Butterflies

At the end of April-beginning of May, we studied butterflies in our classroom. How fitting for our class, Mrs. Bonner's Brilliant Butterflies! Our school has an AWESOME butterfly garden where we searched high and low for eggs, chrysalises, and caterpillars. We were unsuccessful in finding any this year (I am sure due to the COLD weather this Winter), but had a great time doing it! It was amazing to see that the students knew what to look for from all of the facts we had been learning!













We did find some evidence of munching.......



















It is a good thing that I ordered Painted Lady butterflies in the mail from InsectLore http://www.insectlore.com/. They came in a container filled with food. They are very easy to deal with! You leave the five caterpillars in the container as they eat and build their chrysalises. Once this has occurred, you simply pin the paper insert with the chrysalises attached into your butterfly habitat and wait.... Very EASY! Our butterflies came out in 8 days. We took a vote and named them different silly names, but Brilliant was one of them!

TAKS Rally and Time

Last week was an interesting week! We learned about many different things including time. We read many different pieces of literature including The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle and What Time Is It, Mr. Crocodile? We made our own watches, practiced with Judy clocks, and even sang along with various songs including traditional ones such as Hickory Dickory Dock. We even made a human clock using each other as the hands on the clock!

2:00

8:00

We also had a TAKS Rally parade on Friday to get the 3rd and 4th Graders pumped up for the TAKS test this week.

Strawberries

Froberg Farms is a fabulous farmer's market located in Alvin, Texas. One of the things that children and families can do is pick strawberries. I brought strawberries to school to share with my students after my neighbor had too many to eat of her own! We used FactMonster www.factmonster.com and Google images to find out information about picking strawberries before enjoying them for snack!

Your

Here is another great video of my kiddos singing one of their sight words songs for the week! This is now one of our favorites.....your!

Eggs, Eggs, and MORE Eggs

With Easter on its way, we did a week long study on oviparous animals. These are animals that hatch from eggs. We learned about animals we knew hatched from eggs such as chickens, ducks, and snakes. We also discovered that turtles, sharks, and frogs hatch from eggs too! To carry the egg theme throughout, we also used eggs to experiment and learn with measurement. The students worked in groups with hard-boiled eggs finding its weight and area.



We also worked in small groups with plastic eggs. Each group had 5 eggs with different objects inside. The students used unifix cubes and a balance scale to see how many cubes each egg weighed. After recording the number for each egg on the recording sheet, the students were allowed to open the eggs to reveal the objects inside.



It was an "EGGS"tremely fun time!

Kindergarten Rodeo 2010

We had a lot of fun at our Kindergarten Rodeo! We had events in the morning including Steer Roping, Barrel Racing, Buddy Pick-Up, Face Painting, and even Gold Mining! We had a visit from a REAL cowboy with animals, and we ended the day with square dancing and cowboy snacks! Perfect day in the life of a Kindergartener the day before Spring Break!

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!