Spring is here!

I've been so busy lately that this is my first blog post this month- and now I log on today to find out that Blogger has completely changed! I just don't know if I can handle this-can I make it go back to the old layout?!

Well, moving on, my kindergarten class has been studying spring weather, insects, animals, and plants this month! We made these darling ducklings that I saw here. We also made umbrellas out of paper plates that we cut in half and added pipe cleaners to. I was brave and let my students get out their water color paints to decorate the umbrellas-they turned out pretty cute!

We have been learning about the parts of a plant and made these darling art projects as well. This idea is from April Larremore's All About Plants unit which I totally recommend!

We also made this cute carrot graph from the unit. I loved getting my kinders to eat some healthy carrots for a snack! I think next year I might go a step further and have them try eating all different kinds of veggies that represent the different parts of a plant (i.e. carrots for the root, celery for the stem, spinach for leaves, and broccoli for flowers). Then we could graph which part of the plant we think tastes best!

We did some fun experiments in science to learn about plants too. The students loved seeing the leaves of the celery change color as the celery stems sucked up different colors of water.

We are also growing bean plants in baggies on one of our windows. I sure hope they grow! Some years I have had great success with growing beans and other year the beans just rot- I have no idea what makes for successful bean growing-so I am crossing my fingers that things work out this year!

During shared reading this week we read a fun poem about plants. This poem can also be sung to the tune of "Row, row, row your boat." We have been working on highlighting blends in our poem. We also read the big book Jasper's Beanstalk which I love. It is a cute book about a cat that tries to grow a beanstalk and isn't very patient about it. My favorite thing about the book is that it is a day of the week book (similar to the book Cookie's Week ) and each page tells what happened on a different day of the week. I have been encouraging my kinders to try out writing books like this in writing workshop and some of them have made very cute books using this structure. 

We have also been doing some fun math activities to go along with our study of plants. My students enjoyed measuring different things using sunflower seeds-and of course they liked eating the seeds when they were done with math!

We also played the "Plant a Garden" game, which you can download for free here. Students take turns picking a flower card, and and using the number at the top to put the card in the correct spot on their game board. First player to get all their cards in the right number order and "plant their garden" wins.

I know I have not been great about updating my blog lately, but I do have several posts planned for this week to show what we've been up to in literacy and math stations and some center freebies too. I also have a tour of my classroom library coming up too-so please keep following my blog! I'd love to hear what you've been up to this month in your classroom!