Ms. Lauren's Kindie Crew 23-24: Crew News January 12th, 2024

Announcements

Snow Gear- A big thank you for sending snow gear in this week, including outside boots and inside shoes. I truly appreciate it! Also, I've noticed how much more quickly and independently students have been getting their gear on and off- Bravo!

Calendar

Jan 15th: No School; Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Jan 31st: Ms. Lauren's Crew leads The Beat 9-9:30

Crew Highlights:

Expedition Update!

(Reminder- expeditions are what we call our social studies and science units.)

Last semester, our focus was on social studies with our WE ARE CREW expedition.

We just revealed in our next expedition, we will be focusing on SCIENCE.

The first place to start was brainstorming "what do we think we know about scientists?" Then we watched a video and read a book to learn more.

This chart shows their thinking and learning.

Next we began working as scientists. At 12:50pm, I collected some snow from our outside playground and slushy blacktop. I asked what questions do you have? They had many! But we decided to focus on: how fast will the snow melt? What will it look like? Students made predictions that ranged from 1 hour to 4 months for the cup of snow to melt. Also, some predicted the water would be clear and others predicted that it would be very dirty.

At 1:50

And at 3:45!

Students noticed all the dirt (and woodchip- ha!) in the water.

Some concluded that maybe they should stop eating the snow from the playground (yes please!). It was a great example of using the scientific method from start to finish! We will be doing another experiment before we reveal the official topic of our new science expedition.

In writing, we launched a unit on Pattern Blocks. We read an example, and students began writing their own 3 page pattern book, using one of the suggested sentence starters.

In phonics, we are easing back into the swing of things, and we took some time to review and practice the sight words that we have covered so far.

Here is our list for reference.

In reading, we have been reviewing a variety of skills with our read alouds including: identifying the author, illustrator, & title on the cover; retelling the events of the plot in order; comparing/contrasting characters across two texts; and using opposites to help us better understand word meanings. Then students took a Benchmark Assessment to practice these higher level skills indpendently.

In math, we have been working on Subtraction Within 5. Students used manipulatives, pictures, and even play-doh to model subtraction problems. I try to use a variety of language to talk about subtraction, so that they are familar with the words "take away," "minus," "subtract," and "difference."

On Tuesday, we had outdoor teambuilding with Mr. Cody. The theme of each game was using integrity. In one game, they were passing different sized balls using elbows only, and in another game, students had to alternate with running and freezing to accomplish a goal. Our crew did GREAT and used their integrity!

Check Seesaw for pictures of passing the ball with elbows.

Running and then freezing (standing still) to capture the ball.

On Wednesday, Mr. Doug hosted our school cup-stacking tournament. It was incredible to see students of all grades (even 2 Kindies!) race against each other, until there was the last one standing as our school champion! It was truly inspiring to see the participants give each other high fives or fist bumps after each match, celebrating that each person tried their best. With perseverance, anyone can master this skill!

With 4th grade buddies, students set goals and New Years Resolutions.

There were a page of choices,

and it was fun to see which ones they selected as their resolutions.

These will come home in Take Home Folders.

In preparation for our upcoming holiday, we spent some time talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his impact. It is very inspiring to hear kindergartners talking about friendship and treating everyone with kindness and respect!