Fingers crossed that kindergarteners (and their teacher!) have green thumbs!
The Tiny Seed, by Eric Carle (this month's author study), was part of the inspiration for kindergarteners to plant grass seeds. Each day we are monitoring our seeds and recording the progress. So far we haven't seen any change in our seeds, but we are being very patient and hopeful that soon we will see little spikes of grass. During the planting process, the students were reviewing what they know about the difference between living and nonliving things. We remembered from past discussions that our plants will need water, fresh air and sunshine and food. Some children were curious where the food would come from. Others shared their background knowledge that there are vitamins and "special stuff" in the soil that help feed the seeds! Smart gardeners!
Fingers crossed that kindergarteners (and their teacher!) have green thumbs!
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Friday proved to be the perfect Spring Day to set our butterflies free! Four out of our five chrysalises hatched. We had a chance to enjoy them in our classroom and observe their behavior, their needs and their characteristics. The class decided, as a whole, that the butterflies would be happier living in the wild rather than contained in a small mesh cylinder (our 3D shape Math vocabulary!!). How exciting to watch our beautiful Painted Ladies fly from their butterfly house into our Garden of Life! We watched as the soared over head and then found little wild violets and dandelions to land on. We might have overwhelmed them a bit as we chased them throughout the field! We have one more chrysalis to hatch. We can't wait to see Monday morning if our last butterfly has hatched! Mrs. Keilty and Mrs. Edwards joined us for the release which made the day even more special. Afterwards, we were as excited as the butterflies since we got to play on the playground with the PreK class! A special spring treat for all! Thanks to Steve Tracy for bringing in their newborn goats for us to meet! As you can imagine, both groups of kids went crazy meeting each other. It was very exciting in kindergarten! So exciting that the white goat peed all over our floor. But that's okay- the class recognized that "he's only little and can't help it! Everyone has accidents sometimes!" I was so proud of the way the children waited patiently to pet the goats and didn't overwhelm them. Even those that were nervous, gathered up the courage to pet the goats and were pleased to feel how soft their fur was!
The goats didn't have a name yet when they visited, so Steve asked the kindergarten to decide on names. We brainstormed possibilities and then "cast our vote". We talked about voting and how to make group decisions as fair as possible. We also discussed how we all had ideas that we thought were the best, but that the majority vote would be the new names. Everyone was agreeable and felt like that was fair! This discussion lent itself beautifully as an introduction into our new unit, Opinion Writing. The goats names are Slinky and Pinky! (we didn't even plan on making them rhyme- just a great coincidence). |
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