Heart Smart Kids!

We had a short week because of conferences, but learned a lot about being heart smart healthy kids!  We read the story Magic School Bus Has a Heart and learned that the heart is our strongest muscle and it never stops working.  We did some experiments to feel our pulse while we rested and listened to a story and then did some exercises and felt how much harder our heart had to work.  We realized that we had to make sure we kept our hearts healthy.  We brainstormed ideas that made us “Heart Smart Kids”.  They generated a great list of ideas.  Then we made books that showed healthy choices for exercise, foods, to not smoke, and created a food pyramid. 

 

After all the “Heart Smart” learning we decorated our classroom with lots of cute “heart art”! 

 

100 Days Smarter!

  

It is hard to believe that we have been in school 100 days!  We have been counting up to this day and it finally came!  We had a lot of fun on our 100th day (even though it was postponed because of the weather!)  We worked a lot on grouping of tens and ones and learning to group them with place value rods to make a 100!  We worked on counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100 and sorting objects by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.  We also read The 100th Dayof School and completed sentences about the number 100…like 100 things we could lift, 100 things we could eat, 100 things we would not like to eat, what we would do with $100, what we wished we had 100 of and what we would not want 100 of!  They were very clever with their ideas. 

They enjoyed the story I’ll Teach My Dog 100 Words and they realized that we have learned a lot more than 100 words!  They then completed a book with 100 words they could read and write.  They wrote these words into 10 sets of 10 words…10 color words, 10 number words, 10 spelling words, 10 action words, 10 people words, 10 foods, 10 animals, 10 more animals, 10 friends, and 10 things they could wear.  It was a lot of word to write 100 words!

    

Their favorite story was The Wolf’s Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza. about a wolf that tries to fatten up a chicken by giving her 100 pancakes, 100 lb. cake, 100 cookies, etc…but in the end decides not to eat her because she had a 100 chicks that gave him 100 kisses and hugs for the yummy snacks he had been delivering.  We also made our 100 day Stew with all the items you sent for us.  Thanks for helping us out.  They loved “Mrs. Schmelzer’s 100 Day Stew”.  While we ate our 100 day snack they played some games where they flipped a coin 100 times and tallied the heads and tails, colored a 100 day grid to find a mystery picture,  and colored 100 items and counted them up to = 100.  Then we wrote our stories about being 100 days smarter!  They wrote about all they had done and learned the past 100 days.  They were very creative and they are hanging in our hallway to share.  Here we are 100 days smarter in our 100 day glasses too!

Penguins on Parade!

  

The kids really enjoyed the unit on Penguins.  It was a quick week to learn as many facts about these funny creatures that we could.  We did a KWL to organize our information.  The K stands for what we KNOW, the W is for WHAT we want to learn, and the L is for what we LEARNED.  We learned that penguins are birds but they can’t fly, there are 17 different kinds of penguins, some even live where it is warm, they are great swimmers, and we learned the words tobogganing, fledging, rookery.  Ask your child the meaning of these words.  We also learned that Emperor penguin dad’s are the best because they protect the eggs and go for 2 months without eating! They wrote stories about being a penguin and came up with some great ideas.  I will share these writing samples at conferences.  Our centers were penguin themed also.  We did antonym match (opposites) penguin contractions, penguin number line race to the igloo, penguin fact families, and penguin subtraction facts using penguin counters.  We also did a listening center on the Emperor penguin and sequenced events of how a baby penguin is born and raised by the mom and dad. Their favorite project was making the snow globes showing the penguin families. They love to show off their projects!

Happy Birthday Kansas!

We spent the week learning about Kansas and the symbols of Kansas.  They created a book about each symbol and will share it with you this weekend.  They loved the cheer:  Kansas Sunflowers, Kansas Wheat, Kansas Jayhawks are hard to beat!  Kansas’ birthday of becoming the 34th state is celebrated on January 29!  Happy Birthday Kansas! 

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King, Jr.!

We paid a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. today.  The kids were quite amazed to learn how people were treated by the color of their skin years ago.  They really enjoyed the stories of how Martin could not play with another friend that was white when he was in first grade, about Rosa Parks and her simple word “no” that helped stop segregation on the buses,and about little Ruby Bridges and how she was the first black student to be integrated into a white school and how she handled the hostile situation.  We talked about how to treat others and how MLK’s dream is a live today!