Counting Carrots!

 Springtime is the best time of year in kindergarten. Everything starts coming together, and the Bunnies can do so much independently. After lunch, one day, my desk was covered with the leftover carrots that no one seemed to enjoy. We quickly turned this into some math and reading fun. 

We read the classic book, The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, and then went outside to plant carrot seeds of our own. After all, we're Kinder Bunnies, so carrots should be our favorite snack. I passed out the carrot sticks and asked the students to create different carrot combinations. Check out what we came up with. Afterward, we washed the carrots and gobbled them up.

Remember, you're a counting star!

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

 April 10, 2022

                             Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! We Love Bugs!

This month, the Kinder Bunnies started their entomology study by looking at various bugs. We started with bees, ants, and ladybugs. Of course, a revisit with spiders is always fun. After reading The Best Bug Parade by Holly Keller, https://youtu.be/MJvjqXeo-eo, we also investigated super worms. 

We used dice and our counting skills to create ladybug addition art. We're working on more bug projects as the month moves along. * This activity came from Whimsy Workshop Teaching. 

When students have a chance to interact with nature, they develop many skills. We counted our worms, compared their sizes, and noticed their speed and what they liked to eat. They also learned how to care for other living things. Their conversations were filled with new vocabulary words, and they formed honest opinions based on first-hand experiences. 

Picture by S. Thomas.

We'll be back with more bug fun soon. 

Happy Counting!

Hopping into Spring!

 March 21, 2022. 

                                Hopping into Spring!

The Kinder Bunnies have been very busy investigating rocks, soil, and the moon over the past few weeks. The stars, dirt, rocks, and space are always a big hit with little ones. There are great phone apps to help bring the stars right to their hands. One of my favorites is StarTracker. (Tracker https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.PYOPYO.StarTracker&hl=en_US&gl=US).  

        

            We started by collecting rocks and then counting them. A rock collection is easy to start and build on wherever you go. The Bunnies sorted their rocks by size, color, and shape. Next, we used our measuring tools to learn how to compare the different weights. Our work would only be complete with reading all about rocks. A book that we enjoyed was Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans. Another fantastic book that the Bunnies connected with was Rhonda's Rock Hunt by Molly Beth Griffen(https://youtu.be/6l1NXnkdE8E ).

       Learning about rocks made us wonder more about the sun. We experimented with sun prints and engineered shade structures to see if we could protect our "photo-sensitive" bead pet from getting sunburned. (https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/store/uv-color-changing-beads.html).

Pack your bags! We're off to the Arctic!

    

                                                                 Arctic Wonders

       The Kinder Bunnies often surprise me with the topics they want to learn more about each month. This December and January were all about the North Pole and Arctic animals. One of our math stories, The Arctic Fives Arrive by Elinor Pincez, intrigued my students so much that we spent two months learning about different Arctic animals and their unique habitats. The book is a beautiful way to introduce the concept of skip counting or counting in larger groups. Each new animal arrives in groups of five to an iceberg, making room for the next group. 

We extended our learning by exploring how these animals survive in the Arctic cold. We conducted our own experiment to see if blubber really does keep a polar bear and walrus warm enough to swim in freezing water. We practiced using tally marks to record our survey results, and the Bunnies soon noticed that our tally marks were also grouped by fives! 

      Two brave scientists testing our hypothesis that blubber should keep you warm if you're an Arctic animal swimming in the freezing water. They placed a gloved hand inside a blubber bag while their other hand went into "freezing" water. We had great conversations about what it means to be cold and wet. We live in Southern California, where it happened to be eighty degrees outside the day we did this experiment, so naturally, we wanted our own snow day.  It was a great chance to use our measurement skills. 

      After our polar plunge, we went inside to experience ice exploration. After all, the animals in the Arctic Fives Arrive were on an iceberg. Two bags of ice, tweezers, droppers, and string are a great way to spend time exploring and understanding how water and ice work. 

     We measured two cups of hair conditioner to two boxes of baking soda to make our "fake" snow day. While it wasn't the real thing, they had fun forming snowballs and using measuring tools. 

                                                                     Snow Day Fun!

               Our learning wasn't completed until we built our own igloos with Keva Planks and measured our Antarctic penguins. We enjoyed the book Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice by Steve Metzger.

Stay warm!

We're Math-Tastic!

Let's Fly! Bat Conversations and Research

 In October, we spent time learning how to learn or research a new topic. I love this activity because it's inclusive.

We're using the pictures and illustrations to open up a lot of questions, concerns, and discoveries. We used our new knowledge to write about bats. 

One of our favorite counting books is Five Little Bats Flying in The Night by Steve Metzger.

Who Loves to Learn? Bunny Do!

      Last Fall, we spent time learning about owls and pumpkins. One of their challenges was to engineer an owl nest that could hold an owl and an egg. The Bunnies are free to choose how to accomplish this task with their supplies (pipe-cleaners, plastic egg, and an owl puppet from Ikea). Open-ended projects help little brains build new connections, build relationships, and teach patience. They can either work alone, in teams, or with partners, but either way, this activity makes them think. The feeling of success is felt as soon as someone shares their work, and then others realize that they'll have the same success with a bit of perseverance. 

Another one of our favorite fall experiences is dissecting owl pellets. Usually, this is something that fifth graders engage in, but Kinder Bunnies are scientists who are hungry for knowledge. 

After reading and watching videos about owls, we spent time dissecting pellets. They were overjoyed to find various bones, fur, and other parts. They quickly connected that if an owl catches sick prey, then they'll get sick. It's our job to keep our habitats safe and clean. 

We also learned about pumpkins. Our last activity was inspired by reading Dianne Ochiltree's book Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins.   We took our pumpkins to the playground to test force and motion. In fact, pumpkins roll and quickly. 

                                                           You're STEM-Tastic!

We read Counting with Owl and Bird by Rebecca Purcell, Counting Numbers 1-20 with Owl for Toddlers by R. Rose, various owl poems and rhymes, Owls by Gail Gibbons, National Geographic Readers Owls by Laura Marsh, to name a few. 

Apples, Dice, and Math Mats, Are Nice!

Welcome back to our classroom. We've had a productive first semester that we'd love to share with you. One of the ways that we engage in math is by using art projects as math mats.

A math mat can be a coloring page, directed art project, or like the apple trees below. Each student designed their own apple tree, then used it for a dice game. Dice are fun and easy manipulative for little ones to manage. It helps them subsidize or see numbers quickly in groups, keep track of, and it's engaging. At the time, we were working on adding and subtracting to six. Students would roll their dice and add "apples"/cubes to their tree. Students could also use play dough apples or tiny apple cutouts. Once their tree was filled, they would roll again to "subtract" the apples. Some students decided to make this a partner game to see who could fill their trees up first. We played this game twice.

Another use for our math mats is to turn them into sound or letter sorting mats. Sorting is a life skill that is used in many subjects. Sorting pictures that begin with the letter A for apple or S for seed or T for the tree is one way to practice. We will add a writing piece about apples by the end of the week.

The week was also spent reading books about the life cycle of the apple along with excellent apple counting books. Ten Little Apples by Dial Books, Child's Play, Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins, Ten Apples Up On Top! by Dr. Seuss, Apple Countdown by Joan Holub, and Mr. Bear's Apple Tree are a few of our favorites. No week would be complete without apple engineering.

You're Math-Tastic!