendships in our community so far this year! We enjoyed taking some time to celebrate those friendships and let our friends know how much they mean to us this week.
View more photos from last week in our Feb 8-12 Photo Gallery

Baking Valentines Cookies

2010-02-17T03:12:04Z

This year, as a special gesture of friendship, the classes at the ELC decided to bake each other valentines cookies. The Whales decided to bake sugar cookies for the preschool Dolphins’ class. On Thursday Ms. Stephanie came in to help us the bake the sugar cookies. We have become very skilled bakers since our bread unit. We are able to read recipes, measure out ingredients, and work together to create yummy treats. Our bakers are learning the difference between tablespoons, teaspoons, and cups. We are also learning to compare fractions (for instance two half cups equals a whole cup).

View more photos from last week in our Feb 8-12 Photo Gallery

Friendship Cards

2010-02-10T22:53:03Z

Today was a whirlwind of learning and fun. This morning we got our school photos taken and we spent the day working on special projects for our friendship celebration on Friday. We worked hard at writing special messages for our friends and decorating cards for our friends. During Writers’ Workshop we discussed what it means to write from other perspectives. Several of us wrote stories from the perspective of animals today.