Kindergarten Room 203

I apologize for not being more timely with some of these pictures that I have recently updated.  Only a few short weeks ago, we studied “Day and Night” in the classroom.  We learned about nocturnal and diurnal animals.  We also read one of my personal favorite stories, The Napping House  by Don and Audrey Wood.  We talked about how the illustrations move from dark to light and the illustrator in this story gave us clues as to what could be coming next! 

At the end of the week, we celebrated by wearing our pajamas to school.  We had a great time playing charades!  We acted out night time and morning activities for our friends to guess. 

Please enjoy the pictures!

This Friday, October 23rd will be pajama day in Kindergarten!  Please allow your child to wear his/her pajamas to school.  They will be allowed to wear slippers or house shoes in the classroom however, do not forget that we have P.E. on Fridays so they will need to have a pair of gym shoes to change into.  We will also be enjoying milk and cookies that day so please send your child with 35 cents to buy either chocolate or white milk.  Pictures to follow

As I am sure you have already heard, bat week was so much fun in room 203!  We started the week out by learning that bats use their ears to see.  On Monday, we went out into the courtyard and played a fun game of “echolocation”.  One child was blindfolded and had to say, “echo” and then the other children called back, “location!”  The child that was blindfolded had to find one of his/her other bat friends.  The children requested this game for the remainder of the week!  We also took the time to become mammologists and we studied the differences between mega bats and micro bats.  We learned that the easiest way to tell them apart was by their noses and ears.

Some of the interesting bat facts that we found out were the following:

Bats eat up to 1,000 insects in one day

Bats are nocturnal

Some bats eat fruit while others eat insects

Baby Bats are called pups

Of course one of room 203’s favorite parts of the entire week was wearing our bat T-shirts.  Unfortunately it rained so we could not go out to the playground and hang upside down but we made the best of it by flying from place to place throughout the day!

Next Monday, October 12th we have no school due to Columbus Day.  Enjoy the three day weekend and we will see you back at Ogden on Tuesday, October 13th!

Last week, we learned about apples!  Although many of the children had opinions as to whether or not they liked apples, we dug deeper to learn the history of apples as well as how apples are formed.  Many of your children will tell you that we learned about how John Chapman, or better known as Jonnie Appleseed, helped to spread apple orchards all over our country.  Did you know that when a seed is planted from an apple the apples that grow on that tree may not be the same?  We learned this week that it is very hard to grow certain apples!  We also learned that an apple starts off as a flower on an apple tree and turns into an apple.  Apples can be stored up to a year before they are actually sold in stores! 

We not only learned interesting facts about apples, but we also had fun working with apples in the classroom.  We predicted the weight of our apples by finding something in the classroom that we thought would weigh the same amount.  We also learned that an apple can be a small red house with no doors and no windows and a star inside!  We cut open our apples to see if this was true!

One of the best parts of apple week was when we made our very own applesauce.  Check the pictures section to find the recipe of our applesauce!

Thank you so much for taking the time to come to our classroom website to look at my September Wish List!  I feel that each of these books will be a great addition to our personal classroom library.  If you are interested in donating one of these books to our classroom, please email me at mmheffinger@cps.edu so that I do not receive duplicates.  Your book donation to the class will be much appreciated!

The Magic School Bus Comes to Its Senses – $2

The Kissing Hand Set – $7

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Pack – $17

Bear Feels Scared – $4

Bear Snores On – $4

The Big Hungry Bear $5

I’m in Kindergarten Pack – $12

Fall Readers Super Value Set – $6

Spooky Tales Pack – $10

Lets Read About Dinosaurs Pack – $12

Science Vocabulary Readers Mega Library – $22

Every week two children will be bringing home a sharing backpack.  The sharing backpack is a clear backpack with blue piping.  Your child is allowed to bring one item to share with the class.  This item may be a favorite book, toy, picture, game, or stuffed animal.  The only rule with the sharing backpack is the item must fit inside the backpack.  Each child will be able to share multiple times through out the year.  If you are not sure when your child’s day to have the backpack is, please look at the monthly calendar link on this site!

Every Friday I will be sending home the “Clifford Pal Backpack” home with one student.  The Clifford backpack is given to one student every Friday as a reward for their good behavior that week.  This child is then named the, “Clifford Pal of the Week.”  If your child brings the Clifford backpack home on Friday this means that they are the new Clifford Pal!  The Clifford backpack that your child brings home on Friday will include a stuffed animal Clifford, his friends Cleo and T-Bone, some Clifford stories and a Clifford Journal.  Over the weekend, please fill out with your child what you did with Clifford.  If it is possible, please take some pictures and paste them in the Clifford Journal as well.  Everyone will get a chance to be the Clifford Pal of the week!