I knew I wasn't done with loading you all up on things I've been up to lately! I just finished my four straight weeks of teaching last week, and I tried to take pictures of a lot of the things we did along the way.
I started a weather unit with them during my second week teaching full-time. I downloaded an app called Kid Weather, and we created an avatar and voted on a name for him: Metal the Weather Dog. We checked the weather each day with Metal, and as time progressed and their curiosities grew, we started checking the radar and the forecast for our area on the Weather Channel app. This was one of their favorite things to do every day. They learned a lot about temperature and the forecast, and it was fun to hear them talk like little meteorologists.
To kick off the unit, I asked the question, "Is air really there, and does it take up space?" One child told me, "If air took up space we would be bumping into it all the time!" So we did an experiment (which I forgot to take a picture of) with a beaker, some clay, a funnel, and water. The clay sealed the funnel and the beaker together to prevent air from coming out, and then when I poured water into the funnel, it didn't go into the beaker the way they predicted it would. Then we talked about what was filling up that supposedly empty space. It made for great discussion and they were able to see that, yes, air does take up space.
The next day we talked about wind. What is wind? What creates wind? How can we measure the wind? We created some anemometers and went outside to measure the wind as a class on a windy afternoon. Watching them chase after the wind was too precious.
We also talked about how the heat affects us and where the heat comes from. We did an experiment where we left chocolate chips half in shadow and half in sunlight to observe what happened over time. This also made a yummy snack later!
We talked about the different kinds of clouds, as well. We read several books and wrote some of the descriptive words we thought of for each to make a chart. Then, we made our own clouds with shaving cream, glue, and paint.
As I mentioned before, the final part of our weather unit was writing about our favorite weather and creating an audio recording on AudioBoo and a QR code to go on our illustrations for people in the hallway to check out.
I tried to incorporate a weather theme into our centers, as well. Some of our friends are working hard on the teens numbers, so we had a Cloudy Number Words match-up for our writing center one week.
For word work one week, we had a Rainy Digraph Sorting Station. Those digraphs can be pretty tricky, so we are still working on a few of them.
In math, we have been comparing numbers. Which number is larger? Which one is smaller? How do you know? Etc. We have also been incorporating more graphs, like the one below that we did for Dr. Seuss Week.
A huge emphasis this late in the year in kindergarten is more reading. More independent reading, more buddy reading, more more more reading. So I added weekly Book Reviews to their centers/rest time routine. As the year goes on, these will change into more in-depth critiques about the books they are reading, except for a couple of our ELL friends who are still getting used to the review process.
And finally, these are some of their St. Patrick's Day writing samples. We listened to Eve Bunting's That's What Leprechauns Do, and they wrote their own ideas about what they would do if they were mischievous leprechauns. They came up with some pretty hilarious stuff! I also loved how different each of their faces were that they made. Some of them had 9 eyes! Hey, who am I to say a leprechaun doesn't have 9 eyes, right?
Phew. I think I'm almost completely caught up on all of this! I probably won't have as much classroom stuff to share over the next few weeks... unless I find a job! Fingers and toes crossed and lots of prayers that that happens for me! Until then, I'm trusting that God has a plan... and I'm stalking ALSDE and Teach in Alabama every day ;)
Happy teaching!
Andrea
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