Brown Bear and the beginning of Kindergarten

Wow, I can't believe we are finishing up the 5th full week of school! We have had so much going on in our classroom. We have learned our colors and explored our school using Brown Bear. We have learned about centers, math stations, how to be a scientist, shapes, and soooooooooo much more. Did I mention rules, rules, and more rules? Well, I am going to post a billion pictures as always and I will add a description of what is being done.

 1st Day of Kindergarten Pictures:

 School tour using Brown Bear. We look for the characters and then discuss why we found them at certain rooms/places. This allows the kids to visit all the places that will be important this year.

 Playground fun...

 Practicing painting- We begin with water, black construction paper, and paint brushes. We practice how to paint before using actual paint.

 glue dots

 chicken dance

 Painting the Brown Bear mural- we do this in the order of the colors in the book. We use this to practice sorting by color using items from home.

 shape people

 Brown Bear headbands- the kiddos put the color dots in order based on the order in the book.

 Center time fun!

 Mystery shape

 Sorting by color using the mural we made.

 building rectangles with yarn...

 Finger painting blueberries to go with Blueberries for Sal.

 Tasting lemons for yellow day. Here's a couple of super cute faces!

 Our school was "out" of green paint. I was so sad that we wouldn't be able to do ANYTHING for green day. Luckily, I have some smart kids that wanted to do something for green day and after brainstorming, decided maybe we should mix what we had and maybe we would get green. Each child chose 2 of the primary colors and mixed them. We learned that red and yellow= orange, red and blue= purple, and YELLOW and BLUE= GREEN!!!!! They were so excited. The day was saved!

 Painting backgrounds for our "me" paintings.

 Name Cheers for our Friend books. These didn't want to load together since we do them when we introduce that letter. SO, you may have to keep going until you see your child.

 Shape stamping:  we pull shapes out of a bag and discuss the shape. One day they are rectangles, then squares, triangles, circles. After introducing them, we get into shape groups and use the items as stamps by dipping them in paint. This is a fun and messy activity!

 Name cheers:

 We read Miss Nelson is Missing. The children chose their favorite character and made her. After finishing, each person told me why he or she chose that character.

 Name Cheers

 More color mixing:

 They LOVED it being in their hands!

 Name Cheers:

 Introduction of patterns: we use musical instruments to create AB patterns. They love this. It is so funny trying to only go on your turn. Of course, we had to dance a little with it too!!!

 Recording our thoughts and creating a couple of AB patterns in our math and science notebooks.

 Rainbow Day: Using our rainbow peepholes. We look at the lights through the peepholes and see rainbows.

 We recorded what we saw and the correct order of the colors in the rainbow on a recording sheet.

 Why the rainbow colors are in the order they are in: We mixed primary colors to produce the secondary colors between them.

 Name Cheers

 Color blowing/mixing our first initial.

 Exploring with prisms: I think this was the best class ever at using prisms. They made about a thousand rainbows!!!!!

 Rainbow color fizzies: baking soda, kool-aid, and droppers of vinegar= fun times!!!

 Name Cheers