Insects, Weather, and Continents

Kindergartners were true entomologists, observing, catching, and reading about insects this week!  Since there are more than a million insect species they have only just begun their research! Many students enjoyed looking through the insects on this great site.

We continue to dive deeper into all types of weather.  This week we noticed the power of a windy day and made wind buddies, next week we will conduct experiments with the powerful sun. 

In Geography, we moved on to learning about the 7 continents. We noticed the blue on a map/globe is the water and the green or colorful spots are land.  North America is the name of our continent.  We will continue to explore the fascinating world that we live in.

Students continue to create beautiful work in our Poetry unit.  This week we read some fun poems titled Advice From....  These are poems that bring wisdom from nature. Here is an example of one.  

Have a great week!

What a busy week we had filled with guest readers, poetry writing, and math games!

This week we had 2 guest readers.  One was Edye Graning, our Jericho Representative.  She came in and read an inspiring book about a girl wanting to become president called Grace For President.  Later we had another guest reader, Ms. Jenny, who read the book Mel Fell.  A book about a kingfisher learning to fly. 

Students enjoyed writing poems outside while making observations of different flowers.  April and May are amazing times to notice all of the spring ephemerals, plants that begin to pop up early and tend to have a short blooming period.  Students came up with beautiful poems about trees and trilliums and made observational drawings of dandelions. 

In Math we have been talking about adding a number to 10, ultimately these are the foundational skills for understanding place value.  Many students are recognizing the patterns and tricks to solving these equations. 

Notes:  

On Friday, May 31st we will be honoring our UCS volunteers at our Volunteer Appreciation Assembly.  Our volunteers have helped in so many ways this year:

• Welcome back picnic
• Chaperoning field trips
• Helping in classrooms
• Serving on PTO
• Helping with the garden/planting our new tree
• Snow motion ski program
• Coaching GOTR

Volunteers, please join us at 8:00am on the 31st as we honor and thank you for the time you have given to our school community this year!!

 

                                                                            Spring Beauty

The spring ephemerals are popping up all over.  Students are enjoying watching our forest transform into a green paradise once again.  We learned that some of these special plants take several years to bloom, making coming upon a blossom that much more special!

This week we had fun watching our growing tadpoles, went on a frog hunt and got a bit muddy exploring.  We learned that spring peepers can jump 17 feet and a kindergartner can jump around 4-5 feet!

In our Geography unit, we have begun to learn about our country, the United States of America.  We now know that VT is one of 50 states!  We will continue to discover more about the U.S.A. this week.  

Thank you to those who helped make Teacher Appreciation Week so fun.  The thoughtful postcards, gifts, and delicious food all week for the staff made the week very special!

Lastly, Happy Mother's Day! Hopefully, you all received your marigolds. 💮

Notes:

A message from Mrs. Cowan:  We are very excited to start our biking unit next week in PE!  Kindergarten students will be biking on Mondays and Tuesdays (5/13 and 5/14, 5/20 and 5/21).  If your child is bringing their own bike, please drop it off Monday morning (at the bike racks by the stone bench) and you can pick it back up Tuesday.  Students should also bring their own bike helmets (we have extras for them to use if they don't have one).  Please make sure your child is wearing sneakers and has comfortable clothing to bike in.  Attached is a letter with more info as well as your child's schedule for biking.  If you are able to volunteer, please email Mrs. Cowan (PE) at Amanda.Cowan@mmuusd.org  Bike Trailer Parent Letter

5/13:  UCS Art/Music Night (rain date of 5/14), 5:00-6:30 pm: 

Tadpoles, Kindness Rock Garden, and Math Games Galore!

This week excitement has been around watching our frog eggs hatch to tadpoles in our classroom!  There has been endless gazing and wonder over these little amphibians.  We will follow this curiosity a little deeper next week.

Students have worked hard playing several partner games this week in math where they are working with subtraction and addition problems.  They also played another version of Bump, a loved game because of its playful and competitive bump advantage!

On Friday, we had a wonderful visit from some MMU students for their service day.  We created a kindness rock garden near the Owl Nest classroom.  It was a beautiful collaboration from all ages!