Five for Friday-{Baseball & Derby Week}

I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

This week we celebrated two great things that are offered just on the other side of the Ohio River in Louisville, KY... Baseball & the Derby!

We began our week with learning about horses. We listened to books about horses on our iPads using the MyOn app. We then completed a can, have, are chart on horses. We ended by making adorable horses and writing one horse fact. 

Halfway through the week, we got more into the baseball part of our unit. I was even able to dress for the part and use my favorite Tervis cup. (I may or may not be crazy about the St. Louis Cardinals...)

We ate Crackers Jacks and graphed if we liked them or not. I couldn't believe everyone enjoyed them, but then again, I do have a class of eaters. 

We ended our day by going outside since it was so beautiful and playing some math baseball.

Here is what I did to play:

I found bases at the Dollar Tree and we split up into two teams. The "pitcher" of the fielding team has a stack of "baseball" which are actually paper plates with addition facts written on them. Each player from the other team comes up to "bat" and is shown a baseball. They get three tries, or strikes, to get the answer correct. (I also count to ten in my head, and if they haven't answered in those ten seconds, it counts as a strike.) If they do get it correct, they move to a base, and then the next player comes up. We did that until everyone had at least had a turn and then switched teams. I scored the game just like in a baseball game, one point for every person who made it all the way home. My students absolutely loved it and were begging to do it again tomorrow. We may play it with some CVC words tomorrow where I give them a word and they have to spell it correctly to get on base. So many ways to do it! :)

We also had graduation pictures this week. Only 25 more days of school with these sweet faces in my class. *tear* :( 

Yesterday, Thursday, I was out sick with a horrific migraine. When I came back in, I had the sweetest message on my board waiting for me. I am seriously getting depressed more and more with each passing day because I have to give these sweeties away.

Since the Kentucky Derby is this weekend, we talked about the hats that are always a must for women to wear to Churchill Downs. We looked at pictures of how extravagant some of them were, and then we created our own! I think we nailed the extravagant part!

We ended our day and our week by having our own horse race called "The Run for the Reese's." Students raced against each other in fours within our classes.

We were great spectators and cheered everyone on!

 After each group of four raced and had a winner, all of the winners raced against each other.

This sweet boy was the winner in our class of "The Run for the Reese's."

Check out that crown he won! (See why we call it "The Run for the Reese's?")

Then, just for fun, the winners from all three kindergarten classes raced against each other.

After all of the kiddos got their turns at racing, it was tradition that us teachers raced.

It was a great, but busy week. Next week I am super excited to do a space unit with my Kinders for the first year. We will also be celebrating Mother's Day.

Five for Friday-{Wrapping Up a Fun Week with Butterflies}

It's that time again, folks! I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching.

If you follow my blog at all, you know that this past week has been our oviparous animal life cycle theme study. We spent one day this week learning all about what oviparous animals are, one day learning all about the life cycle of frogs, two days learning about the life cycle of chicks and hatching our very own chicks in class, and today we studied the butterfly life cycle. We began our study of the butterfly life cycle by reading two books, Butterfly by Susan Canizares and How to Hide a Butterfly & Other Insects by Ruth Hellers. The book Butterfly was a good introduction into what the butterfly life cycle looked like and how it went, while the How to Hide a Butterfly & Other Insects book was more for entertainment purposes because it talks about how insects use camouflage and the kids loved looking for the insects that were hidden on the pages. 

Can you find the butterfly hidden on this page? 

We also had our Scholastic weekly reader that was all about butterflies that we read. We learned a new vocabulary word, symmetrical, and did a short craft to reinforce the term.

 For the craft, we folded a piece of paper in half...

 drew half of a butterfly...

Cut the half of the butterfly out with the paper still folded, and then opened it up to find that it was a full butterfly!

 We then took paint and painted a design on one side...

 folded the paper again...

 and, voila! A perfectly SYMMETRICAL butterfly.

After reading the books, we turned to our iPads to create our own digital book of the butterfly life cycle using the Book Creator app. Notice how the students used their new learning of symmetrical when drawing their butterflies! I am one proud Kinder teacher right now!

{The Book Creator app has endless possibilities as far as uses in the classroom, and making a book is just one obvious one. If you have any devices in your classroom, I highly recommend this app!}

After last recess on Fridays, I most typically have some sort of snack to give my students. We are so busy during the other days of the week with that we don't have time to implement a snack on any other days other than Friday, so Foodie Friday has become a norm for us in room 103. Today our snack was all about the butterfly life cycle. {Thank you once again, Pinterest!}

Here is what I bought for the snack activity. 

*Pepperidge Farm Pretzel Thins... they are in the shapes of butterflies!!!! I'm not sure if they typically come this way, or if it is a seasonal thing, but I was super pumped either way.

*Kroger brand sour gummy worms 

*A bag of the Tootsie Rolls (not the long ones, but the small, normal sized ones.)

*Great Value brand mini marshmallows.

I passed out their life cycle paper plates and put one of each snack in the middle of the plate.

 Then they had to put them in the correct order of the butterfly life cycle.

The finished product...

We also FINALLY got our caterpillars in from Insect Lore, and they couldn't have come on a more perfect day than the day we were learning about the butterfly life cycle. The class was excited to see some silk inside the cup of caterpillars after we had just learned that they made their chrysalis' out of silk they make, similar to a spider.

Can you spot the silk?

Phew, what a week! I have thoroughly enjoyed the past two weeks of learning and craziness. I sure am looking forward to this weekend though. I hope all of you have a great weekend!