100th Day of School

Last week, we celebrated the 100th day of school. This is a fun day where we do various math activities. It's always a lot of fun...our class really enjoyed it. We started the day by making a 100th day of school hat. The students had to count by 10's to make their hat.

Next in the day, we counted groups of objects that made up 100 pictures. Each student brought 100 of something to school. We had some very interesting things to count. Using a number chart, each student counted to make sure that they brought 100 of something. We had everything from pennies to smiley gum balls. We grouped these items and counted them in different ways.

At the end of the day, the entire kindergarten went outside to the blacktop. All three teachers had huge garbage bags in their hands. They wanted to show the students what 100 balloons looked like. So, the teachers opened their bags and let all of the balloons go free. Each student was allowed to pop 1 balloon. Then after everyone had gotten to pop a balloon, the rest of the balloons were free to whoever could catch them. The students seemed to really enjoy watching those balloons fly everywhere and then getting to pop them.

Tacky the Penguin

This week, we read the book Tacky the Penguin. In this book, Tacky is a very odd penguin. He does everything differently than his other penguin friends. Tacky is very boisterous and clumsy. Due to Tacky’s differences, he was able to save his penguin friends from a group of hunters. The class discussed how differences make us special and give us all our own individual talents and abilities.

The children really loved Tacky. They found his odd clothes and behavior to be very funny. After reading the story, we decided to make our own penguin with his/her own personality. The children had to give their penguin a name, tell where it lives, what it likes to eat, what it likes to play, and what it likes to do. The children really loved this activity, and they had some great names and ideas.

Here are just a few:

Cameron's penguin is named Gilbert. Gilbert lives in an igloo.

Gilbert's favorite food is macaroni.

Gilbert likes to play football with Cameron.

Jay's penguin is named Harvey. Harvey lives at the North Pole and

loves to eat fish. Harvey likes to play football and enjoys swimming.

Rudolph is the name of Keelan's penguin. Rudolph lives in an igloo.

Rudolph's favorite food is fish. He likes to play football and bake

cookies with his friends.

Tristyn's penguin is named Honey Sims. Honey Sims lives at the North Pole.

She likes to eat fish and corn. She likes to play hide and seek, swim and slide.

New Year's Resolution

I have always enjoyed celebrating New Years Day! It is a time for new beginnings and new promises. It's a time to start fresh and dream of what the new year may hold. Today, our class discussed why we celebrate New Years Day. We also learned a new word...resolution. We discussed that a resolution was a promise to do or keep from doing something. After discussing the term resolution, we began to think of things that we could resolve to do in 2007. I shared with the class that my resolution was to save more money so that I could buy the nicer things that I really want. As the class began to share their own ideas, we decided to write them down to share on our blog.

Here are a few really good resolutions for 2007:

Alexis told us that, this year, she would like to learn to tie her shoes.









Jay promises that this year he will try to help his mom and dad around the house.

Tristyn also made a resolution to help more around the house. She wants to help her aunt do the dishes.

Jacob is planning on working extra hard this year to achieve his goal for 2007! He wants to save money so that he can buy himself a house one day. I guess it's never too early to start!