What would you do with $100? What would a kindergartener do with $100...read to find out! :-)

We enjoyed looking at a $100 dollar bill. We talked about the value of $100 and what we would do with 100 dollars...some of the responses were...buy toys, buy legos, give it to God, give it to my mom, buy a castle, buy a new tent, buy a scuba suit and the list went on. This is always a fun activity. I planted the seed that they could do anything they wanted...buy something, give it away...anything! It will be a cute book on display in room#116 so check it out if you are around school :-)

Happy 100's Day!

A wonderful day was had in room 116 as we celebrated 100's day. We began the day by displaying our 100's collections on trays in our classroom. We then began diligently making our 100's day fruit loop necklaces. Counting to 200 is a lot of work so we did it by making 10 groups of 10 on math placemats. The necklaces came out fabulously!

At 10:00 on the button we toured all of the kindergarten classrooms to see the other kids' collections. It was a lot of fun!

When we got back to our class we didn't have much time left for centers so we were flexible and ended up doing a quick George Washington activity. As it turns out a child had a few pieces from their special 100's collection come up missing...it was sad but led to a discussion about honesty, lying, "stealing" and doing the right thing :-) We drew pictures about "once I told the truth...once I lied"...just like George did with the cherry tree!

Kindergarten students learn about shadows from the Ground Hog!

We had a fun week playing with shadows in kindergarten....how can an old folktale about a ground hog inspire so much learning...and fun? We we had a great time playing on the playground with our shadows...one day....yes our weather doesn't allow for very much shadow play as of late!

In our science curricculum we have been learning that you need three things to make a shadow. A light source (we used an artificial one in our classroom!), a surface and an object. We wrote a book and took picture of objects on the playground and the shadows they made. We learned that shadows move and about how the earth rotates and has a shadow from the sun. We learned about sundials and ways that shadows change depending on the time of day (see our diagram!) We even made a shadow with our class. It was a lot of fun. I cannot imagine my life (or your child's) without a digital camera!

Ask your child what they learned about shadows. By the way...the Ground Hog says 6 more weeks of winter!

Celebrating the Lunar New Year in kindergarten!

The Lansing kindergarten classes were "lucky"...get it? ....to have an opportunity to learn about the Lunar (Chinese) New Year first hand from from students and professors in the Asian Studies program at Cornell University today. The guests arrived with their "lion" parts and put on quite a display. They explained about the traditions that surround the holiday, the significance of the color red, the lion/dragon dance and parade and so much more! Ask your child what they remember from the presentation. At the end of the presentation each child had an opportunity to be the head of the "lion"...it was an incredible opportunity and we are thankful! Our presenters even brought us red envelopes with gold coins in them and special information about the holiday. There will be a performance on the Ithaca Commons on Sat. Feb. 13th from 11:00-3:00. (Information should have come home regarding this in your child's bag today). There will be a performance of the lion dance, and children's activities.

In one of our social studies lessons we learned about international holidays and how we celebrate different holidays but celebrate in many of the same ways, such as, fireworks, pinatas, parades etc...

Happy Lunar New Year!