Seining and Bean Bag Toss

5 For Friday

This has been a jam packed week at school. Half our kinders went on a fieldtrip on Monday and the rest of us on Tuesday. 2 of my kinders had birthdays. We had a school ice cream celebration for behavior. We evaluated our artwork from this last unit....and Field Day. Not to mention the cleaning and inventorying because we have 1 more week left.

Fieldtrip & Seining
After much begging, we had enough chaperones and activity leaders for our field trip to a local girl scout camp our school district uses for environmental literacy. The kinders played bug bingo, dug for bugs in the woods, learned about tree life cycles and parts, rode in a row boat, learned about trees and erosion and watched me seining. Yup. I was an activity leader for one of the stations. After we made it rain on models of land with and without roots, a volunteer and myself went out seining in waders. The kinders loved watching us pulling in the net and seeing the little fish and shrimp. They all got to touch them and try to carry them to tanks for more observation. It was a long day but I loved all the small group teaching.

 

Bean Bag Category Toss
Due to our outdoor field day being rained out, our K-1 hall had  indoor events. Mine was beanbag toss. I labeled 3 hula hoops in different colors. Each hula hoop had 2 category options (animals/people, food/places, or things/transportation). I laid the hula hoops out so that they were different distances from the edge of the carpet. In the closet hoop, went a small shallow container. The farthest had  a plastic box and in the middle hoop a taller container. The students took turns selecting a bean bag & identifying something that started with that letter and which category it fit into. A student may pick out a Kk bean bag. They'd say "k is for kayak" and toss it in the container in the purple hoop labeled transportation. The kinders and firsties were able to move from room to room but they picked up the game quickly and some stayed for a long time. It would be a great game to teach parts of speech as well by labeling the hoops: nouns, verbs and adjectives. I practiced ahead of time with my class using a spinner on the SmartBoard which made it more difficult because they were assigned a category. We were so busy that I totally forgot to take pictures but I could be a carnival caller. Its a great activity to play in your class and easy to differentiate.

Song
We decided to learn a new song One Small Voice and after 2 times through they were all singing and signing. So we called the office and asked if someone wanted to hear us. By dismissal, my class had performed the song 5 times and were randomly singing it as they worked at their seats. It was just one of those things. Our unit is about expressing ourselves and mainly we have worked with Art not a variety of music. They found a way to express themselves as a class. each year, I find classes pick songs they really like to sing and we try to find something to do with them.

Family Time
We had a family trip to the National Zoo. Those 3 in the middle are mine. :)

 

With all this, I didn't put together a Friday Freebie this week :( but check back to last Friday's Father's Day Reader and of course June 1st's Ice Cream Review.

Enjoy your week!
Jenn