Our Kindergarten Community: Scripps Ranch Library Tour and MORE!!

Hello friends and families,

Check out these snap shots from this week's adventures. Enjoy them together for more insight on your child's perspective of their week.

Planning Meeting

I introduced a few new things for Open Choice Time, including threading for the Fine Motor Skills area. Friends practiced modeling how to use this to their peers and have been practicing threading the strings through the holes with a friend.

We also had a friend bring in money from Mexico that some friends studied, drawing the lines that they saw and discussing the differences between that country's currency and our own.

Friends continue to study and classify the specimens collected during our Nature Hunt.

Friends finished up many of their messages to loved ones this week and were happy to deliver them.

Rachael and Hannah took the friends out to the neighboring grassy area to practice what they learned in Outdoor Education last week. They used their overhand throwing skills to play Clean Your Room.

This week, our friend brought in crickets from her home to help us feed our scorpion. Friends watched as I wrangled a single cricket into the scorpions' jar to watch what happens. But alas, no action occurred during our meeting, so we collected our questions about the scorpion and brought them to Mary for Nature Studies.

Mary gave a lot of useful information about the scorpion. Check out our discussion notes binder for more information. Friends had an opportunity to see what they could find in our school's garden and collected some interesting creatures for observational purposes.

The following day, we came back to school and saw that the cricket we put in with the scorpion was GONE (mostly)! Friends have taken to drawing their theories of what occurred during the evening while we were all sleeping. Come in to check out their ideas.

Many friends had been working on writing messages to our school's "handyman" who has built so many lovely things for us to enjoy. Today, we saw him on the yard and were able to give him our cards.

This week we had our first Meet and Greet with our 4th Grade Learning Buddies. We practiced asking them interview questions and getting to know many knew people with each rotation.

For one of our afternoon movement activities, we put on Pandora and listened to Rock n' Roll music from the 50's. Check out some of these awesome dance moves that our friends can do!

Throughout the week, we look through our Morning Message and find words and letters that we recognize. We are starting to compile lists of words that have common sounds in common. Check out what friends have come up with so far.

Outdoor Education with Coach Curry and Coach Q entailed of multiple exercises, endurance and gross motor skill building.

Thank you to Lynn, Roberto and Arelia for being our Family Readers this week!

We ended our week with a fun game of "Save the Man." After writing the spaces for the letters in a secret message that I had in my brain, each friend got a chance to guess a letter that could be in it. With each incorrect letter, we drew a part of the man near the dragon. With each correct letter guessed, we would erase a part of the man so that he was farther away from the dragon. We were able to fill in the blanks and Save the Man from the dragon and successfully get him to the safety of his mansion! Have fun playing this game at home together!

Scripps Ranch Library Tour

Gina, our Tour Guide, helped us get ready to visit the inside of the library and learn the ins and outs of how to do research.

Here, friends learned a little bit about the Dewey Decimal System and how the library organize their books by numbers and categories.

We were allowed a sneak peak into the back work room and saw where the books are returned to the stock room using a book drop.

We were shown where people can do research in the computer lab.

We were also able to enjoy Story Time with Gina.

Then , we were provided independent exploration time to find different books. Some friends found books about scorpions and we checked them out to do more research back in the classroom!

After our tour, we were able to have lunch and journaling time at the nearby duck pond. Come check out our journals to see what the children learned from the librarian about how to find books.