Saturday, January 7, 2012

Out of the mouths of babes "....I am just not in the mood!"

Overheard:
"Mrs. Gnadt, would you please ask ________ to quit telling me he loves me?
 I asked him to stop and he keeps saying it. 
 I am just not in the mood!"

Sweetness:
"Mrs. O', _______ was making bad decisions in phy ed.
I told him I can still be his friend because he has kindness in his heart,
he just has to let it out!"

I LOVE my job!

This week we eased into our routine.
Snow and mittens were our themes.
First time ever teaching this unit, that we didn't have snow, and didn't really need mittens!
Crazy!
So we made our own snow!
First on pieces of paper, with words written on them, and crumpled up.
Then we had a good old fashioned 
SNOWBALL fight!
(we had to read the word before throwing)
The next pics are blurry action shots....





Then mixed up a batch of "Insta Snow",
a polymer that absorbs water and increases in size 100x
Here is a link to Steve Spangler Science
(I LOVE him!  Even had lunch with him once in Minneapolis!)
We also learned that snow was made of crystals,
so we mixed up a batch of those, too!



Here are some Wonderful Wednesday pics:




 Playing with that "Snow"
 Making snow people with repurposed creamer containers





 Scrap paper snow people 




 Mr.Carrier's mittens for our mitten book



2 games from recycled candy boxes


 ABC review SPLAT

 Mitten project with Chris
 literacy stations

 Math stations with Mr. Carrier

 Reviewing AIMSWEB 
What a fun week!

Monday, January 2, 2012

Was Winter break not over in a blink of the eye?  
Wow!
Some of our family's highlights:

We took the kids to Sherlock Holmes on
Christmas Eve...a pretty good movie
considering it is a sequel!


Then I stayed up ALL NIGHT Christmas Eve
Baking and cleaning and crafting to Christmas carols...
singing loudly and off key...
absolutely enjoying every minute!
perpetual journals x3

gingerbread grandkids for my mom


Maeve's Community Shadow Puppet Theater...


Then Christmas Morning
finally arrived:
A Dr. Who Christmas!!!
notice the dorky ties...
we embrace our geekiness!

Sonic Screwdriver!

Loved this episode...Van Gogh

PS3 finally!

Nothing says "I love you" like maple candy right from Vermont!
Our Silkie Chicken spent the Holidays IN the house...
She was injured and in shock but as you can see
she pulled through...
Tiny Kitty was pecked on the head more than once...

Pippan's new sweater

The reigning mini Foosball Champion!!!!




Then...
We FINALLY got to see Wren!!!!!



and Shae and Chris
Graham and Melissa
and Lee, too, of course!




We played games, ate, swam, ate some more
decorated cookies...
minute to win it stacker game...Fionn won!

at my dad and Max...group shot, just our kids!
We are 11 now!
at my mom's

another minute to win it game
drop the icicles
and cookie face game...

finally at the pool!





cookie decorating in the hotel room


one of our new family games...sour apples to apples!

The time went way too quickly...
Shae, Chris, and Wren went back to Indianapolis,
Graham to Atlanta,
and Melissa to Minneapolis...

which leaves LEE 
and his 23rd Birthday!
After a tasty meal at Jefferson's
he headed back to Mankato...
Back down to 3 kids and New Years Eve...

a tasty tradition...ice cream feast!










And now our Kindergarten update...
Welcome 2012!
Our first week in the new year we will spend preparing for the AIMSWEB tests coming up next week. 
We will also be looking at the letter Hh, star word 'a', short a words, and punctuation. 
Math finds us reviewing,printing, counting objects to 20.
Our themes include Winter and Mittens!

The K Team,

Bonnie Kalmes  bkalmes@isd857.org          isd857.org  elem site, academics tab,kindergarten


Suzanne Pilger  spilger@isd857.org             http://pilgerkindergarten.blogspot.com/        

WELCOME!

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