Hail to the Chief!

Wow!  What a great week of learning!  In conjunction with President's Day on Monday, we studied George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and learned about the president and what his job entails.

We started by taking a look at George Washington and reading George Washington:  Our First President.

 

I found an old Kermit the Frog "News Flash" segment where Kermit interviews George's father as he explains about George cutting down his favorite cherry tree.  That, coupled with our conversations throughout the year about honesty, apparently really stuck in their brains.  At the end of the day, we made a chart about what we had learned....and look at the first idea they gave me!

 

Our Art project in centers this week

Day 2 focused on Abraham Lincoln.  We read A Picture Book of Abraham Lincoln.  The students made a lot of text to text connections between what was said about Lincoln and how he felt about slavery and Martin Luther King, Jr's ideas about equality.  I was very impressed!  We also made a chart to show our learning but my picture has disappeared.... :(

Wednesday was all about democratic principles and the right to vote.  We began by reading Duck For President.  Then we had a discussion about why we vote.  The students decided we vote so it's fair and nobody gets to boss everyone around all the time (I LOVE Kindergarten thinking!).  Then it was time....we got to vote ourselves!  I asked the students to pretend they were one of the animals on Farmer Brown's farm and was going to go vote for president of the barnyard.  They stepped up to our voting booth...

...and cast their votes!

Once all the votes had been cast, we tallied our results.  Duck was declared the winner, just like in the book!

We reviewed all that we had learned about the presidents on Thursday by sorting ideas about the two presidents and placing them in our venn diagram.  The students did great!  They easily knew where each idea went.

In Math, we graphed which president we liked learning about more.  Hands down it was Lincoln!

On Friday, to wrap it all up, we made log cabins.  I think we ended up with more chocolate "glue" (icing) on our hands and faces than the actual log cabin but the kiddos had a blast!

But here's the best part--the conversations I overheard and had with my students:
   *"My cousins are coming this weekend and I think I'm going to ask my mom to take me to
      Springfield (Missouri) so I can see where Abraham Lincoln got shot." (I know, not total accuracy
      but they knew enough to remember Springfield and it's ties to Lincoln!)
   * 2 students come over with a book.  "Ms. Doennig, look!  We found all the presidents and
      here's George Washington!"  (me) "That's great! Can you find Abraham Lincoln?" (student 1)
      Ummmm....(student 2) "I know how to find him! 1...2...3...4..." and he counts to 16!
   *While we are making our log cabins..."Ms.Doennig, see?  I made one window in my log cabin 'cuz
      in that book you read us (Abraham Lincoln: A Boy Who Loved Books) it said he had just one
      window in the whole cabin.  I just put in one."  Awwwwwww....

I love my kiddos!

YEAH!!!...I won!

I entered a drawing on the blog Chalk Talk hoping to win many, many educational units made by the wonderful Deanna Jump and I WON!!  Do 'the Doennig'--woot, woot!!!  This is a HUGE prize.  Deanna makes these wonderful units full of ready to go literacy and math activities and I get everything she has made.  I think I scared the kids a little when I jumped up and ran walked briskly out into the hall after checking my email!  Thank you to Deanna for providing such an amazing prize and to April Larremore at Chalk Talk for hosting the giveaway!!

Penguins on Parade

Again...another week interrupted by snow.  This week we only made it one day before the blizzard of 2011 hit and boy, was it a doozie!  I have drifts in my yard that are over 4 feet tall.  The official record is 19 inches.  Yikes!  Last week we were lucky to have one solid week and we got a chance to study penguins.  The students were so excited and really soaked up the information.
We always make a schema chart whenever we begin a new unit.  This time we made a tree map, but unfortunately I didn't get a picture.  The students gave me what they knew based on 3 verbs...can, have and are.   I liked this because it made the students really think about their knowledge and categorize it.
We've also been working on identifying ending sounds.  I made up this little activity for the students.  They each had a fish with a picture on it and had to decide the ending sound of that picture.  If they were able to do so correctly, they got to "feed" the penguin.

After reading Plenty of Penguins by Sonja Black, the students were amazed to learn that the Emperor penguin is the same size as an average Kindergartener.  As one of our Math activities, we measured ourselves in comparison to a 4 foot penguin, then recorded our data.

I thought that most of our class would be the same size as or taller than the penguin, but our results showed most of us are shorter!

 I also got to read one of my all-time favorites, Tacky the Penguin.  I am of the "if you can't sing good, sing loud" mentality, so this book is perfect for my vocal stylings.  It is physically impossible for me to read this book and not sing as loudly and dreadfully as possible.  This, of course, is hilarious to my kiddos.  I usually end up reading this book several times.
After reading the story, we worked on comparing and contrasting Tacky and his companions using this Venn diagram.  As I have said before, a Venn diagram is only effective if the concepts being used to contrast the two objects are applied to both.  For example, a student gave the example that Tacky wore weird clothing.  After we recorded that on the "Tacky" side, I asked the students to tell me about the companion's clothing.  Similarities were listed in the middle.

Another way I encourage retelling and increased comprehension is story treasures.  I try to do these at least twice a month, although it's been hard the past couple of months.  For Tacky, students received 2 lima bean penguins, one with a bow tie, one without to help them remember some of the concepts we recorded.  A note is attached telling the parents how to utilize these at home.

During Writing Workshop, we have been working on writing good sentences and learning our sentence rules.  I've noticed, however, we've had a lot of the I like/I love my mom/dad/dog/cat/pizza kinda thing going on.  Tacky's colorful nature was perfect for a lesson on using describing words.  I displayed a picture of  Tacky and asked students to describe what they see. 

Afterward, we shared the pen to write a descriptive sentence about him.  We discussed how by using descriptive words, we make a better picture for our readers.  Students then had the opportunity to use descriptive words in their own sentences.