Back to Learning Through Play

Well, we may have had a week off from school during March Break, but we were sure ready to get back to business in our kindergarten classroom.  Take a look at the great things that happened during the past week in JK/SK!

We started a discovery unit on "weather".  Each morning the students are filling in weather graphs.  We will be exploring different types of weather and began by talking about wind.  Look at our friends experimenting with the concept of "wind" as they try to blow different objects across the carpet.
 

We discovered that it was easier to blow things across the table.  The children also came to the conclusion that things shaped like cylinders and spheres would move farther as we blew on them because they roll.  We talked about how the wind blows things around outside, such as our garbage and things from our recycle box when we put them outside!  The children discussed how the wind can only move certain things and not others (e.g., houses, big trees, etc.)  We also talked about how we can't see the wind, but we can see the things the wind moves!

Another highlight from the past week was the opening our our BEACH CENTER!  One of our students suggested we change our house center into a beach.  So, off we went to work on getting this new center ready.  It took a few days and everybody contributed in some way from writing words to decorating fish for our water scene to hiding sea shells in the sand to helping make a price list for our beach snack bar sign.  It was almost as much fun getting this center ready as it was finally opening it!

Digging for sea shells at the beach and making sand castles with our friends!

Anyone ready to play beach ball?

Enjoying an ice cream cone while sitting by the water!

Check out the fish this friend caught!

We  had lots of creative building this week in our classroom.  It is truly amazing to see the structures and objects built by the children.  We are working on having the students talk in greater detail about what they have made.  We are also having the students create a paper to accompany their structures with sentences starters such as "I made __________________." and "This is a ________________."  The students are using their "best guess spelling" and the word wall to help as they write!