January Update!

The time in kindergarten is flying by! It is hard to believe Valentine's Day is around the corner! We have been learning so much and having a lot of fun since we came back from Christmas break. We did a unit on staying warm which was very fitting with the extremely cold weather we have been getting! Last week we learned all about the different kinds of penguins. We made a fact book about penguins. They enjoyed writing two facts and illustrations about each penguin we learned about. They are becoming great writers! Our penguin books will be coming home in the Friday folders this week! This week we will begin our unit on arctic animals. We will be learning about the walrus and polar bear.

Here are some pictures from an experiment we did during our winter unit. We wanted to find the fastest way to melt an ice cube! We made a hypothesis, completed the experiment with a partner and graphed our results! We experimented different methods we could use to melt an ice cube to determine which was the fastest. We discovered putting the ice cube in water was the fastest way to melt the ice cube.

We have read many of Jan Brett's books during our winter units. One of our favorite books that she has written is "The Mitten". We read "The Mitten" and then practiced retelling the story to a partner. 

Here are some pictures from our Christmas party:

We are continuing to work on being bucket fillers and are very close to filling our bucket again! Two high school students that are taking a leadership course at the high school taught a lesson on the book, "The Energy Bus". It was a great reminder to the kindergarteners to have a positive attitude and to continue to fill each other's buckets every day! They donated the book for us to have in our classroom library! We are lucky to have such great role models at our high school!

I sent home a list of our sight words that we are learning in school. We are working very hard at school to learn these words. I created a website with some resources that you can use at home. It has a few games and songs to help the students learn their letters, sounds and sight words. We have used the sight word page at school. Feel free to use this website at home! Here is a link to the website:

http://mrsfriederich.wikispaces.com/