Traveling Around The Globe!

Our Exploratorium has been transformed!

The Bear Cave has been a popular spot for dramatic play lately.  Remember those bears I told you the children traced, cutout, and stuffed last week....here they are to welcome our little "cubs" into fun play and learning activities.  Ziad wrote the introduction about brown bears being found in North America, Europe, Asia, and Northern Parts of Africa.




Saying G'day to Australia!

Among the many lessons about animals and plants living in Australia, the children learned this week about the Aborigine People of Australia.  They learned about Aboriginal art and even were encouraged to add their own art using stencils of animals and other nature (As Aboriginal Art is based upon what they see around them in nature) to a makeshift paper replica of Uhluru...AKA, Ayers Rock located in Central Australia and a sacred place for Aborigine People.

The sand table was filled with sand and red clay.  The clay was to represent Ayers Rock and the children  ROCKED it!  They molded and stacked it right in the middle of the table, added some eucalyptus which we learned is the choice food of koalas in Australia, and put in some of the creatures we learned to be uniquely Australian.
We read books of fiction and non, looked at videos, played games, sang songs, and filled in our KWL chart for the animals we "know", "want to learn about", and "learned about".  Our chart and brains were filled with koalas, kangaroos and opossums, which are marsupials and carry their babies in a pouch. Emus, the strangely tall birds that run very fast but do not fly, frilled dragons that have a frilly flap that flies out around their head and neck to scare predators away, dingos (wild dogs), and much more!  The children learned about the official Australian tree called the Golden Waddle and used a math lesson to make one to display in our Exploratorium.  The Golden Waddle is a tree with fluffy golden flowers.  We decided that cotton would represent the fluffy and yellow "dotters" would make them golden.  The children took turns and rolled some dice, added up the dots, counted that many cotton balls and glued them on.  Once glued the cotton was dotted to look like the flowers on the Golden Waddle.  We combined our flowers with those of the other two JK classes to "grow" the beautiful Australian tree in our Exploratorium.  Stay tuned for pictures later this week.

This week we will "travel" to the rainforest of South America and the freezing Antarctica. We're ready! Take a look!

South American Rainforest

The frigid cold of the two poles (combined for the purpose of fun) brings a lot of cool fun to Florida kids!

Exploring our world is great!

This Wednesday we will explore the beautiful international gardens of Botanical Gardens Florida.  We are very excited about this trip.  It is our first full morning trip where we will take sack lunches and picnic in the lush gardens.  I have two parent volunteers already signed up and we are ready to go!  We will leave school at 8:30 am and return after lunch in time for rest.  Please be sure to send your child with a bag lunch and disposable containers on Wednesday.

Planning Ahead!

We would love for you (Adults only please) to join us on Friday March 9th for the JK Activity Day.  It's sure to be a blast! We will travel the seven continents and experience life around the globe.  The children (and you) will engage in crafts, socio-dramatic play, cooking, eating, singing and so much more. Come and be a part of the excitement. We ask that if you'd like to be a volunteer (and we sure could use you) you arrive early, around 8:15 or so.  If you'd simply like to come for the show and the food, please arrive by 11 am.  Either way, we'll be glad to see you!

Have a happy week!

Exploring our world!

Last week in JK the children embarked upon a journey around the world!  It all began in North America, where they all drew pictures of animals they know or want to know more about.  As a class we made a list of the things we know about these animals, want to know about these animals, and added what we learned about them at the end of the week.  One animal that kept popping up on our list was the brown bear!  Go figure! :)  The children were excited to learn that brown bears are not always brown and that they not only live in North America, but in parts of Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia too.  We talked about hibernation and what bears eat.  The children traced almost life-size brown bears on paper, cut them out, painted them, and stuffed them to add to our homemade bear cave in the Exploratorium.  It was beary fun work!

Tuesday's Valentine party was a happy success!  The children had so much fun, and it was fantastic to have so many Parent Volunteers.  Thank you!!

Wednesday was a hoot!  When one of our Bright-Eyed Bears shared that he had seen a Great-horned owl in one of the trees on campus...during the day.....we just had to check it out!  What a beautiful creature!  I was able to take some pictures, but the children were able to really learn about and discover the amazing world of owls.  Take a look!

Back in the classroom we looked at a youtube video of the birds, read a book about them, and then headed back outside to look for owl pellets.  The children were a little too excited (lol) to find out that owls regurgitate or spit up their food in the form of pellets.  They learned about how owls are nocturnal, hunt for foods such as mice, rats and other small rodents, etc. and swallow their food whole.  When the food goes down, the strong acids in the owls body breaks down the "good" parts that the owl can use, such as the meat.  The fir, bones, feathers, etc. is packed together into a solid pellet and spit out for teachers and students to find and explore for learning.  We found the pellets of this particular owl near the tree where he/she was perched.  The children took their Science journals to draw pictures of what they learned and wore gloves to sift through the pellets where they found bones, fir, and feathers.  We found that our owl really likes mice!

Although stinky, these owl pellets were very informative!

Flora and Fauna From Around The World!

Friday's Exploring was "Inta" this world!!!  We had an outta sight time though!  As we prepare for our journey around the world to study the flora and fauna, the children made all sorts of awesome props to transform our center.  They used their fine motor skills to cut on a spiral to make vines and branches for the rainforest.  Trees were made from the paper towel, toilet, and wrapping paper rolls that were brought in, using paper mache.   Leaves were traced, cut out and sponge painted.  The igloo was dismantled to make icebergs for Antarctica. The continents were magnified and projected onto paper to trace, cut out and display on a giant world bulletin board in the Exploratorium.  The water was created by little people feet painted with blue paint and dancing across paper. Mrs. McIvor had a room filled with instruments from around the world for the children to experience.  The best was the snack, of course!  A tortilla was literally painted with blue and green cream cheese to resemble the earth!  After painting, the children rolled up their tortilla earth and enjoyed tasting their magnificent work.  It was "Inta" this world!

Take a look!

Reminders for this week:
The Valentine Party is Tuesday.  The festivities will begin at 9am.  Please be sure to send in your child's Valentines by Tuesday morning at the latest.  The Valentines will be read during the party.  The children may wear Valentine and/or pink and red spirit clothes that day!

Wednesday is the Hot Dog Picnic Lunch for Relay for Life.  The children may wear purple shirts and uniform bottoms that day.  The picnic begins at 12:00 for JK.  Join us please!

It's going to be a great week!

Busy Busy Bright-Eyed Bears!

'Tis the season of LOVE.  The Bright-Eyed Bears know how to show it every day.  Friendship and love were the theme of this week's centers.  The children started the week with putting sounds to words and words on paper to show their love. Valentines!

Learning tray activities with a Valentine theme were introduced to enhance fine motor and sorting and classifying skills, visual discrimination, continuing patterns and more.  The children really enjoyed working with them.  One of the favorites was a Transferring Tray where the children used tweezers to transfer tiny beads from a container to a heart-shaped mat filled with slots, one for each bead.

Isn't learning sweet!  It is when you use candy conversation hearts as your graphing medium!

The children loved using this sweet treat to sort, count and graph.  They were even allowed to sample one heart afterward to celebrate a job well done! 

We baked yummy pumpkin muffins to celebrate a happy birthday.

Mrs. McIvor shared a violin experience with our class this week, and I was lucky enough to be there to capture the moment. That was definitely a sweet treat!

Our 2nd trip to First Fruits Hydroponic Farm was FABULOUS!  The children were so excited to pick the strawberries they planted last fall when we first visited.  Red, sweet and juicy! Just look at those smiles!

It's been a SWEET week so far!  Mrs. Cummings and I are looking forward to our visit with you on Thursday. Friday is a regular Exploring day......Spirit Day!
Valentine's Day is a RED AND/OR PINK...VALENTINE SPIRIT WEAR day. The children may dress down in the spirit.
Wednesday the 15th is a PURPLE day....The children may wear purple shirts with uniform bottoms in honor of Relay For Life.

Stay tuned......

adios enero! Good bye January!

This week we bid good bye to January!  We said adios enero!  Hello February!  hola febrero!  It was a great month!  Here are some of our highlights in pictures.

gasin' up the bikes

learning new tricks

lots of teamwork activities

welcoming special people into our classroom

Myla played her guitar for us!

We enjoyed a SNOW DAY....Florida style!

Florida snowman!

Shorecrest Circus!  Aren't our tigers cute!

A lot of thought goes into building with the Bright-Eyed Bears.

AND SO MUCH MORE!!!

We spent a lot of fun time outside this past week.  As we wrapped up our Author Study with books by Doreen Cronin, the children enjoyed story time in all sorts of "nooks" on the Shorecrest campus. We walked to the Faculty Garden outside of the theater to read one day and joined 7th grade reading buddies on the playground and in our own garden for story time on another.  The whole class took a walk to the Shorecrest pond behind the baseball fields, and even ran on the track around the football field after spying all sorts of exciting birds and creatures.  We had a Mystery Reader in the Library on Thursday...Myla's mommy!  We even got to see a story come to life on the big stage when our very own Shorecrest 4th graders performed "We Haz Jazz!".  What a treat! The children were singing the songs all day long after the show. On February 7th the children will skip rest time to go and see Aesop's Fables in the theatre. We love a good story!

looking for the turtle

 Wow! Itty bitty minnows

Reading buddies are the best!

In class the children worked on numeral recognition of numbers to 30, and practiced counting with 1-1 correspondence. Each child learns differently and at his/her own pace.  That is always taken into account during our center and classroom activities.  Games like Number Bingo, Chutes and Ladders, Go Fish, Memory and more are great motivators for extra learning at home and also a lot of fun for the whole family! :)

Teacher picks me a number.  I say what it is.  Then I count out that many objects to paste on my paper.

The children have really been enjoying bookmaking activities and dictating stories.  What's even more exciting is that many of them are beginning to sound out and print their own words for these stories.  Mrs. Cummings and I are encouraging the children to print words phonetically in order to get them writing! No worries if the spelling is a little off....it's what they hear and they are learning! :)  Printing on paper with stationery head and on white boards, chalkboards, easels, etc.with many different media is great for getting these little friends excited about reading and writing.

Isn't learning GREAT!

This week is a busy, busy one!
Monday and Tuesday we will focus on the letter Vv and activities will center around Valentine's Day.

On Wednesday, February 8th we will return to First Fruits Hydroponics to pick strawberries. First Fruits is the farm we visited in October. We saw many plants that were just sprouting flowers or had tiny fruit buds but there wasn't anything that was ready to be harvested back then. The boys and girls will now get to see the fully ripened fruit and we will bring some back to school for snack. We will leave school around 8:30 and will return around 9:45.

Thursday is Spring Parent/Teacher Conference Day!  Can't wait to visit with you!

Friday will be a regular Exploring day! :)

Have a great week!