It was a busy day in KC. Here are some highlights.

Happy Birthday Lakes!

Lakes and his mom also brought in their Australian tree frogs to share. They were VERY cool!

2nd, 3rd, & 4th grade strings performed during Assembly.

We worked on word families.

We started organizing the gift bags for the troops. We had a few members of our class mention that they had things at home to bring in, so we will accept items on Monday also. No pressure! We have plenty of everything. If you do have something at home that you want to send in, please do so. But, there isn't any reason to go out and buy anything. Thanks to everyone for all the goodies that we have.

January Tree

We worked on our January tree illustrations for our tree book. We made lovely, glistening, icy trees. It isn't a surprise that everyone loves decorating with glitter!

It's snowing!!
We had a blast creating a snowstorm in our classroom today.

We also watched a demo of an online site where you can make snowflakes and then watch them fall. This site is now on the blog (under CA Teacher Links), and the web address for it also came home in backpacks today.

China Festival

Last Friday, we were supposed to have a Chinese festival to end our China unit. We had a snow day instead, so we had our festival today. The entire Kindergarten was divided into four groups, and each classroom had a different craft or game. The groups traveled to each classroom, so everyone got to make or play everything. It was an exciting morning.

We played bingo with Chinese pictures.

We made panda puppets.

We played a Chinese memory game.

We made shuttlecocks or hacky sacks, and then we kicked them around the room.

Chinese New Year Traditions

A KB parent visited today to share some Chinese New Year traditions with the Kindergarten. She spoke about preparing the home by sweeping out the old year to bring in the new. Families also eat sweet treats and wear new clothes for the holidays.

Assembly

We had an exciting Assembly today! Chinese students from OSU performed a traditional Chinese New Year lion dance. The performers were on stage, danced down the aisles, and hid in the audience. Click on the movie to see their show.

After the OSU students performed, the 2nd grade classes presented a story, displayed their artwork, and sang a song about Martin Luther King Jr. Their presentation was a perfect early kick-off to Black History month which is February.

Happy Birthday Keiran ~ If I were president... ~ pennies

Happy Birthday Keiran!

In our journals, we wrote what we would do if we were president. We have lots of animal lovers who would house and feed ALL the animals. We would also feed people healthy food, lower gas prices, fix roads, give people jobs, take care of fire hydrants, teach kids to read, help teachers, and not make food go stale. Lots of great ideas!

We also talked about the penny. We noticed that it is worth one cent, has smooth edges and bumpy sides, has a picture of Abraham Lincoln on one side, and has the Lincoln Memorial on the other side. We counted pennies and wrote down the amount using the cent sign. We talked about the equal sign again, and we discussed that it is a balance. What is on one side of the equal side has to be the same as on the other side. Everyone had fun and learned a lot. Got a jars of pennies around? See if your KC kid wants to do some counting at home.

MLK Jr. ~ Inauguration

We started off the day reading a book about Martin Luther King Jr. We talked about our country's history, and that at one time, blacks and whites didn't have the same rights. We read how the mother of one of Martin's friends (a white friend) told Martin that he couldn't play with her son anymore because Martin was black. This happened when he was 6 years old. He could have been in Kindergarten.

We learned that Martin believed in peace, advocated loving your enemies, and wanted all people to be treated the same. This lead us into a discussion of the inauguration, and how amazing it is to have the first African-American president.

We ate bagged lunches in our classroom which was very fun. We then went to the theater to watch part of the inauguration with some of the other LS classes.

We combined writing numbers with reviewing the Chinese numbers. These Chinese Counting Books will be coming home soon.

Everyone created their own story problem. Each student wrote a number sentence and then illustrated the math problem. We talked about + sign, - sign, and = sign. The + sign means to "add it all together". The - sign means to "take some away". The = sign is "what we have" after the + or - signs. We are finishing the story problems tomorrow. Here are two examples:

Concentration

We played a domino - number concentration game today. We put the numbers and dominoes in numerical order first. Then we mixed everything up, turned them all over, and played concentration.

Tangrams

We read "Grandfather Tang's Story" today. The story has both regular illustrations and illustrations created from tangrams. After the story, we created our own tangram pictures.