Monthly Archives: March 2010
Spring Break
Hi Everyone!
We’re enjoying our Spring Break so far and this year, it’s truly going to be Spring like weather!! 🙂 80’s by Friday! 🙂
I don’t have much in the way of new things to share with you, I’ve been working on making some new cards in my free vacation time and you can check them out here. If you’re interested in purchasing any of them or becoming a Stampin Up! demonstrator and earn some easy extra money…shoot me an e-mail and let me know, or if you would like to purchase some of your own materials or a kit with pre-cut materials, contact me at fuzzlady77@hotmail.com!!
Today we took a trip to the zoo and saw the most adorable baby goats…they were born yesterday (March 29th). Two mommies gave birth and they each had 1 girl and 2 boys, so triplets for both!
I think I need a Meerkat as a pet!! 🙂
Dog Sharks you can pet in the tank…not for me! 🙂
I received some more books from the last grant I posted on DonorsChoose.org:
Kristen 🙂
NSTA 2010
I, along with four of our other Science Coaches were privileged enough to be able to attend NSTA this year in Philadelphia. I was also able to present with Steven and his wife Amy. I met Steven through a partnership our school district had with Purdue University for the past three years. He is one of the Outreach coordinators and I attended the academy for three summers. Our grant has just run out, but I am thrilled that I was able to be one of the lucky ones in attendance for all three years!
As coaches, we attended NSTA this year to learn more about what our positions could entail in the future. I attended one session where I heard some great ideas for video taping lessons where we would be teaching critical Science Process Skills and then learned how to share them with a small cohort of science leaders.
Here are some pictures of our 4 1/2 days there, some touristy and some from the conference…enjoy!! 🙂
More Ponds
Hi Everyone!
I am sorry that I have not posted in what seems to be forever…but duty called and I had to attend NSTA in Philadelphia and I was busy getting ready for that, so everything else seemed to fall by the wayside! 🙂 Never fear!! I have some more pond ideas to share with you and then I will post a gallery of NSTA photos if you are interested in looking at those.
Just a few notes about the pictures:
In three of them you see where the students sorted various pond pictures into groups that they considered acceptable. I think the two groupings that are pictured show Pond Animals/Not Pond Animals and Reptiles/Not Reptiles.
You will also see us acting out the book “Splash!” by Ann Jonas. Several years ago, I created “masks” for each character in the story and we act it out using our pond rug!
The last picture you see is a sheet I made so that we could physically act out “Five Green and Speckled Frogs”. The children begin with all the frogs on the log and as we say the rhyme, they write numbers below and move their frogs above.
Questions?? fuzzlady77@hotmail.com
I’m working on a Pond Unit that I will have available for sale shortly (not today, but probably next week sometime). It will include a book list, Five Green and Speckled Frog math mats, 5E model plans, Literacy Work Station plans, a word search, a sheet of resources/materials and alternate activities. I’ll let you know when it is posted!
Kristen 🙂
IB Ponds
Our district continues to move forward with our IB units. My team chose to do the Transdisciplinary Theme called “Sharing the Planet”. We incorporated ponds into it and below are pictures so far from the 7 days of our unit. Our total unit is 4 weeks long, so we’ll be done at the end of March. I’m going to post these gallery style so they load faster and you can click on them for a larger picture.
You will see the question mark in several photos. If you are unfamiliar with IB, the idea of the question mark is to have a place where you can put questions that your kids have and wonder about. Lots of ideas go along with what I already know about Inquiry and we’ve decided to tie it in with Science, right up my alley!
Nutrition
Way back in February, we did a two week long study about Nutrition and Healthy Habits/Dental Health. Here are a few pictures of the new things we did this year. (You can search my blog for other ideas from last year).
This is a food pyramid that we created. I free handed a pyramid and then one food group at a time, the children drew pictures on precut index cards (2 1/2 x 2 1/2). As they finished, they would bring them to me to tape on the pyramid. Each table got to color one section as well. I have these books that are specific to each food group, so we would read those first and get some ideas about what to draw.
This was a chart I got several years ago with some other Nutrition information. It is dry erase and we were trying to check off how many fruits and vegetables we ate each day at lunch.
We practiced brushing our teeth using egg cartons. I cut the dozen sized cartons in half and we first flossed and then brushed the “plaque” off. We also used pictures of teeth in sheet protectors and I drew “plaque” on them with a dry erase marker and the kids had to erase it, so if these toothbrushes look a little green, that’s why!
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 