Friday Fun by Guest Bloggers Lucas L. and Henry

Kindergarten worked so hard this week and we finished ALL of our year-end assessments.  We treated ourselves to some Friday Fun.  Guest bloggers Lucas L. and Henry recap our day.

Friday was crazy hair day.  We messed our hair up and some of us added
color to our hair. Mr. Desmarais had blue hair and a pony tail and a purple beard.
Mr. Desmarais helps to keep our school safe and clean.

Today we learned about balance scales.

A heavy object makes the scale go down.  If an object is lighter,
it goes up on the scale.

We got to measure all kinds of objects from around the classroom.

Some things people measured were blocks, cars, markers and pretend food.

We also got to do a free write outside.  A free write is when you
get to write about anything you want.

Some people chose to sit on a bench or the ground...

Some of us wrote at the picnic tables.

Two thumbs up for working in the shade under a tree!

Our class wanted to know how to make paper airplanes.
Mrs. Duval didn't know how so she looked it up
on the computer. We practiced following directions to build our planes.

We flew our planes in the classroom and outside.
It was fun to see how far they would fly. Joseph was really good at
saying...1,2,3, GO! He could throw his plane far too.  We all could throw
our planes far.  We didn't get upset if they got crinkled or stuck in a tree!
We like Fun Fridays!

Kindergarten at HMS

Our kindergartners from all three classes helped to write and star in a video about our kindergarten program at HMS. On Wednesday night we showed this video to parents of incoming kindergarten students at Kindergarten Parent Orientation Night. Our kindergartners are so proud of it, they wanted to share the video with their families. The video is a little long (around 17 minutes) but we wanted to include all of our students. It's hard to believe how much they have grown this year!!

Kindergarten WIN Performances

Kindergarten wrapped up our WIN groups this past week.  As a culminating activity, each group presented a poem or reading that they have been working on.  It was a such a fun way to spend our last WIN time being all together.  Check out these amazing kindergartners in action...

Our Trip to Brockway by Guest Bloggers Charlie and Josh

The children of Hopkinton are so lucky to have the opportunity to visit Brockway as part of an endowment made by the late Dorothy Osborne. Brockway is a wonderful place to explore with a little help from NH Audubon education naturalists Hilary and Kevin.  Here is a recap of our Brockway field trip by Guest Bloggers Josh and Charlie.

At Brockway, we worked at three different stations.  Our first station was journaling.
We were working on our nature journals.  We found a tree that the beavers cut down.
It made a perfect seat.

Charlie found insects hiding in parts of a tree. The insect were living inside of the wood.

We looked for letters in nature. We drew what we saw.

Magnifying glasses help you look at tiny stuff...it becomes BIG!

Taking a break on the beaver tree.  Some kids wore hats to keep the bugs away.

Working on our journals was fun.
We had to listen with our ears, see with our eyes and smell with our noses.

The next station for our class was birding.  We learned about where birds live.
We made a bird's nest and put the nests in a safe place.  We
tested our nests with jelly beans and pretended they were eggs.

We are working on our bird nests. We used sticks,
dry grass, straw, mud and animal hair to make our nest.

Lucas L., Lucas R., Henry and Summit test their bird nest in the tree.

Our favorite station was ponding with Kevin.
We caught lots of things in the pond!

The weather was warm.  It was an awesome day.

We used nets to scoop up the bottom of the pond.
We had to be careful not to fall in.

We collected what we caught in fish tanks and jars.

Everyone got to use a net. We caught lots of dragon fly nymphs.

We caught a crayfish. 

Charlie caught a fish.  We let everything
 go when we where done looking at it.

Our class caught two frogs in the pond.

We also found a salamander and a thread worm.

Mrs. Chapman came to visit us in our KD classroom after our trip.
We reviewed all of the things we found and learned.

We even got to hold a turtle.  The turtle was a girl.

We made a mural of Brockway.

We had so much fun and learned so much too.  The weather was perfect.  Thank you to all of the parents who helped with the trp.

A Peak into May

I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation!  The warm weather is finally here and it is perfect timing for our week in kindergarten.  We have our field trip to the Brockway Nature Preserve on Wednesday. We also have a special day at school on Tuesday when Hilary Chapman will visit us from the NH Audubon.  She will be pre-teaching about some of the things that we can expect to see on Wednesday at Brockway.  We will even have time to explore the vernal pool at HMS during her visit. Please have your child bring boots to school on both Tuesday and Wednesday. The boots can be rain boots or winter boots.  Catching frogs and tadpoles is more enjoyable without muddy toes.

We will be planting some seeds tomorrow.  Stay tuned for some exciting observations and some informational writing on how to plant a seed.

It's hard to believe we only have six and a half weeks of school left.  This is such a wonderful time in kindergarten!  There is certainly a lot of talk in our classroom about first grade.  The kindergarten teachers are working hard on building strong communities of students to send to first grade.  Kindergartners will have the opportunity to visit their first grade classrooms on Move Up Day during the last week of school in June.  There are no formal spring conferences but if you have any questions or concerns about the first grade transition, please feel free to email or call.  We can easily set up a time to meet.