Teachers Go Bananas!

Have you ever seen your teacher go bananas before?  On March 1st, every teacher in the building dressed up like a character from one of their favorite books!  We then took turns "going bananas" and running into different classrooms to read our books to other children!  Here are the Lighthouse teachers after a long day of GOING BANANAS!!

Mr Kefgen ( from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), Ms. Mirjah (from the Cat in the Hat), Ms. Standard (from Where the Wild Things Are), Mrs. Woolsey (from Clifford the Big Red Dog), Ms. Josephson (from Ms. Nelson is Missing) and Ms. Demsky (from Fancy Nancy)

One of the silliest parts of the day was the song that played on the PA to signal the teachers to go bananas - Banana Phone by Raffi!

Shining Light

Last week, we had two Shining Lights!  I explained to the kindergarteners that I was looking for someone who does an excellent job of sharing.  Congratulations, Anthony and Jarvis!  Both of the boys showed what excellent shares they are, sharing both materials and taking turns!

Lighthouse Book Walk

To finish March is Reading Month, Lighthouse Village celebrated our love of reading by presenting a book walk for friends and family.  Each child chose a book and learned all of the story elements present in the book - characters, setting, plot, problem and solution.  Here we are presenting our information!  They all did such a wonderful job!

A great big CONGRATULATIONS goes to Anthony, who read the most books for our classroom contest - 50 books!  I am so proud of all the children who participated! 

Shining Light

Recently, Daryl was honored as our class' Shining Light!  Daryl was chosen because of his hard work during writer's workshop!  Daryl has been really working on writing a story with a complete beginning, middle and ending!  Way to go, Daryl!

Our Butterfly Field Trip

We had such an amazing time on our field trip to Oakland Mall to visit the butterfly exhibit.  We enjoyed 3 different locations during our experience.  Here we are getting ready to go on our first field trip.

We began by listening to the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar and watched videos explaing the life cycle and body parts of caterpillars and butterflies.

Here we are as we entered the butterfly house!  It was very hot inside, and there were butterflies flying everywhere!  We all got to hold a butterfly and watched them fly, climb and drink gatorade!

We also headed over to the art area wher we leaned how to make paper butterflies that flapped their wings when we pulled a string!

We had such a great time!  We can't wait for our next field trip!  We would like to thank all of the chaperoines who joined us on our first kindergarten field trip - Mrs. Barnes, Ms. Littleton, Mr. Brooks, Ms. King, Mrs. Espuet, and Mrs. Marbury.

Shining Light

As we continue to update our past Shining Light, here is Tonia as she proudly showed off her award.  Tonia was chosen because of her kind words and her progress on following directions.  Keep up the good work, Tonia!

Mystery Reader

Here is Anthony and his mom when she visted us as our Mystery Reader!  We had such a great time listening to one of our favorite stories, Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss.  We love to guess which rhyming words Dr. Seuss will use next! 

Snack Review

We keep learning...even during snack!  Here we are enjoying our Fruit Loop snack and reviewing our math!  We sorted, graphed and made patterns.  Learning is always more fun when you can eat your work!

Mystery Reader

A few weeks ago, our village had a special visitor!  The Grizz from Oakland Univeristy joined us for a village meeting and read us a story!  Here is our class with our new friend!

Kindergarten Spring Concert

Next Wednesday, May 2, our class will be performing in the K-2-4 spring concert!  This year, the concert will be called "Blue Skies."  The concert will be performed from 6 - 7pm in the Ellen Thompson gym.  I can't wait to hear what the children have been learning this year!  They are such wonderful musicians!  I hope to see everyone there!

Kindergarten Spring Concert
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
6:00 - 7:00 pm
Ellen Thompson Gym

St. Patrick's Day

We had so much fun on St. Patrick's Day!  Here we are creating a pot of gold writing activity - who is worth more than gold to you?  We made our own pots of gold to display our writing!  We also played a sight word game called Popcorn Words, which, of course is a leprechauns favorite food (because of its gold color)!  Finally, we enjoyed some snack while we graphed the marshmallows in our Lucky Charms cereal!

Surveys

In math recently, we learned about surveys.  We discussed how they are created and different ways to organize the information collected.  Each kindergartener took turns creating a survey question to ask the class and recorded their findings.  Some of the questions included "Do you have a pet dog?  Yes/No", "What is your favorite color?", "Do you have a baby brother/sister?  Yes/No", or "What do you like to eat at lunch?"  After taking the surveys, the kindergarteners created their own graphs to show what they found!

Shining Lights

Over the last few weeks, our class has honored friends who have already been the Shining Light, but have continued to let their light shine everyday!  I am so proud of Nia, Donovan and KB!  They were chosen because of their excellent behavior.  I have been looking for different things each week, and these friends have shown amazing sharing skills, taking turns and not interrupting a speaker.  I can't wait to see who our next Shining Light will be! 

Groundhogs Day

Before Groundhogs Day, we spent the week learning all about groundhogs, especially Puxatawney Phil!  On the morning of Groundhogs Day, we made a graph predicting if we thought Phil would see his shadow or not.  We then watched a news video from earlier in the morning to see what happened with Phil.  Here is our graph and some Groundhogs Day writing!

100s Day!

We had such a great time on our 100th day of kindergarten! Check out the hats that the children created using 100 objects! They were so creative - cotton balls, candy, stickers, cereal, buttons, you name it! 

We also had 100 themed activities!  Here we are making a pizza with 100 topping!

We made our own 100 Day trail mix.  We used 10 pieces of 10 different snack to create 100 piece trail mix.  It tasted do good!

Our centers were also focused on the number 100.  We played a dice rolling game up to 100, wrote our numbers to 100 and made 100 fingerprints!

Finally, we made a list of things that we would want and would NOT want 100 of.  Check out what we said!

We had such a great day!  We can't wait for the next 100 days of school!