May 28, 2021

This was our last week of kindergarten! We celebrated by having a "Camping Party" all week long! We even had a real tent set up in the room to play and learn in.

At our seats, each table group was turned into a tent, and the kids loved sitting under and crawling through all these tents.

For our "Camping Party," we played lots of camping games with fly swatters, hiking sticks, and other things. However, our favorite game was "Bear Attack" which we played outside with hula hoops.

We also cooked some s'mores and watched a movie under the stars for our "Camping Party."

Before graduating, we went outside and celebrated with silly string.

And finally, each child graduated from kindergarten with our outdoor "red-carpet" ceremony! It was a night full of a variety of emotions, but everyone was so proud of the kids from room #98.

The class also got to take home their birdhouses on graduation night. Remember, these birdhouses were the exact height of each child when they started kindergarten back in August. How tall will each child be in first grade?

May 21, 2021

We walked to the Brockway Park this week, and we got a little surprise on the way. The high school students were launching rockets, so we had the chance to stop and watch a few take-off!

When we got to the park, the kids had a blast on the spider web, zip line, slides, and jungle gym.

We also celebrated letter R for rainbow writing, so we made a huge rainbow poster.

Letter T day was also this week, so the class brought in some interesting and fun toys to share.

May 14, 2021

The Science Fair was this week and we tested to see which wiffle ball bat was the best! We found out that the medium-sized bat was the best, and we put the class that our board made in the gym for everyone to see.

We also walked around to see all the other awesome experiments that the other kids did for the science fair.

We travelled to the "Artisan Market" this week, and we found a ton of cool things that the high school students made.

May 7, 2021

We did our science fair project this week! We were trying to figure out which wiffle ball bat is the best. We voted as a class and agreed that the biggest bat would hit the farthest. We got outside and tested our idea and actually found out that the medium sized bat was the best! We will show our results at the science fair next week!

We continued our ABC Countdown to Summer with games for the letter G.

We also had delicious ice cream with sprinkles for the letter I.

April 30, 2021

We were celebrating our ABC Countdown to Summer all week! We read with our flashlights and read our spooky book together for the letter F! "Our Families From the Black Lagoon" had some spooky characters in it!

We used chalk on the sidewalks for letter C.

We exercised for the letter E around the pond area at the main entrance.

We blew bubbles outside for the letter B.

April 23, 2021

We celebrated Earth Day this week, so I brought in my Earth Day friend named Robbie the Robot. I made him back when I was in fourth grade for a recycling project we did.

We worked on our own recycling project by making bird feeders! We really want to save the planet!

In library class, the kids made Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar crowns.

We started our ABC Countdown to Summer on Friday by bringing in stuffed animals. It was like a zoo in here!

April 16, 2021

I put up the posters for our ABC Countdown to Summer so the kids could see all of the fun activities coming up! They were jumping with joy to see each fun day! The class is excited for ice cream day, game day, flashlight day, and many others!

We did a science experiment with cleaning fabric this week. First, we had to stain the fabric, so we put ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, and marinara sauce on a piece of cloth. After letting the stains dry, the kids trying cleaning it with water, which didn't work great. After that, we tried with detergent and the stains almost disappeared! Next time you have a stain at home, you can put your kindergartner to work!

April 9, 2021

The week before this was our Egg Hunt, and one of Mrs. Puhala's gifts was a new box of chalk for each student. We weren't able to use it last week when it snowed, but now we have some perfect weather for it. We got out there a few times this week with chalk, and the class loved drawing and writing messages with their new gift!

We learned about measuring this week, so we tried measuring some things in the room. Our favorite thing to measure was a green snake, and it was definitely the longest! 62 blocks long!

April 1, 2021

We had our Egg Hunt this week, and the weather did not cooperate very well! However, we had a great day looking for hidden eggs.

After coming in and warming up, the class opened up their eggs and found a lot of awesome treats!

We used connecting cubes to measure eggs, bunnies, baskets, and more!

Mrs. Puhala had some incredible gifts for the kids this week, and she used her creative wrapping skills to make the bunny designs. Inside, each kid got a plastic bin of sidewalk chalk to use at recess.

All week, we had eggs on our seats that we needed to keep warm by sitting on them. They eventually hatched and marshmallow peeps came out of the eggs!

March 26, 2021

This week was our chance to be the author and illustrator for the book that we are having published! Our book is called "Our Families from the Black Lagoon!" It took us a few days to brainstorm ideas, write a draft, and then write it in black ink. Later in the week, we worked on drawing the pictures and adding other details. We are all really excited to see how our book looks when it is done!

On Fun Friday, each group got to play Bingo with "Bossy e" words. Lots of treats were earned on this day!

March 19, 2021

On Tuesday, we built some incredible Leprechaun traps to try and catch Leonard! We used all the things leprechauns love to try and trick him, such as gold, Lucky Charms, and rainbows.

When we came in on Wednesday, we found out that our traps did not work! However, Leonard did some crazy things to mess up our classroom! He put green stuff everywhere! Walked through paint on our desks! Flipped our desks and chairs over! But, he also left some treasure for us!

We got the gold and Lucky Charms back and even played a game called "Sight Word Cereal" with the yummy marshmallows.

March 12, 2021

We played a couple new games this week, which all included working with the numbers in a 100's chart. First, we did an activity, where the kids had to glue a 100 piece puzzle back into place using all the numbers in a 100's chart.

On Fun Friday, we played 100 chart Battleship. The partners competed against each other and tried sinking all five ships on their opponents board. We really enjoyed this game!

We also had a tiny green visitor last week! We thought Leonard the Leprechaun was nice, but he ended up stealing all our gold!

March 5, 2021

It was Read Across America this week in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday and his work as an author. We celebrated by reading and learning about some of his best stories, and we found out that he really loves to rhyme, even with made-up silly words!

After reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, we did a science experiment with colored fish. We tried dissolving them in some mystery liquids. First, however, we had to figure out what the liquids were like scientists, and it didn't take us long to figure out which one was vinegar using our noses!

We also loved story time with The Cat in the Hat! We had some funny imaginations when it came time for us to figure out ways to stop Thing 1 and Thing 2.

February 26, 2021

This week was our first virtual learning day! We had a snow day this week, and we successfully navigated this new change! However, I was happy to see everyone back in school the following day!

This week, we also played a new learning game that involved some Matchbox cars, a road, and letters that we cut out. After building a word, the children would put their letters on the road and we would drive past the letters while sounding them out. We always started slow, but the children's favorite part was definitely going fast! Luckily, no speeding tickets were handed out!

February 19, 2021

On Fun Friday, we played a game called "Gummyland," and we transformed the entire classroom into a big gameboard. This spinoff game came from the classic game called "Candyland," and the winners earned a bag of gummies if they made it to the finish line!

We also participated in a CVC word hunt where we had to use magnifying glasses to find the hidden words in the picture. Some words were tough to spot, but we eventually found them all!

February 12, 2021

Friday was our Valentine's Party! We did a cool science experiment to learn about static electricity and used balloons to pick up tiny hearts. We also played some games with balloons and tried to bounce them up in the air for 100 seconds!

We used small thumbtacks to write messages on paper hearts! They turned out amazing, and no fingers were hurt in the process!

We used candy hearts to do some graphing and some measuring.

All the kids worked really hard to fill out 20 Valentines! They had to write their name in the "from" spot 20 times, and write another students' name in the "to" spot 20 times. That's 40 names, but they did fantastic!

We actually started our party a little early on Thursday, and had cotton candy! It was a really fun week!

February 5, 2021

This week was our 100th Day of School Celebration! The class had such creative and funny outfits to make them look like 100 year-olds!

We made a pizza with 100 toppings and graphed the results.

Each child also made a prediction about the number of licks it would take to finish a lollipop, and every lollipop took over 100 licks! These results were shocking to us!

Groundhogs Day was also this week, so we learned a little bit about shadows and how the movement of the sun changes how a shadow looks to us.

January 29, 2021

In library class, Mrs. Lefler had the children make Fruit Loop necklaces with 100 Fruit Loops. The kids are even more excited for the 100th day now!

January 22, 2021

Anna was our Student of the Week! She was thinking hard about how she would change the world! All the kids had some great ideas about how to make the world a better place, just like Martin Luther King Jr.

On Fun Friday, we played a penguin game. The kids used miniature clips that they clipped to the penguins feathers if the math problem was correct!

January 15, 2021

Giada was our Student of the Week! She's holding up two fingers because she wanted to be the student of the week for two weeks. Actually, we were working on place value and the children were learning some huge numbers up in the hundreds!

We did a science experiment to learn if a mitten is warm or not, so we read "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. We tried to fit in a mitten just like the animals in the story did to stay warm, but we needed an extra large glove for all of us to squeeze in.

We learned about thermometers and tried them in hot and cold water to see the temperature markers move. Then, we tested them in mittens outside, and we found out that mittens don't actually make heat, but our bodies do!

January 8, 2021

Brielle was our Student of the Week and she was a total rockstar! Not only was she a rockstar leader for the class, but she also showed off some of her musical talent during our "Show and Tell."

Our entire class had some awesome items to show the class, and they did such an amazing job of answering questions and describing their toys. It was such a fun and entertaining day!

We also did a little science experiment to learn about hibernation. We found out that bears do not like food in the winter because it is frozen or covered by snow. We tried frozen blueberries, and they were not yummy! That is why they load up on food before the winter, and then they sleep all winter. Afterward, we tried blueberries with snow (whipped cream), and that was much more tasty!

December 23, 2020

After watching the Grinch movie, the class was visited by the big green Grinch! Then, the Grinch and all the students went around and stole the Christmas decorations from the other kindergarten classrooms.

After coming back to our room, we did a science experiment to make the Grinch's heart grow three sizes! We used a green balloon, baking soda, and vinegar.

We also rearranged the classroom to make room for us to have a snowball battle. This was a lot of fun without freezing our hands with real snow!

Each child had the chance to pin the nose on Rudolph before using the noses for a craft.

Our Christmas party also involved icing a brownie so that it looked like a tree with sprinkle ornaments. They were delicious!

And finally, Forest the Elf got us all fake mustaches as a present, because he has been tricking us with mustaches for two full weeks!

December 18, 2020

Louie was our Student of the Week and he was ready to play in the snow! Not only did we have our first snow day this week (because of the 20 inches of snow we got), but we also got to play a learning game with some fake snow. We didn't have 20 inches of fake snow, but we did use it to practice spelling and writing some words we have been working on.

Our elementary school has been participating in a school-wide challenge called the "8 Days of Reindeer." Each day, Mrs. Patricelli comes on the loudspeaker and announces the new challenge, which has been different each day, including trivia, building trees, taking pictures of the class, and singing Christmas Carols. So far, we have won once, so we are going to try and win again this upcoming week.

December 11, 2020

Logan was our student of the week and he found a special surprise that Forest the Elf brought for the class. Forest brought Elf cereal for all the kids to enjoy on Fun Friday.

The class got to play a new game today (even though I'm pretty sure the game is older than me). After spelling a word right with the magnet letters, the children would each get to play "Don't Break the Ice."

We did a science experiment to see how strong a gingerbread house is, so we tested the strength of a single graham cracker by putting weight on it until it would break. We were shocked by the results!

December 4, 2020

Roxy was our student of the week, and she was super excited for a tiny visitor from the North Pole to visit us! She was always keeping an eye on the other children so that she could report back to Forest the Elf with news for Santa.

Excuse the mess, but the class was on the hunt for finding sounds in all those magazines!

November 25, 2020

This week, we learned about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade before starting our Thanksgiving break.

First, we learned about Tony Sarg and how he helped start the parade with puppets. His boss from Macy's wanted the parade to be better, so Tony Sarg found a way to flip the puppets upside down so that the crowds could see them better above their heads. Then, he had an even better idea to start using helium in the balloons, which helped transform the parade into what it is today.

Next, the children worked in small groups to create and design their blueprints for their own balloon float. They acted like engineers!

After making the blueprints, the children created their balloon floats with a ton of different materials.

Lastly, we took our "Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" through the school, and we made sure to have Tom Turkey at the front and Santa Claus at the end.

November 20, 2020

Caleb was our Student of the Week, and he made lots of noise.... but we were allowed to for this science experiment! After setting the table for Thanksgiving, we did the "tablecloth trick" where we attempted to pull the tablecloth and have all the dishes stay put. We had a ton of fun figuring out the best way to make this work, but it usually ended up in some dishes hitting the floor and making some noise.

We also had our first snowfall at the playground this year! The kids were so excited to see that winter is on its way.

November 13, 2020

Calvin was our Student of the Week and he was a leaf smashing rockstar! We needed to smash leaves for a science experiment, and he did great with this!

Miss Abbi finished her teaching this week. She taught a virtual lesson about leaves changing colors.

On Fun Friday, we played a game called "Slinky Dog Spelling." The kids had to use letter cards to spell words, then we stretched the sounds out like a slinky.

November 6, 2020

Aliah was our Student of the Week! We played a game called "Hungry, Hungry Homer" and I think Aliah tried feeding him too much!

Miss Abbi continued doing her Block Teaching about leaves. She showed us a funny looking leaf called a sassafras leaf. It looked just like a mitten!

October 30, 2020

LJ was our Student of the Week. He was a "howling" good bowler during our Halloween party.

We had four stations during our Halloween party, including candy corn bowling, pumpkin bean bag toss, eyeball races, and pumpkin ring toss.

We had "Vampire" donuts for our treat.

Earlier in the week, we carved pumpkins with Mrs. Puhala during her group time.

We did a science experiment with Frozen Ghost Hands and we tried to get the spiders out by melting them.

October 23, 2020

Mia was our Student of the Week! She really enjoyed our science experiment when we created some paper mâché pumpkins, and she wanted to show them off by putting them on our heads!

We did a little nature investigation to learn about living versus nonliving things in nature. We had to use our senses to figure out what item was in each bag and then decided if it was alive or not. There was also a zombie arm involved! We weren't sure if zombies are alive or not!

We finished our spider crafts and hung them around the room. We definitely have the creepiest room in the school now!

October 16, 2020

Paislee was our Student of the Week! She was a great pilot of the alien spaceship we used to play a reading game. Several aliens sent messages to us from outer space, so the children had to read them with an alien voice. After translating the messages into human words, the children were a little surprised to see what the aliens had to say. After finding out the secret messages, the children decided to fly away from these aliens using our spaceship.

October 9, 2020

Parker was our Student of the Week! All eyes were on him this week (literally) when we played a Halloween themed math game to work on counting and simple addition. We used googly eyes on monsters to count and add.

This week was also National Fire Safety week and some of the Brockway firefighters visited our kindergarten class. The kids were really excited to learn more about fire safety, especially when the firefighters got all of their gear on.

In the background of the third picture here, you'll see a video on the smartboard. All of the area Firehouses teamed up to make a fantastic video about fire safety this year because they all might not have the opportunity to visit schools like they have in the past. The video really turned out great when we watched it at school. Below is the link for this video if you would like to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ6h9iigOxY&feature=youtu.be

October 2, 2020

Sydney was our Student of the Week! She was a little surprised to see some creepy-crawly critters join our room. Luckily, she wasn't scared of the spiders!

This week, we also celebrated our late-August and September birthdays by having some delicious sugar cookies and Hi-C juice boxes. We also did some birthday songs and dances to celebrate the birthday kids.

September 25, 2020

Colin was our Student of the Week! He had some awesome dance moves when we did the "Na-Na Ni-Ni" dance after learning more about the letter N.

On Fun Friday, the children got to play some letter BINGO to help them learn their lowercase letters. Mr. Lydick almost ran out of treats because we had so many winners!

Open House

Since we won't be having our regular "Open House" this year, we created a short video to explain some of our daily routines here in kindergarten. Even though you won't be visiting our classroom for this, I am glad that all of you already got to visit our classroom during "Meet the Teacher" day. The video just gives some important information about what we have been doing each day. We also did a little dance at the end, so please try not to laugh too hard at our dance moves!

September 18, 2020

Harlee was our Student of the Week! She loved Throwing Theo (the monkey) on Thursday!

When doing science, the children had to figure out how to sink a piece of wood using only rubber bands and paper clips. They found out that some wood takes more weight to sink it.

On Fun Friday, we played a bean bag toss game. Each bean bag had a letter on it, so the kids used them to learn their letters and to put them together to make some short words.

September 11, 2020

Today was a day of remembrance for our school (and our country) because of the events of 9/11 that happened nineteen years ago. You can see all the kids in their red, white, and blue gear. We read a book called "Fireboat" to help the kids better understand this day, and I told them how I was actually in kindergarten as a student in 2001. They had a hard time believing that their teacher was ever a kid in kindergarten!

We also got to act as doctors while learning our letters. The children used tweezers to operate on the letters, because the letters had an accident and needed fixed up.

September 4, 2020

Today was the end of our first full week of Kindergarten! And we ended it by having "Fun Friday." Here, in this picture, the kids were learning their letters and letter sounds by driving on them with Hot Wheels cars.

August 28, 2020

This was our first week of kindergarten! We learned about mask safety and decided through a classroom vote that Spider-Man is our favorite superhero ... and he has the best mask for staying healthy!