Thank you! Thank you!

Mrs. Cummings and I were floating on air all day long Tuesday! We felt so appreciated and loved!  WE both want to say "Thank You" for the lovely flowers and sweet cards we were showered with for Teacher Appreciation Day. Our lunch together, along with the whole Shorecrest faculty was such a nice treat! Every day is special with the Bright-Eyed Bears and we consider ourselves very lucky to experience so much learning with them.  Tuesday, however, was EXTRA special! Thank you!!!! xo

As a class we traveled around the campus to admire all of the decorated doors, yesterday.  They were really  GREAT.  Still, no decoration was quite as remarkable as the amazing quilt that decorates my classroom door!  During the week, the children sign-in on certain days to practice printing their first and last names.  The clever Mrs. Drygas gathered a recent sign-in from each child and embroidered them into a beautiful Bright-Eyed Bears quilt.  Tears of joy definitely came as I realized I can snuggle up with my little friends for many years to come with this precious gift and keep warm with memories of this fantastic year! Thank you so much Mrs. Drygas!!!

If only this picture could do the amazing quilt justice!  Mrs. Drygas did an AWESOME job!!! Please come in to see!

WE are celebrating Spring in JK! This week we began our exciting Insect unit!  The children started a new KWL chart to talk about what they already Know about Insects, Want to know about them, and we'll fill in what we Learn as we go along! The children studied pictures of different insects and drew pictures of the ones they had questions about and even labeled them too!  Now we have a starting point!

Books, videos, observation of live insects, "bug walks", and so much more will help us in our investigations. Here is a favorite video we've shared in class:

Wednesday was all about BUTTERFLIES! There were a staggering amount of questions about these beautiful creatures.  We investigated and found lots of answers, but we'll watch as caterpillars grow and change in our classroom to find out more! Stay tuned!
Ask the children about:
how many body parts an insect has, and what they are called
how many legs and where

butterflies:
how many wings
what the "feelers" do
how butterflies taste flowers
what butterflies use to "slurp" up the nectar from flowers (Proboscis)
where butterflies lay their eggs

(We are investigating these things first hand on a milkweed plant outside and another inside our classroom!)

I could go on and on! Your children are Insect GENIUSES!!

Have a great day! Until my next blog on Sunday enjoy these pics of fun JK goings on!

Loving Nature!

The end of the week was just as exciting as the beginning.  On Wednesday we took a trek to the Shorecrest  Pond for a little investigation.  There were all sorts of cool things to see; minnows, tadpoles, bugs, ducks, and more!  The children were excited to find clam shells on the shore.  Some of them were even whole!  Feathers, leaves, sticks, shells, rocks and more were found too for a special "sink and float" experiment.  The children discovered that dense rocks and shells sink, but lighter and hollow things like sticks, reeds, leaves and feathers don't! They took their Science Journals with them to draw pictures of the most exciting things and even labeled them with descriptive words all on their own.

Exploring on Friday offered great opportunities for the children to really explore their creativity.  There were pizza makers (a yummy homemade snack), nature sculptors, abstract artists, etc. It was an awesome day in Junior Kindergarten! My room was all about sculpting with natural clay and using objects from nature to enhance the final sculpture.  The children used river rocks to smooth the clay, sticks to cut and poke it, shells and leaves to make prints in and decorate the clay, and so much more! Take a look at my pictures and then visit the other JK blogs to see pictures of other rooms and exciting happenings.

 Once finished, the children drew pictures of their wonderful sculptures before removing the natural objects and offering their clay to another friend for making a new masterpiece.

Other excitement from the week included making habitats for our hermit crab friends to crawl around in and explore!

This week we look forward to Relay For Life on Friday!  We will kick off the day with a 9am walk around the track with Senior friends.  Later in the afternoon families are invited to visit and experience the many tents set up with food, crafts, and items for sale all honoring Relay For Life! Don't forget to wear purple all this week!  The children may wear a purple shirt with uniform bottoms Monday-Friday this week.

Have a great one!!!

A Super "Natural" Week Back!

What a happy week we have had so far!  Naturally!  We have had such lovely, sunny days lately.  It's such a pleasure to be outside and to bring some of the outside in as well.  Our week started with a nature walk, where the children collected interesting natural things they found around campus. Later, each child emptied the contents of his/her bag onto a small tray for closeup study.  We used magnifying glasses, and our senses to really investigate what was found.  The children used descriptive words to talk about their natural items, then they drew pictures of a few in their Science Journals and used inventive spelling to write the descriptive words.  Awesome! 

After each child recorded their information, the contents were packed back into the individual bags and collected to make a "baggie" nature book for the children to share in our Science Center.


It's so much fun to use nature for learning across the curriculum!  We love to spend a lot of time outside, but it's also great to bring the outside in!  The children played a matching game this week where they matched natural objects such as shells, rocks, leaves, bark, etc. to the impression each made in a moldable material we call "Bubber".  The children had to figure out which item made each impression, and tell why they thought their figures were correct.  Afterward, they were able to use those same natural objects and some others of their choice to make their own impressions in the "Bubber".  They also made cool art by using stamp pads in different colors and stamping the natural objects on paper. Take a look!

Mr. S invited us down to the Lower Division lunch area to take a look through his amazing telescope!  Guess what we saw!  A mama and papa bald eagle and their eaglets were perched at the top of the electrical tower in their beautiful nest.  We got a real birds-eye view of them in their own home! What an amazing treat!

This is the view from my camera.  The telescope view was so much better!!!

What was made by MAN and what came from NATURE?

The children sifted through a tub of sand that had a mixture of man made and natural items inside.  They discussed together which things came from people and which were created by "Mother Nature".  There were some interesting discussions about wooden pencils, polished rocks, etc. Where do they belong?  Ask your child? :)

It's been a naturiffic week so far!  Please stay tuned for more pictures and exciting descriptions about the days to come. We will head off to our campus pond tomorrow to do some more inquiring and investigative work!

Happy Wednesday!

Welcome Back!

Hello Friends!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Spring Break. What beautiful Florida weather we have been enjoying!
Activity Day was "animalazing"!  We had such a great time and hope you did too.  Thank you for being our guests.  I'm looking forward to more bright and lovely days outside with The Bright-Eyed Bears as we begin our Spring and Insect unit of investigation.  This week we will celebrate spring and enjoy making fresh new discoveries while investigating our campus pond and bringing the outside in to create a new Exploratorium for this season.  There will be plenty of pictures so stay tuned!
Speaking of pictures....I was so busy with the "trek" that I didn't get to take even one Activity Day picture.  If anyone did, I would LOVE to see them!  Thanks!
Have a great week!

Nicole

Coming Soon for your calendar....
*Celebrate The Arts Week....April 16-21.

It was another exciting week in Junior kindergarten!
As an extension of our unit, Flora and Fauna Around the World, we visited the Florida Botanical Gardens in Largo. The children spent the day outside visiting the different parts of the garden to see plants from all over the world.

We "traveled" in our imaginations to South America this past week.  We spent a lot of time in the Amazon Rainforest!  With help from videos, books like The Great Kapok Tree, and inquiry and investigation the children learned so much!  I cannot believe how full our KWL chart has become!  We started out with adding pictures and words about the animals we know, then moved on to the animals we want to know about, and finally added what we learned!  It has been so much fun in learning!  

 How delicious math can be!  In the Amazon Rainforest we learned about leaf cutter ants.  After watching a short video on youtube that showed us these mighty little workers in action the children experienced a math center that reinforced the addition and subtraction that has been introduced in previous math centers and everyday occurrences.  Raisins represented the ants.  The children worked with me individually and pulled a numeral from one pile, named it for me, then counted that many ants onto a leaf.  They then pulled a second numeral and named it for me.  This time, however, they either added it and told an addition story or subtracted it and told a subtraction story from the original ants on the leaf. This was a great lesson for numeral recognition, counting with 1-1 correspondence and critical thinking skills.  The children did an awesome job!

This week we will journey to the continents of Asia and Africa!  I cannot wait to see where this trip will take us in our animal inquiry!  It's all up to the children!

We are so excited to pull all of the continents and our learning about them together on Friday with our Activity Day!!!  It is sure to be a very special day.  I hope you can join us.  If you are a volunteer, please arrive no later than 8:15 am.  If you are simply joining us for the show and lunch, please be to school by 11 am.  Thanks so much!!! Have a great week!

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!