Last Post on WordPress

After school today, I worked on switching my post from WordPress (what you are reading now) to Posterous.  Unfortunately, we weren’t able to figure out why WordPress wasn’t working for us at school even though it appeared to work at home.  Below is a link to the new post.  I was able to import the posts and pictures from the beginning of the year.  Thank you for your patience.

http://mhuikko.posterous.com

Shape Art Project

Today we did an art project that used a variety of colored squares.  We changed many of those squares into other shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and circles.  We glued the shapes onto a large sheet of construction paper to make a design or collage.  The kindergartners finished their artwork like any other artist – by signing their name!

First Attempt at Stations

Today was our first attempt to do stations.  In kindergarten, stations is something that we do once or twice a week.  It allows the students to be involved with several different activities (typically four) for about 10-15 minutes each.  Today we painted our alphabet soup using watercolors and watched our crayon letters magically appear through.  We decorated the border of our All About Me page that was completed at orientation.  We used shape stamps to make a shape collage and introduced a new toy for choice time.  The kindergartners did such a great job working hard and their stations and using yellow and green voices (normal talking and whisper voices).  Before doing stations we discussed our volume scale.  As your child if they can remember what some of the colors mean.  A blue (1) voice is super quiet or silent.  A green (2) voice is a whisper voice.  A yellow (3) voice is a normal talking voice.  An orange (4) is an outside voice and a red (5) voice is an emergency only voice.

Tomorrow we hope to finish our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom art projects by scrambling the letters of our names on them, gluing noodles on our alphabet soup, and discussing why we have rules as an introduction to Constitution Day.  Look for our own preamble to come home with our classroom behavior plan!  Have a great weekend, and cross your fingers that WordPress gets fixed at school so we do have to switch our sites!

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

We read the story, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and practiced our shapes.  After doing both, we put them together to make a project of the three bears.  We cut lots of squares into circles by trimming the corners and then glued them onto a rectangle.

Alphabet Soup

Today we differentiated between letters and numbers.  We then practiced our letter by writing them on our alphabet soup.  On Thursday, we’ll paint our bowl of alphabet soup!

Letter Hunt

After rereading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, we went all around the school searching for the letters for our coconut tree.  We visited the Media Center, Gymnasium, Computer Lab, Music Room, Cafeteria, and the office where we met Mr. Schuler.  Each location had a clue with directions for where to find more letters. Our last clue told us to go back to the coconut tree to find a surprise!

Bus Safety Practice

Bus safety was our highlight of the day.  We practiced getting on and off the bus safely. We took a thumbs-up/thumbs-down quiz on how to stay safe on the bus.  We practiced our best coloring in our bus safety coloring books and make stop signs with Ms. Ortt so our family and friends can STOP and ask us about bus safety.

 

PM Kindergartners learning the bus safety rules.

PM Kindergartners listen to the bus driver about staying safe.

AM Kindergarners cut and paint their stop signs with Ms. Ortt.

AM Kindergartners are hard at work on their bus safety coloring books.

 

Class Rules & Bus Safety

Creating our classroom rules and bus safety were the main topics of kindergarten today.  Our classroom rules are: help people, share, be nice, and use your words.  We learned about the Danger Zone and colored it red on our picture.

How Do Dinosaurs Go to School?

Today, the kindergartners came up with a really good list of things dinosaurs should do when they go to school.  Some of those things included sharing, being nice, taking turns, being quiet, helping people, and making friends.  We will use that list to help us make our classroom rules tomorrow.  We took a break from our day to enjoy the beautiful weather outside (and the playground) as well as took a picture of each kindergartner.

Mrs. Huikko's AM Kindergarten Class

Mrs. Huikko's PM Kindergarten Class

First Day of Kindergarten

Wow, did the day fly by!  All in the course of 3 hours, we read a story, wrote our name and drew a picture of ourselves, went to the Media Center, went to the Computer Lab, had snack, did the calendar and played for few minutes.  It was definitely a busy day.  I look forward to seeing everyone again tomorrow!