But We Do So Much in Kindergarten!

Greetings Friends,

Today I am going to talk about some more fun things we are doing in kindergarten!  This week will mark my second full week teaching and I'm pretty excited about it!  We have a light week at Hemlock Creek---we have a field trip Thursday to Mulberry Farm and a half day Friday! 

Here are some (more) things we did this week:

In math I worked with the students on number collections.  (Remember the pair of boobs that one of the students made?) Here again we worked with different number collections.  I had the students use pipe cleaners and beads to make a "math counter."  (We cannot say bracelet because that would indicate it was a gendered project--even though I could care less if you are a man that wears a bracelet! I didn't want to get into that discussion.

Then I read the book "Math Fables" to the students.  They had to figure out how many beads they needed to complete the collection.  Below is an example of a collection of ten: 4 and 6. 

Here's another one with the number 4: 1 and 3.  

Also--we worked with butterflies.  We talked about the life cycle of a butterfly.  Right now we have real caterpillars in the classroom.  Eek!

 

This is probably my most original idea I have had this entire time.  The original idea came from Jennifer's mom, Marie.  She suggested for me to collect egg cartons to make caterpillars.  I came up with the idea to do a cocoon and to make wings on them!

First we painted egg cartons.  Here's mine.  Pretty bad-a.

Then we wrapped them into cocoons and hung them up in the classroom.

Then we decorated wings.  We talked about symmetry and how one side of the wing looks the exact same on the other side.   Originally, I had a stencil for them to cut out, but I kept on making the wings look lop sided.  Instead, I found the clip on line and enlarged it in Microsoft Word.  It worked quite nicely.  I love being able to print from a computer:)

 

After the students were done decorating the wings, we took the caterpillar out of the cocoon and added the wings! 

 Aren't they cute!?!

 

To summarize up the caterpillar unit, I had them create the entire life cycle of a butterfly.  Using an idea from Pinterest, I had the students use egg noodles to identify the life cycle stages.  

If you ever choose to do this activity, I would have the words pre-typed up so the students could cute and paste them in the correct spots.  I would also have the cycle go in a circle.  I had them go line by line (just like they did on Pinterest).  However, I think having the stages in a circle would really show the students that it is indeed a cycle. 

 Finally, Lynn (Noelle's old Co-op) put up the bulletin board for the hands from Earth Week!

I die-cutted the letters for Lynn: I don't care of the font Hemlock Creek has.

A closer look!

I have so much more coming up!!!  We have an exciting week ahead in Kindergarten!!!! 

<3

Em