Thank you Veterans!

This is a unit that I absolutely love teaching/learning about because it hits home.  My husband is a Veteran, who has served in the Army for seven years and did two tours overseas. Being part of a military family has helped me as a teacher and become a better person to help others, teaching others to help and to teach our youth what Veteran's have done for us as well as what Soldiers are doing for us now. Ok, I will get off my soap box now :).

A benefit to have a husband is a Veteran means I get cool Army things to bring to my class to show them and talk about them, and most of all to have a soldier/veteran come into the classroom to talk to the students!

Here is an old picture when my husband Justin came home after his one year tour in Afghanistan, in 2012.

This week was a very short week (3 days) since our volleyball girls made it to state! YAY!  

Center work:  Working on some middle sounds of words.  

Center work: sounding out the letters of the words and identifying the letters. 

The Kindergartners with the rest of the elementary singing during our Veteran's program.  I told them to make sure to sing loud and smile.  I was so proud of them singing in their first concert!  

We learned what/who a soldier/Veteran is.  We listed some items that describe them and what they all do.  

 They each got to make their own soldier.  To incorporate our art with handwriting, they had to think of one thing they would say to a soldier to thank them.  They came up with some sweet and nice things to say.  

Like I said earlier one of the benefits to having a husband in the Army is all the cool stuff they have.  I brought in some his Army stuff and explained to them what they were used for as well as some of the medals that he earned. They each got to try on his ruck sack.  

Trying on one of his Army hats. 

Putting on the safety belt that is used when they go running during drill.  

Army boots.  

Our soldiers all done and put up in the hallway. 

During our reading we learned about pandas.  We learned a lot of fun and interesting facts.  Pandas are not considered bears, they are considered to be part of the raccoon family.  They are also very lazy and eat most of their day.  He made our own little panda.  We learned about what parts of the panda are black and what parts are white.  We used cotton balls for the white parts on the panda. 

Another Veteran's day art we did was heart flags.  We added glitter onto our stars to make them 'pop'.  The saying is right, we are proud to be an American!!! 

Whose Garden?

This week the Kindergartners read a book called "Whose Garden Is It?   We reviewed parts of a plant want what plants need to survive.  We continued working with adjectives so we drew a flower and wrote some adjectives that describe our flowers in our journals.  Here are a few. 

In Social Studies we have been talking about neighborhoods and some types of neighborhoods such as farms and cities.  We connected our Science into our Social Studies lesson by identifying some animals that live in our neighborhood.

This week we worked with short Ii again and focused on using short Ii in our words.   We also working with -id and -im words. 

We started Buddy Reading this week.  It's where we spend time reading books from our pink basket and read them with our buddy.  They really enjoy buddy reading. It's amazing to see how far they have come and how great of readers they are becoming! 

Working on some center work: building and writing sentences. 

Along with our adjective flowers, we made a larger one.  We water colored a coffee filter and then turned it into a flower.  They then had to think of two different adjectives to describe their flower. They are very colorful!!!

After we listed items we can plant in our garden, we listed some things we can do or make with our items planted in the garden.  One of the things we can make was soup.  We did this activity on a day that we had soup for lunch.  It worked out perfect! :)   We listed ingredients for our Kindergarten soup and listed steps to make our soup.  I had them identify the items that were in their chicken noodle soup at lunch. 

In Science we have been learning about what animals need to survive.  We read a book called: "Gilbert Goldfish Wants a Pet."  It's about a fish who wants a new pet and what he has to do to take care of his new pet.  

They then got to make a Gilbert goldfish craft and name a new pet for him.  

Our farm poem that we put in our journals.  Farms are a type of neighborhood that we learned about this week. 

We read a book called "Tops and Bottoms."  It's about a tricky hare who tricked Bear into planting and harvesting his garden and splitting the profit.  It is a very funny book but also helped with identifying which vegetables grew on the top, bottom and in the middle.  After we read the book, we identified which parts of the plant we all eat and we eat them all!  We saw and listed each part of the plant and tried some of them.  

Taste testing all parts of the plants.