Mr. M's Mighty Kindergarten M&M's

Today is one of our favorite author's birthday.  All next week we will celebrate the books we have come to enjoy.  I have some fun and tasty activities in store for them.  Today we read The Cat and the Hat.  The kids journaled about their favorite parts of the book.  For our regular reading period we read What Has These Feet?.

Creative Movement was today with Miss Kathleen (Caiden's mom), filling in for Miss Rachael.  I may not have mentioned that on the days I do story time I often read from my classic tale book of stories that have a theme that the children can related to, and I ask them what lessons could you learn from this tale.

The Lion and the Mouse - Friends come in all sizes and shapes
The Wolf and the Dog - Being free is the greatest gift
The Fox and the Crane - Treat others as you want to be treated
The Cat and the Mouse - An idea is not always enough
The Monkey and the Fox - Do not try to be something you are not
The Rabbit and the Turtle - Slow and steady wins the race

In science it was our investigation of fish with the focus on goldfish.  We changed the water, and the kids netted and moved the fish from their somewhat dirty environment to a fresh new clean one.  They did an observation of the structure of the goldfish with an attention to detail - color, eyes, scales, mouth, and how many fins do they have.  We started a word bank of terms we knew or learned about fish over the last two lessons.

In math we did lesson 8-4. I am going to backtrack some to give some extra help to some of the children that are struggling with word problems.  Please, please try at home to talk through a few word problems you make up.  Do not work with numbers more than 10 unless they are not having difficulty.
Example.

• Five birds were in a bird bath, and 3 birds flew away.  How many birds were left in the birdbath?
• Seven caterpillars were crawling on a leaf, and four fell off.  How many caterpillars were left?
• Six monkeys were in a tree, and soon two more monkeys joined them.  How many monkeys are now in the tree?