3/2/10 - 3/4/10

Tuesday, 3/2/10

The Snowy Owl was waiting to greet the kids this morning perched on our easel. :) We began our day by writing in our new Arctic Numbers book. After working on a similar project in January I feel like the kids “got it”. They worked independently and were proud to show me each page the completed. I loved hearing those that were farther a head help the friends who were just getting started.

We began Morning Meeting by dancing to a “Word Family” song. We will begin in the next few weeks and to the end of school focusing on word families and very basic pre primary words. Our goal is for the kids to begin learning sight words over the summer before Kindergarten begins.

We learned many facts about the Snowy Owl. See if the kids can recall for you another name for the Snowy Owl. Ukpik! We talked about their yellow eyes and fantastic sight and the fact that their heads can turn fully around in a circle. The kids loved seeing this when demonstrated on our Owl puppet. I brought in a down blanket to demonstrate how the feathers of the Owl are used to insulate their bodies and keep the warm air in and the cold air out. The kids cuddled up in the blanket to experience the warmth as I read a non fiction book, Snowy Owl.

We then moved to our AM Center time and made our very own Snowy Owls. I was so proud of the kids. This was a very involved project that took thinking and many steps and problem solving before our Owls were complete. They were all anxious to get started and many moved on with out my help to complete the project.

After lunch we read a Ukrainian folk tale, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. The kids loved the story about a boy who just had to have a white mitten but lost it when he went out to play. Meanwhile the animals of the forrest crawled into this Mitten...and I'll just let the kids tell you the rest.

After gym time we came back to the room and painted with watercolors all the character animals that had crawled into the white mitten. It was wonderful to have 100% participation and no one rushed through to get to the play dough or blocks. :)

Wednesday, 3/3/10 (Ms Chrissie's Corner)

Two new things in the classroom this week were very exciting for everyone. The new Veggie Tales rug that arrived on Tuesday was still the talk of the town and featured prominently in our morning meeting lesson, and the scale that made an entrance today. You have to love preschoolers! They were all jumping on to see who weighed the most, grabbing each friend as soon as they arrived and getting them on the scale. Some felt if they assumed a "cool pose" the scale would show a different weight. Well, that wasn't the intended purpose of having a scale today, but we had our fun, and then we got down to business! We put into 3 white bags: a 5 lb bag of rice; a cantaloupe; and a honeydew melon. Then we started weighing those. The scale didn't care for our rice, so we removed it and used blocks instead. This was an all day, kid directed project to compare and find things in the classroom they could put in the bags to equal approximately 5 lbs. We found out why at morning meeting.

At morning meeting we all took a letter to sit on, and went around the circle, and everyone sounded out the letters and our friend's had a chance to come up with a word that started with the letter they were sitting on. We all tapped our noses if we agreed that word started with their letter, pronouncing the starting sound, the letter and the word a couple of times. If help was needed, I either gave clues or a word for them to tap their nose if they thought it was a correct word for their letter. We spent about 15 minutes on this during MM.

Then we learned more about the Snowy Owl, from the book of the same title. Specifically, about two important measurements - it's wingspan, which is 5 feet long, and its weight which is 5 lbs. Yesterday the class learned about what it looked like and other facts, so we added to our Snowy Owl knowledge, such as it is an owl that hunts both night and day, how it catches its prey, what it likes to hunt, how many eggs a Snowy Owl lays, etc. We passed around the bag of rice pretending it was a Snowy Owl so we could really get a feel for what 5 lbs felt like. Some felt it was quite heavy, and others thought a Snowy Owl wasn't all that big; but everyone thought it was funny for some reason! Then when we took a tension rod and with the help of a couple friends, a measuring tape, and some masking tape we measured it to 5 feet long, and taped it shut. When I swooped it around (watching out for our globe and our friends!) like an Snowy Owl about to get a lemming (which is a rodent like mouse and the favorite prey of Snowy Owls) everyone was pretty impressed when it landed in the middle of morning meeting on the rug and its wings spread across the width of our new Veggie Tales rug! "Wow! That's pretty big!" said one friend.

This was a perfect introduction to our projects of the day: Weights and Measures. Besides weighing things to 5 lbs on the scale, we would also be helping each other measure our own wingspans as if we were Snowy Owls to see how our wings compare to a Snowy Owl's. Then with my help, we made half of a wing pattern on a folded piece of colored paper and cut it out, unfolding it to find our very own wings! It was fun to see their faces as their wings appeared and then we held them back up to their arms and sure enough, it was exactly the length of their arms right to their fingertips! We are great measurers! Each child began the project as independently as possible and I followed up with help for the tricky feather cutting if needed. I was proud of their efforts because the paper was giving everyone alot of trouble with curling and it took some perserverence to see it through. I hope you got a chance to see the results of our wingspan project displayed outside our classroom! If not, please enjoy the photos taken during the measuring.

After lunch and another day of indoor recess (c'mon Spring!) we went to work on lacing our mittens, a project from the story The Mitten which will be carried through with Ms. Cari on Thursday.

During snack time I read, Owly, a cute story about a young owl who always has yet another question for his mother at bedtime, like how many stars are there, or how deep is the ocean? His mother is a wise owl, and lets Owly find the answers to his questions himself, and so we turned pages counting "One Thousand and one, One Thousand and two...". The class enjoyed the process, and enjoyed exclaiming "NOT AGAIN!" about the third time Owly had another question and his mother sent him off to find the answer! Don't we all just like getting quick answers to our questions?! In the end, Owly realizes some things just can't be counted or measured, just like his love for his mother; and he tells her that he loves her more than all the stars in the sky and deeper than the ocean.

Thursday, 3/4/10

Today was the end of our never ending Winter unit. We finished up our arctic number books and wrote in our journals about what keeps the Snowy Owl warm in winter. Almost all of the kids were able to tell me it was their feathers. And even a couple tried to write out the word. :)

During Morning Meeting we re read The Mitten with our very own mitten and animal characters. The kids really enjoyed this activity. They were invested by having activities (the painting of the characters and the lacing of the mitten) all week leading up to this moment.

As a group we read aloud the arctic number books we had also worked on all week. This is an on going exercise in number recognition and reading skills.

We then all gathered around the table for some Kindergarten work. :) One of our Snowy Owl facts is that in a town in Canada the snowy owl is known by another name. “Ukpik.” The kids wrote out on sentence strips “Ookpik” as it sounds and Ukpik like we saw in the book. Ask your child what Ookpik stands for. :)

Our art activity today was to make baby snowy owls. We wrapped cotton snow around pine cones, glued eyes and cut out beaks. At first the kids weren't so sure about the texture of the pine cones while wrapping the cotton/feathers around. But they all in the end did a great job. They wrote their names on brown/tan paper that represented our Tundra for the Owls to rest on. All of our winter crafts will go home on Tuesday morning. Please make sure to take them at drop off.

Next week Solar System!