We heard books this week about kid-friendly ways to take care of the earth. They listened to the books and acted one book out while listening. Later in the week each drew and wrote to answer the question: What can I do to take care of the earth? They illustrated and wrote. Some wrote a lot by themselves, sounding out words and finding words in the question or a book or around the classroom. Others worked by sounding out and writing words with a teacher or finding their sentence in a book. They were expected to begin a sentence with a capital letter, use spaces between words, and end with a period. All of them had thoughtful answers, worked hard, and did well.

We connected with our reading/writing theme of taking care of the earth by participating in Green Up Day. In two groups, we went around our forest classroom, through the field, down Downer Forest Road, back to the School, and up the driveway picking up a lot of litter along the way. The children worked hard and had fun spotting the trash, using the grabbers, holding the green bags for each other, and comparing how much litter each team collected. Great job, kindergarten!

So many fun activities have been going on since last you heard from me!

Our read aloud before vacation was Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One day we did a variety of activities that they might have done during that time period, for example, making paper dolls, playing marbles, and playing a button game. Throughout the unit we often compared ways that our time is the same and different from Laura’s time and posted them on a board. When we finished the book, we did a writing piece about the ways things are the same and different. These were sent home earlier this week. We also looked at photos of artifacts that were used during the 1870’s. In pairs, the children had to guess what they thought it was used for, and then look at another card with an explanation of what it was. Some of them were really hard to figure out! The class really enjoyed hearing this book and keep asking to read another one, so if you are looking for read aloud ideas, keep Laura Ingalls Wilder in mind.

We also read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. We brainstormed ways to take care of our earth, sorted some recycling items, and planted our own mini landfill so we can see what happens to tin, glass, paper, orange peel, plastic, and styrofoam. We will dig it up in a few weeks to see if any of it decomposed.

On Friday afternoon we walked down to Colburns to deliver the money that we had collected for the food shelf. There was about $45.00. Next week a teacher will deliver the food to the Sharon Food Shelf.  

It was a great first week back from spring break! During math we began our new Geometry unit. We focused on identifying different quadrilaterals and triangles.

We continued our discussion of character traits during reading and noticed how a character’s behavior tells us more about them.

To practice reading words with consonant clusters and long vowels, students played games of concentration and lotto. We began our new informational writing unit this week by picking a topic and using different resources to begin our

research!