The Kinders showing off their morning message skills.
We wanted to teach the children nouns and verbs using our morning message. Once the children learned those easily and then discovered that there were more parts of speech to learn - they demanded to be taught. It has been so fun and downright amazing watching them do this.
We hope you enjoy the video. |
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The Kinders show off all the Phonograms they've learned.
Sorry - the video is no longer available - Unfortunatley Spalding Phonogram International has had the video of the ECA kindergarteners removed as they feel we infringed on their copyright by showing students practicing the phonograms.
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We have been learning 50 of the 70 phonograms this year. Phonograms make up all the sounds that we hear in the English language. We use the Spalding Phonogram program. The children are exposed to the phonograms, begin learning the sounds then as they become more confident with them apply them to their spelling and finally to their reading. It is very exiting to see this process in action.
We hope you enjoy the video. |
Spring Showcase Preparation May 8, 2009
The kindergarten children have been as busy as little beavers preparing for our Spring Showcase next week. We have been printing our poetry, reading and practicing “projecting” our voices. We have also been choosing the songs we’d like to share with our families. As our program has come together, we have been working out the details and the children all helped paint our backdrop. We can’t wait to show off some of our favorite things and are looking for your “Wow!” reaction.
Brain Gym Activities with the 6th Graders May 1, 2009
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The kindergarteners had a blast touring through the brain gym activities organized by the 6th graders. We can thank Mrs. Pinson and Mrs. DePlaunty for organizing the project inspired by the in-service they attended Monday evening. The activities incorporated lots of movement focusing on large and small motor skills. It was so exciting to see how well the 6th graders worked with our students and how the kindergarteners were so actively engaged. We look forward to making this a weekly event. |
Olympic Gold Medalist Visits ECA April 24, 2009
Today we had a very special visitor, an Olympic gold medalist! Emery Clark won a gold medal in the 1964 Olympics that took place in Tokyo for rowing. The students were all fascinated with his speech, photos and especially his gold medal. He allowed each child to hold and even wear the gold medal. Prior to visiting with Mr. Clark, the children watched some highlights from the 2008 Beijing Olympic opening ceremony. Then we went outside with our stopwatch and held our own kindergarten Olympic race. After the race, we had an American student win first place, an Australian student win second place and the rest of the students representing third place coming from a variety of countries. Mrs. Gamache and Mrs. Pinson hummed the American anthem in our own classroom medal ceremony. Every child received a gold medal that they could decorate.
April Fool's Day April 1, 2009
A Busy Week in the Kindergarten Room March 27, 2009
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We accomplished a lot this week in the kindergarten room. On Monday the first graders joined us as we learned about the Water Cycle. On Thursday we had a little green visitor, a slimy frog that sat very still. On Friday we recorded a fun song, hopefully you will see more about it later. . . We also received a letter from Alex in South Carolina. We began working on a video letter that we will be sending back to him. Our final “Fun Friday” activity was our Spring Hunt. The children took their clipboards outside and observed how spring was arriving. They documented at least four things by drawing pictures as well as writing words to go with them. Nice job Kindergarteners! |
Welcome Spring! We've been waiting a LONG time! March 20, 2009
To welcome the first day of Spring we made Strawberry SpringCake! The boys and girls helped us measure out the ingredients. First, we reviewed that when using a measuring cup, we had to make the ingredient match the line of the measure we need. We also learned that 1/3 is half of 2/3. We all stirred and mixed and then put our cake into the oven to bake. After lunch, when our cake had cooled down, every student was offered fresh strawberries and a little plastic knife to cut them up. We reviewed kitchen safety, and the children did a great job. Finally the children were able to put cool whip and their strawberries on top of their cake creating their own Strawberry SpringCake! It was another Fun Friday! |
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Spirit Week! and Presenting: The Foot Book March 13, 2009
Comments from muriel: "MARAVILLOSO!!" |
What a Fabulously Fun and Wacky Week! Sports Day! Pajama Day! Beach Day! CRAZY Hair Day! Mismatch Day! The participation was great! We managed to squeeze in some academics around all the fun this week and we finished our “The Foot Book” voicethread. We hope everyone has a restful weekend. See you next week! |
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! March 6, 2009
We had had such an action packed and fabulous week. First we celebrated Dr. Seuss’s 105th birthday on Monday. We started work on a class “Foot Book”, built clay creatures from his books, created Seussical buildings, counted Cat’s in Hats while practicing our handwriting, solved an –at word riddle book and visited http://www.seussville.com.
The fun didn’t stop there! We celebrated Square Root Day on 3-3-09! The sixth graders came to our room and helped us make squares with blocks and colorful squares and find the square root. That was fun!
Thursday we had our own Kindergarten Pajama Day! We read the book Pajama Day! By Lynn Plourde, cuddled with our blankets and special friends while we watched “Banana’s in Pajamas” and made pancakes. Yum!
Finally, we ended the week with our school wide science fair! The kindergarteners worked through the scientific method. We hypothesized what would happen to human teeth that were soaked in Water, Sprite and Pepsi. We spent several weeks observing the teeth. This week we concluded that water is healthy for teeth and Pepsi and Sprite are not! At the end of the day we presented our finding for the whole school!
Whew! What a week! It sure was fun!
Using Ten Frames February 27, 2009
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In math we practiced using models to solve problems. We introduced the “ten frame” which is a precursor to using and understanding base ten blocks. During centers had 3 “ten frames” together to practice modeling numbers up to 30. Children picked numbers and then used Beanie Babies as manipulatives. It was so much fun! |
Kindergarten Soars February 13. 2009
This week the seventh and eighth graders came to help us build rockets. We have been learning about force in motion as well as gravity. We watched “The Magic School Bus Plays Ball: A Homerun with Physics” as well as “The Magic School Bus Gains Weight: The Laws of Gravity” and the boys and girls can tell us all about gravity and forces. The rockets were powered by air blown through a drinking straw. Each kindergartener launched their rocket two times and we recorded the distance. After finishing the experiment, the children worked in small groups with Mr. Foster on the computers. They saw how he could create a graph with the information. We look forward to working on more graphs in technology after the winter break.
In other news this week: We celebrated the 100th day of school. Many of the children brought in their collections of 100 objects. In the afternoon we counted out 100 each of marshmallows, chocolate chips, pieces of popcorn, pretzels, raisins, M&Ms, Cocoa Puffs, Smarties, candy corn, and Cheerios. We learned that 10 groups of 100 = 1000! Then each child got a cup of our “trail mix” to graph individually. After the graphing activity we all enjoyed a yummy snack!
Kindergarten Poets are Published February 6, 2009
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Late last fall the kindergarten children heard a poem by Ilene Fisher that they really enjoyed called “I Am.” We used the format to create our own “I Am” poems. Then we sent them to the Creative Communication Poetry Contest. We were so excited when we were notified by the Editors of the contest that there was “a very atypical situation;” all of the poems submitted were selected for publication. On this voicethread, you can hear every child in our class reading their own poem accompanied by a self portrait. We hope you enjoy our presentation. |
Wonderful Worms January 23, 2009
This week we read the book Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser. For our Fun Friday activity we began with a warm-up activity to give the children a clue about what we were going to do. We read the words bugs, insect, worm, arachnid, dirt and soil. Then the children helped us make some nice brown mud. We mixed three cups of milk with pudding and we had mud! We followed that with a baggie of Oreos that the children got to smash into little pieces. That was FUN! After pouring in their “dirt” each child got a nice juicy worm to place on top – the gummy variety.
Wow that was a tasty teat! Cooking in the classroom always make a super “Fun Friday!”
Back to School! January 9, 2009
The Science Alive! animals visited us this week. We saw Blackberry – a Chinchilla, Tortellini – a Russian Tortoise, Cranberry – a Cranwells Horned Frog, Oliver – a Military McCaw and Snuggles – a Burmese Python. It was so cool to see the creatures up close and touch them as well. The snake wasn’t slimy at all!
We also had a great time learning about snowflakes this week. We read several books about snowflakes, looked at a cool science book all about snowflakes with beautiful pictures of real snowflakes. We learned about a man named Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley who was passionate about taking pictures of snowflakes over 100 year ago. For our “Fun Friday” event we made our own edible snowflakes. We cut tortillas and cooked them with butter on a skillet and added parmesan, mozzarella and swiss cheese. Yum!
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Don't forget to check out our fun activities from earlier this year: http://ecakinderkids.weebly.com/fall-2008.html