Have a Cupcake, With your Cupcake!

We all know how important mothers are in our lives. So the Robots wanted to take a day to bring all their mothers in for a class luncheon! We spent a few days just preparing for our moms! That morning we cleaned our classroom, we decorated our tables with personalized place mats, and we practiced our performance. Yes, we even had a performance! 

As each mom, grandma or dad came in, each of the Robots faces lit up! And what a wonderful, warm, and quite cozy turnout we had! The moms and students ate their lunches, talked, and learned a little about what we do in the classroom. After our bellies we full from lunch, we passed out yummy glitter cupcakes! 
Then the Robots snuck out of the room to get ready for their show. We started by thanking our mothers for all they do and handed them a handmade bouquet of flowers. Each student thanked their special guest and told them why/how they were special. 

Overall we sang three songs about our fabulous moms and spent the rest of our time running and playing outside! We hope you enjoyed the show and please know that I appreciate ALL that you do!

Egg-Speriment Week!

To celebrate learning the letter Ee, we had an egg-speriment week! We had science books that had different experiments to do with eggs. On Monday we soaked hard boiled eggs in white and chocolate milk, soda, orange juice and water. We made predictions about what would happen to each egg after soaking in the liquid for 24 hours, then 48 hours. We imagined that the egg shell, was our tooth enamel.

How would our teeth be effected after sitting in these liquids for a long period of time?

Here were some of our Predictions 

Milk:
The egg would grow. The egg would get brighter. The shell would get stronger.
Chocolate Milk:
The egg would have spots. The egg will turn brown.
Soda:
The egg will crack. The egg will dissolve. The egg will stain.
Orange Juice:
The egg would grown a Easter Bunny. The egg would turn into an orange.
Water:
The egg would grow. The egg would float. The egg would be healthy to eat.

We also soaked one raw egg in vinegar for 48 hours (we actually did it for 3 full days, just to see it transform). Here were some of our predictions:
The egg would grow.
The egg would disappear.
The egg would smell bad.
The egg would be cleaned up.

Each day the students got to "brush" the eggs to see if they were stained or growing or changing. This was definitely their favorite part!

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THANK YOU MS. BORDEWICK!

Engineering Fridays

Well, Fridays OFFICIALLY rule!

We are now having Engineering Fridays. So every Friday, until the end of the school year, our days are dedicated to designing, problem solving, creating and testing. We have done a few science experiments and math based problems in our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) books, but this was our first official go at engineering in kindergarten! 

Mrs. Baer and I got together and created the STEM books to incorporate some more hands-on learning in our classrooms! Each Friday our Engineering day will be focused around a specific book and a design problem that was in the book. 

Today  read the book "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." We discussed the problem that they had in the story and what qualities make a good bridge. We concluded in order to make a good bridge it needed to be: 

1. Strong

2. Long (at least 18" to get from table to table)

3. Have side supports

4. Straight 

We knew our bridge needed to pass 2 tests: 

1. Support the weight of 3 billy goats (Schleich figurines) 

2. Get a moveable car across the bridge 

First We had to Design our Bridges - looking both at our materials and the length of the bridge.

Then we spent 35 minutes creating our bridges. Most students wanted and needed more time that that, but we decided that engineers work on projects for weeks, months and even years, so this was just our "first" testing round. 

First we had to test the bridges to see if they would support our 3 billy goats. 

Then we tested our bridges to see if they could hold the weight of a car and if the car could get from point A to Point B without falling off. This is where it was really important to have a straight bridge with some sort of side rails! 

Overall the day was a HUGE success! We had all 19 bridges support 3 billy goats AND 10 bridges were strong and straight enough to get the cars across! It was pretty impressive engineering! We cannot wait until our next Fun Friday! 

Mystery Reader Marisa

Happy Valentines Day!!

What a great way to spend Valentine's Day! We had some wonderful parents help out with 5 different Valentine Stations! The entire day was filled with love, candy, valentines, and excitement! The last hour of the day we held our class Valentine Party.  
We had five interactive stations: 

Station One was a Sweet Heart Graphing station. In math we are working on interpreting and creating bar graphs. Shelby's mom, Stacey helped sort, explain and create graphs. They students loved working at this station and enjoyed eating their math manipulatives while they worked away! 

Station Two was an Ice Cream Station! Not just plain Ice Cream, but they created an Ice Cream Sundae station where each student got to create their own personalized sundaes, adding whichever toppings they enjoyed. There were a lot of messy, yet giggling faces at this station! Thank you to Brynn's mom, Nicki for reading so many fun valentine books to them AND making sure everyone was full and having fun! 

Station Three was a Memory Match Station. The students had to stay focused during this game and try to match up words and pictures during this game. Hailey's parents, Jason and Kristi, were very helpful during this game and kept all the students smiling and tatted up! They loved finding a matching set, drinking juice from heart shaped straws and getting unique Valentine tattoos! 

Station Four was a heart headband stations! This station had Samson's mom, Holly and Osborne's mom, Amy working hard to create heart patterns, cut, staple and assemble heart patterns! They did a great job helping the kids create cute and creative heart headbands! I wanted one for myself they were so adorable!! 

Station Five was Heart Bingo Station. The students love playing Bingo! We frequently play it with our site words, letters, and beginning sounds. This is a great way to practice Capital Letters, Lowercase Letters, and Star Words at home! Jordan's mom, Kim helped call out letter sounds, letter names, and words that began with specific letters. They loved picking out of the prize box when they won and everyone even received a goody bag after completing this station! 

We ended our party by opening up our Valentine's and investigating to see all the yummy treats we had inside and handwritten Valentines inside. Since we had so many parents Ms. Bordewick and I had the opportunity to take pictures! Hope you enjoy the slideshow and hope there weren't too many terrible tummy aches when they got home! 

Happy Valentine's Day! 

 Special Thanks to all those who donated items to make this party a success! And to those who were able to attend the Party and Lending a Helping Hand: 

Jason & Kristy Ring

Stacey Jones

Kim Brown 

Holly Rosevold

Amy Lorenz

Nicki Sandmann

100th Day of School

We have been waiting in anticipation for this day for quite some time! 
We did so many activities to celebrate our 100th day of school. 

We started the day with everyone piling in wearing 100 objects on their shirts! It was classic to see the creativity and time that went into their shirts! We then put on our 100 item necklaces created with Fruit Loops – clearly it was a wonderful accessory to their shirts! 
I literally think we did 100 activities today! We are exhausted! Here is a peak at our day! 

Did 100 exercises (10 squats, 10 jumps, 10 push-ups, etc.)
Wrote 100 words
Made a crown with 100 tallies
Made 100 gumballs
Sorted our 100 items into groups of 10 
Made a 100 piece snack
Made towers with 100 cups
Counted how many words we could write in 100 seconds
Counted how many jumping jacks we could do in 100 seconds
Counted how many jumping jacks we could do in 100 seconds
Went on a hunt for 100 hidden pennies
Made a bucket list  of things we'd like to do BEFORE we turn 100 
(see slideshow below this project was ADORABLE!)

Tell your child to kiss their brain, because they successfully passed the 100th day of school! 

A sneak peak at our day!

Our bucket list project!

Groundhogs Day

Well...our optimism failed up this year! We were REALLY hoping that the groundhog would NOT see his shadow Monday morning. But naturally he did. 

On Friday we made little groundhogs and graphed our predictions. We had 12 students predict he would NOT see his shadow and 8 predict that he would see his shadow. Then, the entire grade level put up their predictions in the hallway! 

Time to bundle up, at least 6 weeks more of winter it will be! 

Dates to Remember!!

Dates to Remember for February!

February 3^rd: Husky Huddle

February 6^th: Sneaker Hop at School (See note in Tuesday Folder)

February 10^th: Late Start

February 12^th: 100^th Day of School (Wear special shirts with 100 things!!)

Febraury 13^th: Valentines Party

February 16^th: Presidents Day (Wear Red, White, and Blue!)

February 20^th: NEON DAY for 400 Club Readers!

February 27^th: Music Concert for 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th Graders

Pattern Block Creatures

We have been learning about pattern blocks this week for Math. Our BUILD stations focused around creating patterns, extending patterns, using pattern blocks and using pattern block templates. I wish I would have snapped more photos of their creations throughout the week, but the students did an amazing job using their imaginations and building and creating with our pattern blocks and pattern templates! 

Here's a few photos of their creations with our pattern blocks!