Dental Health

February is Dental Health month.....although, I know that it is March! I am a little behind-
In the last week of February, we discussed the importance of taking care of our teeth. We read many different pieces of literature, fiction and non-fiction, looked at different Internet resources, and even had a visit from a dental hygienist. We also did a science experiment to see the effect that sodas have on the enamel of our teeth. We placed a boiled egg in Coca-cola overnight. We used our process skills and the Scientific method to help facilitate our experiment. We made observations, formulated a question and hypothesis, we conducted our experiment, gathered our results and came up with our conclusion. It is amazing how much these little 5 and 6 year olds understand!
We found that the Coca-cola stained the shell of the egg just as it can stain teeth enamel. We used tooth paste and a toothbrush to "brush" the soda stain from the egg shell!
The students really enjoyed it!

Singing As Usual

My lovelies singing one of their favorite songs to review the days of the week...Today is Sunday by Dr. Jean. They love to do the movements (especially the chicken!) and it is a great way to practice reverse order. The cards can be printed from Dr. Jean's website http://www.drjean.org/.

Valentine's Day

LOVE was in the air for sure on Feb. 12th at Silverlake Elementary. We started off the day with a love potion....the children loved this! Another teacher, Mrs. Jordon, and her class joined us. We added hugs, kisses, and love! Our love was Sprite and we used Hawaiian Punch as our "hugs". We added frozen mixed fruit to our mixture as our "kisses". This was a big production for the students. Before we allowed the students to drink the potion, they worte their predictions of what would occur after they drank our Love Potion. They were mesmerized by the experiment.....I wish they were that enthralled by everything we do! :)


We also celebrated the day with a Valentine's Day Party! Our parents did a great job of providing super cute decorations and ice cream sundaes with all sorts of toppings! We had a SWEET day!

100 Day

February 4th was the 100th day of school! The students loved celebrating being "1oo days smarter"! We rotated through 100 day stations, made 100 day hats and glasses. We even made a 100 day snack including 10 of 10 different sets of goodies. We learned 100 day songs an enjoyed singing them all day long! The students even wore their own shirts with 100 things on them! Crazy day in Kindergarten!

Hibernating

Last week was our big hibernation week in Kindergarten. The students brought their teddy bears from home to enjoy in our classroom all week long. We had our own bear cave in our classroom along with a cave in our hallway. Our bears hibernated in the classroom with the exception of different activities. We measured our bears height, the circumference of the bears' heads and tummies using non-standardized units. On Friday, we hibernated in our classroom using our teddy bears and favorite books and also got to go hibernate in our bear cave in the hall. We also had a teddy bear picnic complete with teddy grahams and our big picnic basket. Due to the yucky weather, we moved our picnic inside. The students learned many interesting facts about bears and animals that hibernate. We incorporated math activities into our week, not only with our teddy bears, but also with bear manipulatives in our classroom.

On Friday, we went to the aquarium at Moody Gardens in Galveston. The children LOVED the bus ride and enjoyed seeing all of the many different things at the aquariums. By far, our favorite was the penguins!

Back into the swing of things.....

So, we are finally back into the swing of things! Each morning we have a routine as we go through our calendar time, movement songs, morning message, and many other fun things. I use music as much as possible in our classroom to help students learn new concepts and reinforce others. I tend to make up songs quite a bit, but I also am constantly searching for new songs and CDs to purchase. One company that I came across when at the KTOT conference back in October 2007 has really helped my teach my students sight words. HeidiSongs offers songs for many different words that helps students to learn how to spell them. HeidiSongs also offers many different products. Another CD I have is for math skills, Musical Math. There is also hand motions for the songs that can be taught to the students. I usually just make up my own though! :)

Check It Out @ http://heidisongs.com/

Students singing our was song- We have a contest each week to see who knows it the best!


Students counting to 100 by ones.....we do this everyday! We change up the movements every couple of months though!