Tastes

Today we did an experiment to test our sense of taste. We have been learning that our tongue is full of tiny taste buds that send messages to our brain as to whether our food is salty, sweet, bitter or sour. Today we tasted honey, lemons, pretzels, and unsweetened chocolate. It was fun to watch the expressions on the kids’ faces as they tasted each food. They were surprised to learn that they did not like the chocolate—in fact that was their least favorite. Ask your student what they learned about how we taste, and which food was their favorite. You will see a sheet in their folders where they drew each food they tasted. For fun at home, choose foods without your student knowing and see if they can use their sense of taste and smell to figure out what they are eating.

January 2

Welcome back Families!

I hope you enjoyed a wonderful and relaxing winter break with your family. I am so excited and anxious to see the kids, get back into a learning routine and hear all about the many adventures and experiences that happened to them during the last ten days. Unfortunately I caught the cold virus that had been circulating our room before the break. I spent the majority of my vacation coughing, and stuffed up. It is nice to be healthy again. I hope that you all have found the start to 2011 to be a healthy one.

Here are a few things that have been keeping us busy in our room:

We have enjoyed learning about our sense of sight. We have been learning about how our eyes work, and how different objects can affect how we see the world.


Here we are working on an engineering project with our fourth grade buddies. Our challenge was to come up with the best flying paper airplane. It was so fun to experiment with different types of folding, paper clips, and tape.


We were excited that our friend Athen represented our classroom in the K-3 paper airplane throwing contest. We learned about how to compete positively, how to support and cheer on our peers, and how much fun it is when the school comes together.

The students were challenged to fly their paper airplane through Mrs. Gerber's hula hoop! It was hard!
Two days before break, we joined our buddies again to decorate gingerbread cookies and read together. It was so fun to read with our buddies in our pajamas...it felt so nice and cozy.

I am very excited to see what 2011 will bring to us at Lincoln Center. Thank you for a wonderful 2010.

December 14

Hi Families:

I apologize for being away from updates for so long. I have many fun pictures to share with you since my last post. We have been so busy in our room. We are learning so much about our five senses. These past few days we have been learning about our sense of sight. We had fun looking at I SPY books and observing the many details an illustrator includes on a page.



In math we have been working hard on probability. We played a game with three sticks. One side of each stick is red, the other side is blue. We predicted the probability of the sticks landing on the same color when we dropped them. We had so much fun playing this game. Ask your student how often we dropped sticks and they landed all on the same color.

We are also working really hard on one to one correspondence between objects and numbers. We loved playing domino matching. The kids had to count the number of dots on a domino and match it to a number card. Here we are having so much fun. We also learn a lot from each other when we work in small groups:

We made five senses collages using different craft objects: felt, sequins, googly eyes, sandpaper, yarn, scratch and sniff stickers, bells and pipe cleaners. They are on display outside of our classroom.


Show and Tell this week: Bring in an object that we can touch. Help your student come up with one word that describes their object i.e. crinkly, soft, hard, smooth, rough etc.

Don't forget that tomorrow is early dismissal at 1:30. Remind your students how they will be getting home after school.

Library books are due on Friday. Students must return their book before checking out a new one.

Let me know if you are interested in volunteering in our classroom for small reading or math groups.

Continue to practice sight words, numbers and letters each night. Our students are turning into readers, writers and mathematicians before our eyes!

December 6

This afternoon we kicked started our unit on five senses with a shared learning experience. Several kindergarten classrooms joined together to watch, feel, hear, smell and taste popcorn being popped. It was really fun to witness the kids experience popcorn being popped in a new way--it was like they were looking at the world through new eyes. Ask your kindergartener how they can describe popcorn being popped with each of their five senses. Quiz them to remember what each of the five senses are.



We even learned a new song about our five senses from Ms. Roeske. Here we all are doing the motions to our song. Can you tell which of the five senses we are singing about?

December 5

Good Evening Families:

I am up and at 'em again. Thank you for being so patient, supportive and understanding last week while I was out sick. I caught the bug that has been circulating throughout our classroom--fever, chills, sore throat. I hope that tomorrow I will be at full strength. I am excited to see the kids, and hear about the many fun and exciting things that happened at school.

When I chatted with some of my teammates, I heard how fun the community hallway was. The dentist office that our class put together was a huge success. The passports that students brought home on Friday are from the community hallway experience--they traveled to seven different community "buildings" put on by each class. In order to get a sticker, they had to identify the building, and explain how its workers contribute to our community.

We will be starting our new PYP unit called Sensational Senses tomorrow. There will be a purple sheet in the students' folders that details the unit. We are excited to learn about the scientific process, experiments, and the five senses.

Please look for Peek at the Week calendars to come home tomorrow. I apologize that my sub did not get them into folders on Friday.

I have my camera all charged up and ready to take pictures of our class hard at work this week.

Looking ahead to Friday: This week's show and tell is to bring in a mystery sound object. Students can find something creative at home that makes a sound. They will keep their object hidden while they make its sound and the rest of the class will use their sense of hearing to guess what the object is. Try putting coins in a sock, rice in a bag, or beans in a can. Be as creative and tricky as you can. Show and Tell bags will come home on Wednesday. Please remember to return bags on Friday so they can be reused again.

I hope you enjoyed a wonderful weekend in the snow! Winter is upon us.