Gardens and Umbrellas

CIRCLE/LANGUAGE     We acted out the following words: grumpy, groaning, growling, grunting, grouchy, gobbling, and guzzling. Another fun activity was a game using beginning sounds. I hid a letter inside an egg and they had to find the picture with that beginning letter. They did awesome. Individually, the students dictated to me what makes them grin. Their answers were entertaining!  After reading, The Story of Feelings (Berkner), we role played many emotions. Also, we role played appropriate ways to communicate our feelings. As a group, we did several sequencing activities.

MATH      After reading the book, Making Graphs by Nechaev, we made our own graph by picking our favorite g food....graham crackers, green salad, granola, or grapes. Grapes were the favorite! We practice one to one correspondence when we wrote numbers on our gumballs.

SCIENCE   We are growing green grass in honor of G week! The children "wrote" their beginning letter of their name in the dirt and we sprinkled grass seed on the letter. The children are thrilled with the results and monitor their grass daily.  Our potato grew a potato! One child discovered a potato growing out of our potato.....hysteria ensued and our "scientists" were full of questions.

SOCIAL STUDIES      Using the map of the United States, each child picked 3 states they wanted to visit while on our classroom "bus". The page will be in their portfolios.

ART      We adorned a gumball machine by adding numbers and color. Children designed a garden complete with grass. Umbrellas were made with coffee filters and pasted on paper with "glitter" rain. Golf ball painting was used to paint U's.

BOOKS/SONGS      "The Great Green G",   Busy in the Garden (Shannon), Trouble Gum (Cordell), Gerties Gorilla's Glorious Gift (De Rubertis), Good Nite Gorilla (Rathman), Jewel the Unicorn (Dussling), My Red Umbrella (Bright), Babar's USA ( Brunhoff), Something from Nothing (Gilman)

CELEBRATIONS      We celebrated Israel's 63rd birthday with the entire school. There was a magician who performed and a parade of Israel flags designed by each classroom.  Thank you to the P.T.O. for the magician. The children thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it!   Thanks you to the P.T.O. for the final visit from the Schoolhouse Symphony. Their "shows" are always so age appropriate and the students look forward to it.

REMINDERS      There is no school on Monday, May 30...Memorial Day. Portfolio party is June 1 at drop off. Our end of the year picnic is on Tuesday, June 7. It is at Miami Riverview Park in Loveland. Details will be in backpack soon!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK     I was talking to one of the girls about moving on to kindergarten and being in school all day next year. She replied, "I don't want to grow up. I want to play!"  As we were eating a snack, one student proudly stated, "Elves are real...they make my favorite cookies!"