Monthly Archives: January 2017

Stella’s Sleepover

Today marks a very special day in kindergarten. Stella the Stegosaurus will be going to one of the students’ houses for a weekend sleepover. You might recall that Stella arrived in an egg on Tuesday morning and hatched in kindergarten on Tuesday afternoon. Since then she has been spending time with my family. Here are some of the things we did while Stella was in our care:

Each Friday Stella will arrive at a kindergartners home with her overnight bag and sleepover supplies.

This includes a binder with journal sheets like the ones I used above. Students are invited to use as many journal pages to record their adventures as they wish. Stella and the binder should come back to school by Monday or Tuesday so that we can all learn about her weekend adventures and prepare her for the next sleepover. As you can see from my example, Stella just participates in regular, every day life….she does not need anything extra special to take place while she sleeps over. This activity is designed to help students write events in sequential order while using their best guess spelling.

I am excited to see the outcome of this activity!

Sometimes the best lesson activities…

come from a student. That was the case today. I had prepared a lesson in conjunction with the dinosaur unit on Pangaea. We began by looking at the globe. I told students that the same dinosaur fossils have been found in South America and Africa. How is that possible?

Students pondered the question and came up with two theories:

1.) the bones that made the fossils floated from Africa to South America or

2.) the dinosaurs swam from Africa to South America.

We talked about what happens when something sits in water for a while….it disintegrates. So, kindergarten theory number one was a no go. As for kindergarten theory number two…. there were no dinosaurs that swam. (Shocking, I know…but  plesiosaurs were reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs and were technically not dinosaurs!) There were several confused faces…

This was my opportunity to rock the students’ world….drum roll please…I excitedly shared that scientists say that when dinosaurs lived millions of years ago the earth was believed to have been one super continent called Pangaea! Cue the video clip…

Gasps! The light bulbs went on. A student raised his hand and said very matter of factly, “So Mrs. Delwiche. I think we should be each one of the seven continents. I know we have ten students but maybe some can share. We can be the continents and start together as Pangaea and then spread apart to show how the continents have moved apart. We could sing the continent song while we do it.”

What a perfect way to illustrate this tricky concept! I created sentence strips with the names of the continents on them and handed them out to students. We assembled in order of where the continents are located and created this fun video:

Pangaea….continents…continental drift….I love that these students are eager to learn and use such sophisticated vocabulary!

Special Delivery

Mrs. Mc David delivered a very special package to the kindergarten classroom this morning.

Oh my…what could it be?! We sat as a class and I carefully unwrapped the tissue and discovered an envelope and an egg!! What could possibly be inside the egg? First we brainstormed animals that hatch from an egg.

Next, I had students record their guess of what they thought might be in the egg.

Then using information that was provided in the envelope, I gave the students three clues that described what is in the egg….

  1. reptile
  2. plant eater
  3. taller than Mrs. Delwiche

Students were asked to record their thoughts after each clue was given to see if their idea changed. Then we had to sit and wait for the egg to hatch!

We waited and waited and waited….

And then…..

Stella the Stegosaurus hatched!! We recorded this new information on our recording sheets.

Stella the Stegosaurus brought exciting news to our classroom. She is going to be available for sleepovers beginning this weekend! More to come on this soon!