Friday Fun!

We enjoyed our second Friday Fun of the year!. Two of the activities had a five senses sense of sight theme, which is the sense we are currently exploring. First, students made sun catchers using pony beads and these small pie tins. They carefully arranged the glitter pony beads inside the tin.

I plan to cook the tins in the toaster oven later today. Once baked, the plastic beads will be melted and a beautiful sun catcher will emerge! (When the plastic is melting, it can be quite stinky….so I always plug the toaster oven into an outlet outside the kitchen!)

Update: Here they are!

Here are the supplies I used:

Another sense of sight activity today was making kaleidoscopes! The students had so much fun assembling and decorating these!

Our third rotation was the Listening Center and the fourth was a math activity! Students used these adorable, little grocery carts filled with mini fruit erasers, and they had to stock the grocery store shelves with a specific number of pieces! It was so much fun watching the students load the carts, deliver the fruit, and count the number they were to put on a shelf.

These items are guaranteed to bring many hours of engaged play for young children! In addition to the fruit erasers, I have mini cupcake erasers that the students will use at a later date to stock the bakery shelves!

Five Senses

We began our unit on the Five Senses with a class favorite activity….using our five senses to describe popcorn. Right after our Literacy Workstations I snuck into the kitchen to pop a bag of popcorn. Once back in the classroom, I hid the bag by my desk. I rang the bell signaling to the students that we were changing activities and immediately I was pleased to hear, “Mrs. Delwiche, why does it smell like popcorn?” I proceeded to place one piece of popcorn on each students’ desk for them to use to observe: what did students see, hear, smell, feel, and taste? (I told students upfront that this one single piece of popcorn was for observation only and that I would be giving them a cup full of popcorn to enjoy during snack time!)

Some of the responses the students made included:

Hear: pop, crunch

See: white, yellow, balls, bumps

Feels: bumpy, smooth, soft

Smells: like butter

Tastes: buttery, salty

We had so much fun with this activity! It really is the perfect way to introduce children to the five senses!

Five Senses

Our unit on the Five Senses is wrapping up, but not before we squeeze in some last minute senses learning! Last week, students were asked to create a musical instrument using any items they had at home. Students were asked to “think like an inventor, be a problem solver, use your imagination, and have fun!” They were given a planning sheet where materials and ideas were recorded and a blueprint was sketched.

Once students brought their instruments to school, they were invited to share the process they used to invent!

Students also brought their instruments to music class, where they played a listening game.

Students even had an opportunity to play their musical instruments!

I love how this project integrates learning at home to school to music class!

What’s That Smell?

The kindergarteners are still exploring their five senses. Today, we explored our sense of smell with a fun game. I had prepared three groups of cotton balls where each group had a different smell. I asked the students to close their eyes as I handed out the cotton balls. Next, they were to smell their cotton ball and find two or three other students who had a cotton ball that smelled the same. Once they found their group, the students had to decide what smell was on their cotton ball. Watch what happened:

After the class discussion, students recorded the members of their group and their smell in their Five Senses Notebook.

The kindergarteners are now officially smelling pros!

Friday Fun!

We enjoyed our first Friday Fun of the school year. Since we have been learning about our sense of sight, students made suncatchers. This was one of the neatest crafts I have seen in a long time. I purchased mini aluminum pie tins from Amazon. Students used their fine motor skills to place a row of mostly transluscent pony beads around the bottom of the tin.

After the designs were created (and the students went off to Spanish class) I took our small toaster oven and moved it outside, where I preheated it to 450 degrees. I popped two tins in at a time and let them cook for about eight minutes, or until the beads had melted. (The key is baking the plastic beads outside in fresh air to keep from smelling the fumes.)

Once they cooled, I turned over the tins to remove the suncatchers.

How beautiful! This weekend I plan to drill small holes into the tops and add a translucent thread so that these sun catchers can be hung in our classroom windows.

The next project had students decorating a mini chalkboard.

These chalkboards will be used during Reading Centers as a way for students to practice writing letters, spelling words, and recording answers for different phonemic awareness activities. We love Fridays!

Update:

Here’s what the suncatchers look like after the holes were drilled and the fishing line was strung:

Beautiful!

Friday Fun, Fun, Fun!

Students were thrilled to hear that we would be practicing beginning coding skills using the Bee-Bots. They have been eagerly awaiting a chance to get their hands on these coding robots. We explored the ways to make the Bee Bots go and practiced programming them. Then I introduced them to a rhyming game. The goal was for students to choose a card, identify the picture, and find a picture on the mat that rhymes. So we practicing rhyming AND coding! (and patience too, of course!)

Students also used their sense of sight to look through different kalideiscopes.

They then made binoculars using patterned duct tape, yarn, and toilet paper rolls.

Of course we had to take the binoculars outside and test them out!

Our Sense of Sight

Students were introduced to our sense of sight yesterday. They learned several fun facts about our eyes and enjoyed a short Bill Nye the Science Guy clip on our sense of sight. Today, I planned two activities that challenged students to use their sense of sight. Here is a description of the first activity:

Go! Students went back to their desks to record as many items as possible. They could use pictures or words to show which items they remembered.

Here is what was on the tray:

We came back together to see which items the students remembered….and as a group, they identified all but the blue rubber band! Go, kindergartners!

Next, I took the students outside for a sight scavenger hunt. They looked for items that were big, small, shiny, and

While outside, students drew pictures of the items they saw.

Once we were back inside, students practiced sounding out the words to match their pictures. I encouraged students to use their best guess spelling. What a great job they did!

To carry on the theme of the sense of sight, students will each make a pair of binoculars tomorrow during Friday Fun!

Fabulous Five Senses!

Our Five Senses Unit started with a POP! What better way to be introduced to our Five Senses than with popping popcorn! I borrowed a popcorn popper from Ms. Svedlund, and we got right to work. Many of the students had not seen this type of popcorn popper before. What a treat for me! They were absolutely mesmerized by the process of popping popcorn!

We then worked together to record our popcorn observations into our Five Senses Notebook. Students were encouraged to record their observations using pictures or words. They could write their own words, or I gave students the option to use our class observation sheet that was projected onto the Smart Board to help.

This Five Senses kick-off activity sure made a great impression! Students are excited to see which five senses we will focus on first.

Five Senses Poems

We worked on these five senses poems during reading centers. I love how they turned out.

Students also created texture pictures of the item they describe in their five senses poem. It was fun to create with these different collage materials!