This week we continued our exploration of penguins. After learning about the difference between facts and opinions, we wrote interesting facts about penguins and then turned our papers into a big penguins. In science, we did an experiment with blubber and ice. We found out the importance of blubber first hand by testing our hands in cold water, one hand in a layer of blubber and in just water. We also experimented with ice and textures to see how well our slippery ice penguins slide down a slope. In math, we worked on graphing and analyzing a penguin’s favorite snack, fish. Well we had colored gold fish. We ended our unit by making penguin out of oreo cookies!
Monday:
No School
Tuesday:
In reading we reviewed fiction and nonfiction stories. Then Ms. Torborg read us the story, Flip and Flop. At the end of the story, we had to determine what kind of story it was and why. We tried to identify at least 3 different clues in the book that helped us make that decision. We also identified the characters and the setting of the story. Next, we were introduced to our new letter and letter sounds, Ee. After watching our letter E song video, we noticed that e has two sounds just like the rest of the vowels. We created a list of words that begin with the short e sound and a list of words that begin with the long e sound. Then we completed our letter e sorting sheet. Before music, we were introduced to our next two sight words, they & are. After using our words in a sentence, we read through our newest emergent reader, A Penguin is a Bird, together as a class. We determined it was a nonfiction book because it was filled with facts about penguins. Then, we partner read our story.
Before we could eat snack, we had a little work to do. We know that penguin eat fish, so today we did too. We ate colored goldfish crackers. Before we couldn’t eat, first we had to create a graph. We each got a handful of colored goldfish crackers. We sorted and counted each color of crackers. Then we colored our graph. After that we had to analyze our data. We each had to state 3 or 4 facts from our graph. Finally, we got to eat all of our goldfish!
We continued talking about baptism during religion. First we reviewed the 5 different symbols used during baptism. Then we watched a Brother Francis video, Born into the Kingdom. Brother Francis told us the story of Adam & Eve and the first sin (original sin). He told us that baptism helps us get rid of that sin and get closer to God. When we are baptized we become members of God’s family as adopted sons and daughters.
After lunch, we had Spanish class with Mrs. Kramer and we completed our calendar binder. At 1:30, we joined the rest of the school for the Reading Counts Prize. Everyone who meets their Reading Counts goal (the kindergarteners have to be working learning to read) earn a special prize at the end of the quarter. Second quarter, we worked towards an hour of extra free time with some special time outside playing in the snow. Since school was cancelled on Friday, we received it today.
Wednesday:
In reading, we continued our penguin exploration. We started by reviewing the difference between facts and opinions. Then, we started our writing project. We had to write some interesting facts about penguins. When we were writing we had to make sure to use a capital letter to start our sentence and a period to end a telling sentence. Since not everyone could work at the teacher table at the same time, only a few people worked on writing. The rest of the class worked on reading stations.
Our Olweus lesson today focused on feeling. We started by identifying how we are feeling. Then Ms. Torborg read us the story The Way I Feel. We had to try to figure out how each of the characters were feeling by their faces, words, and actions.
In the afternoon, we completed a couple of different science experiments.
We started by testing out our mittens/gloves. First we tested to see if ice melted faster with a mitten on or without it. We each got one ice cube to hold in our hand with our mitten/glove. After two minutes nothing really happened. Then put the ice cube in our hand without our mitten. It started to melt right away. Next we put one of our warm glove on our right hands and one stretching glove from Ms. Torborg on our left hand. We held an ice cube in our left hand for 2 minutes. Our hand started to get cold pretty fast. Then we held an ice cube in our right hand. We found out that our hand stayed pretty warm after two minutes. We determined that when it is really cold or we are going to play in the snow, it is important to where warm gloves.
Next we worked with blubber. We know that Arctic penguins (and other polar animals) stay warm because of a layer of blubber under their skin. Today we got to “experience” how blubber works. We started with a bowl of COLD ice water. Ms. Torborg had a bag with “blubber” (really it was shortening). It was actually in between two bags, so we didn’t get it all over. We each took a turn putting our hands in the bowl. We put one hand in the blubber and one hand in just water. Our hand in the water got really cold fast and our hand in the blubber stay relatively warm.
Our last experiment had to do with sliding on the ice. We broke up into groups. Each group got a cookie sheet as their “ice”. We needed to figure out how to create a slope with it. Then we got an ice cube to use as our penguin. Our penguin easily slid right down our slope. Sometimes they slid right off our table. Next Ms. Torborg sprinkled some sand on our slope. This time our penguin didn’t slide so far. Many of them got stuck. We found out that the sand helped stop the penguin. Once our penguin was covered in sand it didn’t want to slide at all. The sand created friction to slow it down or stop it.
Thursday:
We had a crazy day. It was Come Play With Us. We started our day out with an art project to go with our writing project. We created a penguin. The body of the penguin was the writing project we completed yesterday our interesting penguin facts. The first step was to lay out the tracing patterns on our paper. We had to make sure all of the patterns fit before we traced the pieces. Then, we cut them out. Finally, we glued them together. We really had to listen to the specific directions Ms. Torborg gave us in order for it to look like a penguin.
At 9:00, we had the preschoolers join us to practice our act for the Talent Show on Sunday. We also split up. Some kindergarteners went over to the preschool room and some preschoolers stayed in the kindergarten room.
At 9:15, we had friends from Kids of the Kingdom and Mighty Dragons come to play with us. We enjoyed an extra, long free time and made friends with someone new. We also made tambourine shakers by sewing two paper plates together with some beans inside. We ended with a special snack, marshmallows and pretzel sticks, down in the cafeteria.
After our friends left, we had a few minutes before recess. We sang through our letter E song, completed our letter Ee worksheet, and filled out our calendar binders.
After lunch, we had some more friends join us to play from Stay-N-Play. We enjoyed playing all afternoon with our new friends. Before they left and we packed up to go home, we had a special snack again down in the cafeteria.
Friday:
Today we had to make our own snack, cookie penguins. Before we got started, we created a list of the different parts of a penguin. Then Ms. Torborg showed us the supplies. We each needed ½ of an oreo with white frosting, ½ of an oreo with no frosting, 2 of the ¼ oreo pieces, 2 mini-m&m’s, 3 pieces of candy corn, and a little scoop of frosting. Our job was to figure out how to turn our supplies into a penguin making sure we had all of the different parts. When we were done, we got to eat our penguin. And boy were they good!
Before lunch, we completed a reading worksheet. We had to read the penguin fact and figure out which word from the word bank completed the sentence. We also colored the picture of St. Francis De Sales in our saint book. We heard all about him at Mass. Today is his feast day, Jan. 24th. He is the patron saint of writers. He wrote many different things to teach Christians about holiness and moderation.
After library, Ms. Torborg introduced us to a new language: code. We started by assigning a number to an action. One means clap, two mean stomp, three means flap, and four means jump. When we heard the code, we had to do it. When we heard 1 2, we knew we had to clap then stomp. Once we got good at following the code, we were introduced to Bee. He wanted to go from his hive to the flower. Our job was to help him get there by telling him what to do. We had to use his code. First, we laid out the route using line and turns. Then we had to tell Bee that code using the lines and turns on his back. Finally, we could press go and see what happened. After working together as a whole class, we brought up into small groups to work on it. We had fun trying out different routes for the bee to take.