Ways to Read a Book

During Read and Rest this week we went over the 4 ways we can read our books during this time!  This anchor chart is a fantastic visual for us to refer to as we continue to build our stamina as independent readers!

Calling All Firefighters!!

These pictures were too cute not to post!!  During free choice time today it was a joy to observe all of the little firefighters hard at work....taking emergency calls and sending the firefighters out to rescue! :-)

How A Pumpkin Grows...

Today during Shared Reading we read a fantastic non-fiction text by Melvin and Gilda Berger titled "Pumpkins".  In this story we learned how pumpkins grow and the different places pumpkins go once they are grown!

GK and SK were super strong and held up our clothesline while we sequenced the life cycle of the pumpkin!  This is now available for all of the children to try in our Science Work Station!

We even made 3 dimensional pumpkin models to share the life cycle of the pumpkin!  We will soon post a video with one of our scientists explaining the process!

Firefighters!!

Firefighters help us in so many ways!  Check out our great thinking...

We also learned a new poem...

Five Little Firefighters
Five little firefighters sleeping in a row.
Ring goes the bell, down the pole they go.
They jump on the engine and put out the fire.
Now they're back home, but they sure are tired.

Check out this cute project...

A Special Chicka Snack!

Thanks to your fabulous donations we were able to enjoy a special Chicka Snack on Friday!!  Yum!!

Fire Safety!

Last Thursday we had tons of fun visiting the Hartland Fire Department!!  We started our visit by learning great strategies to keep ourselves safe from fire and what to do if there ever was a fire in our home!  We practiced crawling under "smoke" and watched a firefighter put on all of his gear!  Wow!  They were A LOT of protective gear to keep themselves safe when fighting a fire!  We now know that we shouldn't be afraid of firefighters, even if they look a little bit scary with everything on!  :-)  We then split into two groups to tour an ambulance and practice spraying a water hose!  Wow!!  The water hose sure was heavy!!

Skyping With Our New Friends!!

Last Friday we had so much fun meeting with our new Kindergarten friends from Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten Classroom in Hawaii!!  On the day we met it was 50 degrees here in Wisconsin and 85 degrees in Hawaii!  Can you believe it?  We had a great time introducing ourselves to Mrs. Lee's kindergartners and asking them questions!  They had great questions to ask us, too!  We will meet with Mrs. Lee's class each month throughout the year to share our learning experiences :-)  How fun!

Our First Trip to the Hartland Public Library!

Last Thursday we had lots of fun walking to the Hartland Public Library for the first time!!  We were thrilled to learn we would be able to check out two books with our new library cards!  During this visit we focused on how to handle the books properly when borrowing them from the library and took a tour of the library!  Our library has tons of resources available to us!!

Our First Field Trip!

Tuesday was a fun filled day at Homestead Animal Farm for our first field trip!!  We rotated through five fabulous stations!!  We had the opportunity to observe lots of different animals in the barnyard, learn more about baby chicks and pumpkins, plant our own "wheaties", practice farm chores, pick our very own gourds, pick out a pumpkin, go through the corn maze and go on a hayride!!  We had so much fun!!! :-)  Thanks to JL's Grandma and LF's Dad we have TONS of pictures to share with you!!  Thank you so much to all of the fabulous chaperones for coming with us!!  This trip would not have been possible without you!!  We had so many pictures we needed to make two videos!!  Enjoy!

We are Scientists!!

On Friday we became expert scientists!  We engaged in three different experiments to explore color mixing!  We first read the story Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh to discover...

blue + yellow = green
yellow + red = orange
red + blue = purple

For our first experiment we placed a blue ice cube in a cup of yellow lemonade and sure enough it turned green!!

For our second experiment we combined yellow and red playdough in our hands!  Look what happened!!  It turned orange!

For our final experiment we built a bridge out of paper towels to join a glass of red water and a glass of blue water.  Throughout the day we made observations and were able to see a tiny purple line where the two colors met!

Great scientists always record their observations...so did we!

Coconut Activities!

Last Thursday we had lots of fun predicting whether or not our coconut would sink or float!  We definitely thought it would sink....but guess what happened??

After our sink or float activity we were ready to open our coconut and use our five senses to describe our observations!!

Check out all of our fun!!

Apples, Apples, Apples!!

Last Thursday we were very excited to welcome AB's Grandma Gail into our classroom!!  Grandma Gail helped us learn lots about apples!  We even made yummy applesauce to enjoy at the end of our day!!  Thank you Grandma Gail!