Abe Lincoln

Learning about Presidents has been a lot of fun. This week we took a look at Abe Lincoln.  We began by sharing what we knew about him. Then we listed what we were wondering about him.  Here is what we were wondering:
What did his hair look like?
What did he wear?
Why did he have a beard?
Did he get married?
What did he like in school?
Did he have children?
Did he have problems with his teeth?
Did he wear slippers?
What was his first job?
Has he died and how did he die?

We spent some time reading biographies about Abe Lincoln and watched a Brain Pop Jr. movie.

Here is what we learned the Penguins said they learned:
His hair was black.
He wore a black suit.
A girl sent him a note saying he would look better with a beard, so he grew one.
He liked to read.
He married Mary.
He is on the 5 dollar bill.
He worked in a store.
He was shot.
Of course we had the most fun when marked how tall he was on the floor.  Then checked to see if any of us were as tall as he was.

While none of us were as tall as Abe Lincoln.  Mr. Greer was the closest!

George Washington

This week we learned about George Washington.  We began by listing what we knew and then made a list of what we wondered about him.  We read many stories about George  Washington.  We were able to answer many of our questions and learned a lot about the "Father of Our Country".

sharing our ideas about George Washington

writing sentences about George Washington.

The Weather the Penguins like best!

Tuesday's flurries created great excitement in the Penguin Class. The second grade Spiders even joined us in snow dancing!  

Ways to show 6

 This week we are working on creating and analyzing visual images for quantities up to 10.  Here are the ways we can make 6.

This looks like a table.  It has 4 and 2 legs.  

                                    

three on top, three on the bottom

This is the tower. It has 1,1, 2, 2.      

                                                                                           

This is an S made with 3 and 3. 

                                                                                             

   

This looks like an L.  

Weather Wonderings

We have enjoyed our look at weather.  We talked about the different kinds of weather and how it affects people and animals.    We record the weather daily and discuss what we notice.   

We read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and wrote about some wild weather.  

It is raining pancakes and tomatoes. 

This volcano has meatballs. 

We talked about the water cycle and worked together to make  drawings to show the cycle. 

We wondered if we could see evaporation and condensation in our classroom.  We filled a bag with dirt and some water.  We placed it in our  window.

We could see the evaporation and condensation in this bag in our window.

We began to wonder what would happen if we did the same thing, but placed the bag in our closet.

Check back for our update!

Busy Week

This was a very busy week with the 100th day of kindergarten, Valentine's and a visit from Dr. Dennis.   We celebrated with our 100 day crowns and math activities and enjoyed our valentine snack.  

Counting by 5's

We are working on counting by 5's.  Notice how we sit knee to knee and cross the mid-line as we practice the pattern.  The first person says 5, 10.  The second person says 15, 20.  We continue taking turns until we get to 50.  Some of us can continue to 100!

 

Indoor Snowball Fight!

We work together to earn snowballs.  When our Penguin jar is full, we have an indoor snowball fight.   Ask your penguin what he/she did to earn a snowball for our indoor snowball fight. 

We earned over 100 snowballs!

We tried to fill in the penguin on the board.

We were able to get 68 snowballs inside the penguin!  

Quick Images

In math we are learning that mathematicians like to group objects so that they can count them quickly.  We like playing quick images.   We look at an image of dots that is shown to us for just a few seconds. Then we build it on our ten frame. 

A ten frame is a board that has 5 boxes on top and 5 on the bottom.  The ten frames  we are using here look like buses.  

We can make numbers in different ways.  We explain to our partner how we made the number.  

We can use what is missing to help us tell what the number is!

 We can also build on a ten frame with this game in the computer lab.  link to ten frame game