My name is Tera Friederich. I grew up in Forest City, Iowa and attended college at the University of Northern Iowa. I am married to my husband Ryan and we have a boy named Turner. We are expecting another baby boy in November. This is my fourth year teaching at Spirit Lake Elementary School!
We have been keeping very busy in kindergarten! I have a couple of updates for you and some great pictures as well :) Just a reminder that there will be no school for the kindergarteners this Friday because of kindergarten round up. Hard to believe first grade is just around the corner! I have also sent home some of our sight word flashcards in the Friday folders! I will be sending more home in the next couple of weeks! The kids are doing an awesome job with their sight words and are starting to become great readers! I can tell that they are enjoying reading and it is fun to watch them continue to grow through the year! I also sent home the March show and share calendar in last weeks Friday folder!
The kids had a blast with our fairy tale unit! Here are some pictures of our fairy tale unit and Valentine's Day party:
Retelling the Three Billy Goats Gruff!
Painting our Castles!
Valentine's Day Party!
One of the highlights of this month has been our new centers! The kindergarteners are really enjoying this time at the end of the day to socialize and learn with their peers! Here are some of the new centers we have added!
Build: The students build or create something using blocks! So far we have had some neat projects! Some of our projects include a zoo, car garage and a castle!
Be a Teacher: At this center the students take turns pretending to be a teacher! I can already see some great teachers in our future!
Technology: The students can use the iPads/iPods or the Smartboard to play educational games!
Be an Author: The students can create books, stories, lists or letters to take home or share in our classroom library!
This week we will be finishing up our space unit! We have spend the week being astronauts and learning all about space!
It is hard to believe that it is already half way through January! Our time at school is flying by and we are enjoying every minute!
In reading we are still working hard on Daily Five reading and the students are beginning to become creative and working hard at their stations! While the students are practicing reading and writing I am working with reading groups! Here are some pictures of the students in their stations:
Daily Five Technology:
Word Work:
Work on Writing:
Read to Self/Partner:
In math this last week we have been working hard on our story problems! We have been learning about our doubles! Here is a video of our Doubles Rap that we learned!
In Discovery, we have been learning about the season Winter! After reading "The Snowy Day," the kids had a chance to bring home their own snowball. We made a graph with our guesses about how long our snowball would last! Most of the snowballs lasted until the end of the day but melted before school the next morning!
One of our favorite experiments was finding out the fastest way to melt an ice cube! We played a game with a partner and dice to help us find out! Here are pictures of us being scientests to find the fastest way to make an ice cube melt:
Put Salt on it:
Drop it:
Put it in water for 10 seconds:
Drop it down your shirt:
Hold it in your hand for 10 seconds:
Blow on it:
Our conclusion was that the fastest way to melt an ice cube was to put it in water for 10 seconds! Thumbs up for a great experiment:
We love Jan Brett's books! One of our favorites is her book, "The Mitten". The kids each made their own mittens and animals and retold the story to a friend!
Our Polar Express day was a lot of fun! Our day was based on the Christmas book, "The Polar Express". The kids had to have tickets to get into our room and on the train! We created and read our own polar express book, solved polar express story problems, drank hot chocolate and at the day and each student got their own bell!
We have been very lucky to have a peer tutor coming in from the high school to help our class from the beginning of the year until Christmas break. Alissa has been coming for an hour each morning to help us practice our letters, sight words and reading!
Alissa is a senior at the high school and is considering becoming a teacher after college. The high school has an internship program where students can experience and shadow a job that they are interested in during their January term. Alissa is enjoying spending time in our classroom and learning a lot about the joys of teaching. She has been in here helping this last week and will be here this week as well. The kids look up to her as a role model and she has been a great help in the kindergarteners success! Here she is helping us with a project in Discovery:
