Yes or No?

We have been learning about all sorts of graphs in math. Bar graphs, pictographs, and even pie charts! We decided to make our own graphs based off of a yes/no question. Each student was responsible for creating their own question and their own graph. We then had each student turn into a scientist to collect their data for their graph. They had all the participants names on a clip board and they had to walk around and ask each student their own yes/no question. We came up with some really good questions too! Here are just a few:

Are you having a good day?

Do you have a pet?

Do you like Scooby Doo?

Do you like pizza?

Is your favorite color blue?

After we surveyed every student we had to create our own bar graphs to show our work. We all worked really well and everyone completed their charts! We learned a lot about each other and after voting we decided that, yes, this was a fun activity! Here's to math!

Thanks for Voting!

Wow! We were very impressed by our responses that flew in for Dr. Seuss books. That shows us that young and old, we all love Dr. Seuss at heart. When we added in all our class votes, blog votes, and email votes we were amazed to discover that we had 58 people vote for their favorite Dr. Suess book! Here are some photos of us graphing the results! 

The Cat in the Hat received 9 Votes

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish received the most votes!

Cat in the Hat got second place with 9 votes!

Green Eggs and Ham received 10 votes!

Here is our results!! Thanks to all those who participated! We appreciate it!

Dance and Sway

So there are many things I adore about teaching kindergarten, but one of my favorite things can be watching them get their wiggles out. Having one classroom with 21 five to six years olds can be one classroom with a lot of excitement, giggles, wiggles, and energy. And sometimes, the only way to calm them down, is to literally wiggle the energy out of them! So that's what we do! We have dance parties. And they are classic. 

Today we had a dance party because we were reviewing the difference between a dance and a sway. These were two words in our read aloud, "In the Yard." So, we decided we turned on a song and they had to follow the rhythm and either sway with me or dance with me when directed. We were lucky enough to have Miss Mahoney, Mrs. Parr, and Miss Hanson (a student observing our class) to watch the fun!

And let me tell you, we have quite the class of dancers! We have one friend that imitates the jerk as he busts a move and another that does the Dougie as he moves- if you don't know those moves, you must click on the link to create a better visual!! We have another friend that mimics hula hooping as she moves. We have a few friends that look like the wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man as they move around. And others that have definitely found the "rhythm" in the music! It is always fun to watch their moves and dancing always puts a smile on our faces!

So, if you're ever having feeling antsy, anxious, run down, or just having "one of those days," we challenge you to stand up, turn up some music, and just dance and sway....dance and sway...dance and sway.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Well it is finally St. Patty's Day and it definitely brought us a day filled with luck and laughter! When we go back from Music today there was a note on the SMART Board saying:

Walk around the Dome twice

And I will bring you something nice

For all the kindness you brought to me

I will give you back your green!

So as a class we quietly walked around the dome twice. When we walked back in this is what we saw:

The leprechaun definitely stopped by!

The table was tipped!

The Carpet was Turned!

There were chairs upside down, the green table was TIPPED OVER, a bag filled with our green goodies, and a NEW note on the SMART Board! Before we fixed anything we sat at the carpet and read the note as a class. This is what it said!

I had a great time playing with your green toys and flipping your room around. To thank you I left some magic powder on in the "Leprechaun in Late Winter" book you are reading.  I only give this magical powder to kind kindergartners, so you should feel very honored.

Did you find it yet? What does it smell like to you? 

Well, in order to make it magical you have to follow a few rules.

1. Captains, grab the magical milk that I placed on your tables.

2. Mix all the magical milk cartons and the magical powder together.

3. As you stir, say these words:

Leprechauns, Leprechauns, Shamrocks Seen

MAGIC POWDER Turn Green! 

Well we followed the directions and I we opened the magical milk we discovered that it was already green! But we poured it in the bowl and started stirring. We recited the poem 3 times and BOOM! It happened! The powder turned in a pudding mixture. 

  We the captains grabbed the milk and we started reading through the directions. We thought maybe the powder would mix with the milk to make the leprechaun appear, or maybe once we mixed it our classroom would magically be clean, or maybe we were supposed to put in on our skin to turn ourselves green!

When we opened the milk carton, we discovered that it was already green! The leprechaun even made magical milk!

We added all the milk to the powder and kept reciting the magic words. We realized, that it was looking more like a yogurt or pudding! Maybe he wanted us to eat it!! But why?!

We made predictions about what would happen if we tasted it. Maybe we would turn into Leprechauns, maybe we would be able to fly, maybe we would turn green!!

So, Mrs. Rehder decided to take the first small taste to make sure it was good. And it was delicious! Then we all sat down and enjoyed the magical mixture that our friend left for us. We talked as a class about why the leprechaun was so nice to our class. These are some of the ideas we came up with:

1. We found his hat and gave it back so he thought we were kind.

2. We let him borrow our green items. 

3. We are nice friends to have and maybe he wants to be our friend. 

4. We are respectful Rangers and leprechauns like polite people.

Overall we felt very lucky on this St. Patricks day and we wanted to share our luck with you! Hope your day was filled with as happiness, kindness, and craziness as ours!

The Mystery Continues...

Well...today the Lucky Leprechaun came back! 

This time, he came while we were taking our final Math NWEA test! We came back to our classroom to find a lovely surprise on our desks! Each one of us had a brand new green pencil waiting for us and the hat was no longer there! 

We looked around to make sure that nothing else was taken, and luckily, it wasn't! But, we did discover that he left something for us again! 

This is what it said:

Dear Class,
Thank you so much for helping me find my hat! To thank you for helping me out, I left a treat on your desk!

Your Friend,
Lucky Leprechaun

Our kindness definitely paid off! We were so glad that we found a friendship with a leprechaun so close to St. Patrick's Day!

Following the Trail...

 We Found It!!

Cultural Days

Our class feels very lucky. We we exclusively invited to Mrs. Hanson's 1st Grade Cultural Day festival! The first graders had been learning about different cultures, themes and beliefs around the World for Social Studies. They learned so much, that they wanted to teach others what they learned! To celebrate their learning, our class was invited to their Cultural Day festival! The 1st graders set up different stations and they were the teachers! They taught us about Native American folk tales, Mexican Maracas, Chinese Dragons, Artifacts and Foods around the World, and we even got to play an African Game called Mancala! 

We had such a good time and learned a lot! But we also realized how responsible and organized 1st graders have to be! We are going to work hard these next 50 days to get our bodies, brains, and ideas ready for 1st grade! We cannot wait! Check out our video to see the fun festival!

More Details...

Monday morning brought many suprises! When we got back from gym class today all we discovered little clovers sprinkled all over the floor. At first we didn't think much about them, but then we found out the the green table was missing their "GREEN" table sign and their green tray of water! Where the "GREEN" sign usually hung, this is what we found:

Dear Rangers,

I popped in to visit, but you were not here! I have a problem that I hope you can solve. While I was dancing around your room, I seemed to of lost my hat! I was really hoping that you could look around and find it for me. If you can find it, I will come back to get it! Oh, I also borrowed a few more green items. I hope you don’ t mind!

Your Friend,
Lucky Leprechaun

So...it is a leprechaun after all! And not only did he leave his hat behind, he left the trail of shamrocks behind! We followed the trail as a class and we did a little bit of hunting and we found the hat! It was hidden in the front of the room. Therefore, we had a class meeting to discuss if we should give the hat back. As a class we decided that we should give it back, because it is the kind thing to do, and we feel like he must be friendly as well because the note said he was just dancing in our room and it also stating that he didn't "steal" the items, he is just "borrowing" them. So he must be a friendly leprechaun!

So we are going to set it out in the morning with a note. Hopefully this act of kindness pays off!

The Magical Mystery

Today, we found a note on SMART Board and we are trying to figure out who it could possibly be from. This is what it said:

Dear Rangers, 

I LOVE green, 

And soon NONE will be seen!
Your Friend, 

?

We discovered that we are missing Petrie - our Huge Green Tree Frog, our green buckets, our green glue bins, our green pillow, and our green writing center tray! Now, some of us think that it may be a teacher borrowing these items, some think that it is Mr. Green, and some even think it may be an ACTUAL Leprechaun visiting our classroom!! If you have ANY information please comment below or email us and we'll read them as a class! We'd love to hear from you and don't worry, we'll keep you updated if we hear anymore news!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Well parents, you probably already know that today we celebrated Dr. Seuss' Birthday! All week we read Dr. Seuss books to prepare ourselves for his birthday party! We learned that Dr. Seuss' real name is Theodore Geisel and his actual birthday is on March 2nd. He turned 107 today — just 105 years older than Cindy Lou Who!!

I truly adore Dr. Seuss. His creative imagination, his play on repetitive and rhyming words, and his ability to make everyone want to read more - from the creative Cat in the Hat to Oh the Thinks You Can Think! My personal favorite is "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" simply because it was one of the first books I "mastered." I can still recite most of that book with my eyes shut!

But today we want to know, which one is YOUR favorite. In math we are learning about bar graphs and we are going to graph our results! Please help us out and reply with the title, and if you wish, explain to us why it is a favorite or a great memory you have from reading Dr. Seuss Books! Don't be shy now. Start commenting!

We are wishing Dr. Seuss a happy 107th birthday, and I hope that his stories continue to encourage every young student to read and enjoy reading!