Animals do what?!

During science last week, Mr. Prazar joined us to cap off our unit on the five senses by asking us how do animals use their senses of smell and touch in the wild to help them live? (MA Science Standard: . Recognize that people and other animals interact with the environment through their senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. )

Above is a picture of a coyote skull that the students got a chance to look at very closely.

Mr. Prazar wanted them to observe the many little threads at the way back of the nose. He explained that those threads were smell receptors that help the coyote smell really well.

Mr. Prazar then asked how many people had dogs and if their noses were dry or wet. WET! was the response from them all. The students then learned that dogs (and coyotes) have a really great sense of smell because when their noses are wet, the smell becomes stronger and the animal is able to find or track food using their sense of smell.

The kids were asked to smell a cannister with a special smell, but not yell out what they thought it was. Then they wet their noses and smelled again!

Well, the second time around...the smell was much stronger for most of them! Some who couldn't smell anything before were finally able to detect the smell and others smelled it much stronger the second time. When Mr. Prazar finally asked what they had smelled, they all knew it was chocolate!

Next, Mr. Prazar showed the kids how animals use their sense of smell to detect danger or to mark their territory in the wild. Deer use their antlers to rub their smell onto tress so that other deer know to stay away. They also learned that antlers fall off each year and new ones grow back in their place.

The students got to touch the antlers and Mr. Prazar said he found this set in his back yard. So, look around your yard, you might find your own set! 

Mr. Prazar shared with us that most animals don't use their paws to feel things, they use their whiskers instead. Cats use their whiskers to detect if a mouse is dead or still moving by curling their whiskers around the mouse. Other animals use their whiskers at night to see like moles and mice.

Unlike other animals, we then got to use our own sense of touch to detect what was inside a box. 

The kids did a great job noticing all of the objects...a pine cone.

A leaf....A rock...and pine needles!

We then got a chance to go outside to use our sense of touch and smell in the wild, just like animals do!

Mr. Prazar had the kids partner up and lead each other with eyes closed to a tree.

The kids who had their eyes closed had to feel the tree, with their eyes still closed. Once their eyes were opened, they had to find the tree their partner had brought them to.

The students finished off their time with Mr. Prazar by using their sense of smell one last time. He had them smell another canister and then they had to find the item outside. The students knew right away what it was - leaves!

The students (and me!) had a great time with Mr. Prazar and learning about how animals use their senses to explore and live in the world around us!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Taking Numbers Apart

This week in kindergarten, we've begun to look at numbers in a new way. We've started to compose and decompose numbers. These are strange terms, but it's pretty easy - it looks like this:

4 is 0 and 4.

4 is 1 and 3. 4 is 2 and 2. 4 is 3 and 1. 4 is 4 and 0.  This concept can feel pretty frustrating for some students at first. So, today before delving into composing and decomposing numbers, I equated decomposing numbers to learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. It feels like you'll never learn how to do it, but all of a sudden, you're peddling down the street with only two wheels! They really enjoyed hearing that! (CC.K.OA.A.3 - Understand addition as putting together and adding to, and understand subtraction as taking from.) Here are a few of the Math In Focus workbook pages we completed today.

Here is how we start out. Tell how many cubes of each we have and then how many do we have all together?

Then we choose our own combinations to 4 and 5. The students have to tell me how many of each they chose to color, how many of each they have, and then 5 is ____ and _____. This is the part that feels like that bike without training wheels!

This student decided they were going to put 3 blue and 2 yellow cubes together to make 5.

This student's first combination to 5 was 4 and 1.

Getting to Know Raz-Kids

We're really getting excited about reading books in kindergarten! I sent home information in your student's folder last week about a new program we'll be using both in school and at home called Raz-Kids. This program is password protected and the students will need to use that password each time they log in.

In kindergarten, reading is an important skill we begin to develop and practice each day. Raz-Kids makes reading more interactive, fun, and focused on a student's "just right" reading level. I will be using Raz-Kids in the classroom each week with the students and hope that you can find some time at home as often as possible for your student to use Raz-Kids to read. (Common Core RF.K.1, RF.K.2, RF.K.3, RF.K.4)

To get to know the program, we joined Mrs. Klipfel in the library on Thursday to learn more about Raz-Kids, how to use it, and to get some time using the iPads, too! Here are a few photos of our time together on Thursday!

Mrs. Klipfel and the students getting set up on the iPads.

Mrs. Klipfel teaching the students how to locate Raz-Kids on our iPads.

We had LOTS of questions while working on the iPads and learning Raz-Kids. If you have a question, Mom and Dad, feel free to email me!

Thank you Mrs. Klipfel for teaching us how to use Raz-Kids!

Reading Workshop for Parents!

Hello 309 Parents,
This Thursday there will be a presentation here at Steward School for parents focusing on reading strategies you can use at home with your student(s). This presentation will be about an hour long. Here are the details for the event:
November 20, 2014 6:30-7:30 pm S.T.A.R.S. - Strategies to Accelerate Reading Success - For kindergarten parents in the Steward library.  Presented by Sarah Lacourciere (ELA Coordinator), Jessica Minnaar and Marianne Monbleau (Reading Teachers) and Lisa Martin (Kindergarten Teacher).
Thank you and I hope you can make it - the presentation is very informative!

Literacy, Art, and Shapes - Oh My!

As you may recall, we recently read the book The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Toriano. At the end of the story, the farmer finds that Spookley was an unusually special pumpkin who not only saved his pumpkin patch, but was a new wonderful shape - square! The farm then decides to plant Spookley's seeds the next year and ends up with a pumpkin patch that is nothing short of amazing with many different shaped and colored pumpkins from triangular pumpkins to rainbow colored pumpkins. (CCSS RL.K.10) To practice identifying our shapes, we chose one shape to trace and create our own special Spookley pumpkin (CCSS K.G.A.2, K.G.A.3) and identified our shape by writing the correct shape word on our papers. 

Students chose their shapes!

And were asked to write the shape word on their paper that says "My pumpkin is a ______"

The best part of our activity? Using oil pastels to color and decorate our pumpkins!

The students had so much fun decorating their pumpkin shapes in all different ways.

Here are some of our finished products!

Here is our pumpkin patch! The students did amazing work!

Spookley Story Retelling

One of our goals in kindergarten is to have each student be able to retell a story using these five areas:
*What is the setting?
*Who are the characters?
*What happening in the beginning/middle/end of the story?
*What was the problem in the story?
*What was the solution?
(RL.K.2 and RL.K.3)

This week, we read the book Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. We discussed the story using our above questions. The students worked together in small groups on one of the above areas of story retelling. Right now, we're focusing on characters, setting, problem and solution.

The students worked together to draw pictures for their part of the story retelling.

We talked about adding the right type of details to their drawings - like making sure they only added the farm, scarecrow and pumpkin patch to the setting drawing.

The groups worked really well together to create their drawings.

The characters were...the farmer, Spookley and the pumpkins.

The setting was the farm.

The problem in the story was that there was a storm that blew a hole in the fence and the pumpkins were rolling out into the sea!

But in the end (or the solution to the story), Spookley the Square Pumpkin saved the day by plugging up the whole in the fence. The farmer was so impressed by Spookley's square shape saving the day, he planted seeds the next year that turned out to be all different shapes, sizes and colors!