100th Day, Invention Convention, Friendship Day, and More!

We now resume regular kinder blogging after technical difficulties.  (I hope!)  Thank you all for your patience in waiting for a new blog post.  I am still working on resolving the picture issue but found a temporary fix in the meantime.  There were A LOT of photos to upload (and then some), so I hope you are snuggled in with some hot cocoa or coffee with plenty of time to read and nowhere to go because of this unexpected weather.  Here is a recap on some of the big things on Team 111 during the last month.

100th Day of School - 100 is a very big number in kindergarten - in fact, some kinders thought it signified their last day of school! 😀  Sorry kiddos, still 80 more to go.  We had a fun day doing some fun activities all about 100:

• searching for stickers numbered 1-100 around the classroom and matching to a hundreds grid
• playing Roll to 100
• writing about what we would do with $100 - some kinders really stretched that money far!
• building and stacking with 100 cups
• coloring and counting 100 things

Other concepts we continue to reinforce about 100 is that a group of 100 is 10 groups of 10, and that we can count to 100 by 10's.

Invention Convention - This year's Invention Convention was such a hit!  As a kindergarten teacher, I was so proud to have so many of our youngest learners at BES bravely present their inventions in front of many teachers and fellow students.  Those not presenting were equally excited to learn about all the inventions that were on display.  Some even felt more encouraged to try it out next year.  In addition to learning about creativity, design, and engineering at the Invention Convention, kinders also:

• practiced being a good audience
• respected their peers' inventions and asked questions about the them
• had fun!

Friendship Day - I mean if we're being honest, everyday feels like Friendship Day on Team 111, so Valentine's Day was no exception.  We enjoyed a mix of friendship and "valentinesy" activities throughout the day, such as candy heart math (which tasted even sweeter), valentines sight word games, writing about our good friends, and finding friends in the classroom who had certain "likes" on a recording sheet (ex: likes ice cream, likes soccer, etc.).  But the bigger message was that we have a lot of friends on our team and that makes us pretty lucky.  We continue to talk about and implement practices that help us be good friends to each other.

Hibernating Bears Math with Mrs. Kurtz - We love when Mrs. Kurtz joins us to extend our math thinking, usually with a special book and activity.  This time is was all about bears hibernating.  After reading a story, we used math mats showing a place for bears to go above the snow and below the snow.  Kinders experimented with different ways to make 5, with some bears above the snow and some below.  This gave us a chance to practice:

• positional words like above and below, over and under
• ways to compose (put together to make) the number 5
• pre-addition strategies
• ways to decompose (break apart) the number 5 (ex: if 2 bears are above the snow, how many are below?)
• pre-subtraction strategies

Kinders then were given a variety of materials to design and build a great hibernating spot for a bear to keep warm in winter.  

Candy Heart Science - Another Friendship Day activity Team 111 enjoyed was candy heart science.  We placed candy hearts in water, vinegar, and seltzer to see what would happen.  Then we recorded our observations and labeled them.  It's great for kinders to apply their writing skills to a variety of subject areas and it is there we often find their most authentic work.  We love making observations and discovering what happens!

Solid Shapes Building - What was originally designed as an activity to build robots turned into quite a bit more after giving students the freedom to create as they pleased.  We used collected recycled materials to design buildings, vehicles, robots, and other creative structures.  This kept us engaged and problem solving over several building sessions.  

Leprechaun Traps - Our next building challenge is that of building leprechaun traps.  Our next door teacher, Mrs. Leite, and I thought we would use the building excitement of the upcoming holiday to engage students in some continued building, teamwork, and problem solving to build a trap for a leprechaun.  We got together with Team 112, set up some mixed groupings based on student choice, and teams got to designing.  So far, we have started the designing and beginning building stages.  Some features of many leprechaun traps include rainbows, pots of gold, and lots of green.  We'll report back with the finished products and whether or not they worked at catching our target green mischief maker.

Ask your kinder - 

• Who is helping you build a leprechaun trap?  How does your trap work?
• Who are some beanie baby reading helpers you use when you read?  How do they help?
• What is your favorite song in the upcoming kindergarten show you are practicing with Mrs. Ricciardi?
• Count by 10's to 100.
• What are some ways to make the number 5? (The goal is to do this quickly by the end of kindergarten.)

Upcoming Dates and Reminders - 

• Thursday, March 29th - Senior Luncheon for Bow Residents
• Thursday, March 29th - Kindergarten Show at BHS 
• Kinders arrive at 5:45 (no earlier please)
• Show begins at 6:00 pm
• Questions regarding the show, please contact Katie Ricciardi at kricciardi@bownet.org
• Wednesday, April 4th - Family Math & Literacy Night - BES Cafeteria
• Thursday, May 31st and Friday, June 1st - No School for Kindergarten Only - Kindergarten Screening Days