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Have you ever had Sugar on Snow?

We celebrated Read Across America and World Reading Day by inviting several people around the world to read to us. Each day, we used Skype to connect with a new reader. We listened to new stories and made new friends. We even heard a story that we knew. Our friend, Mrs. Marrinan stayed up late to read to us. It was good to meet Mrs. Cassidy. We read her blog and have wondered what she looks like. Ms. von Wahlde surprised us by sending us the book she read. We enjoyed our new stories so much that Mrs. Knee bought most of the books for our class. Now we can read the books whenever we want and have good memories of our skype calls.

When Mrs. Marrinan came to visit in December, she brought us several books from Australia. We became interested in Australian animals and have been learning about them through books, websites and even with the help of Mrs. M and the Gems. We have a wiki that we used for our online information - check it out here. We shared our learning with our families on curriculum night. We want to share our learning with you, too.

We have had a wonderful winter of snow play. We've hiked in the woods, rolled snowballs to make snowmen and even had lots of snow for sliding. After our recent blizzard and some warmer temperatures, we had the perfect snow for building. Can you guess what we made? Here are some pictures to give you a hint....

Do you need more hints? We worked very hard packing the snow in the recycle bins and carrying them over to the building spot where Big Jack and Omar were waiting.

Did you guess? If you still don't know, we think this video will help you. Please tell us what you think.

Wednesday was our 100th day of school. We've been preparing for the 100th day of school by practicing our oral counting skills. Many children can count to 100 and the rest of the class continues to practice. We also have been making groups of ten and counting by 10's to 100. Last week, we worked on a bulletin board display that combined the 100th day event with Valentine's Day. After folding paper and cutting out more than 400 hearts, we used them to make 100 Valentine "Cards". Each child wrote 5 numbers in sequence until we reached 100. There have been several compliments about our display and many people stop to look a bit closer. Each square is a work of art. We are very pleased with the results.

We are very lucky to have lots of outdoor places to play at our school. We are also lucky that we can take the time to play and enjoy the outdoors. It was a beautiful day to be outside and the snow was just right for making things. Jack Hutchinson, our wonderful Thursday afternoon volunteer joined us as we worked together to create some amazing things in the snow. As you watch our movie, look for the ways we are working together and helping friends. We learn how to cooperate and how to be friends when we take time to build and create. Look for our smiles too. We were having fun!

Our big buddies met with Mrs. Campelia, our physical education teacher to learn about activities that would be good to do with 5 and 6 year olds. They planned wonderful activities to do with us. Some of the big buddies showed us things that they can do with the materials. It was like a show. It was a fun afternoon. We especially like the parachute. We are wondering what we will do next time when we get together with our big buddies.

Our gingerbread houses are a direct follow up to the reading of several versions of the runaway food. We read about the Gingerbread Girl, the Gingerbread Boy, the Gingerbread Baby and even a variation that involved a Runaway Pancake. Mrs. Marrinan brought us a story from Australia called the the Lamington Man. We noticed the setting - country, city ( yes - New York City), farm, and forest. We discussed the ways the runaway character was tricked and eventually caught - except for the Gingerbread Girl, who is one smart cookie.

In the Jan Brett version of the Gingerbread Baby, Matti used a gingerbread house to capture the baby. The children drew plans for decorating the roofs and walls of their houses and followed their plans with various patterns of candy. The pattern work was connected to our math activities. Lots of thoughtful work and effort went into creating each house.

We have big buddies from the eighth grade. They came to our room to do a project with us. They traced their hands and our hands and then helped us cut them out. Mr. Grieve let them trace his hand and they cut that out too. We used the hands to make a turkey. It was fun to work with our big buddies. We want them to come back soon.

What happens when it snows during the night and then it rains for most of the day? You have very disappointed KinderKids who were hoping to play outdoors in the snow. Did they cry? Goodness no!!! They brought the snow inside and had fun anyway. Playing with snow inside was fun but we are hoping for many days of outside snow play this winter.

Last week, we posted several pictures from our Halloween performances. This week, we have the movie version so you can watch us getting ready and you can see both plays. We used Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman, illustrated by S.D. Schindler published by Aladdin, 1995 and the audio version published by Recorded Books 2005. We also used Inside a House That is Haunted by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and illustrated by Tedd Arnold, published by Scholastic, 1998 and the audio version from Scholastic 1999. We hope you enjoy the show!

After reading Big Pumpkin and Inside a House That is Haunted, we wanted to do the books as a play. We practiced lots so we knew what to do. We painted the background and made costumes.We performed the plays for other classes and for other teachers. It was fun. We want to do more plays.

We love to play outdoors and our favorite place to play is in the woods. We have fun playing together and everyone get along. We build things, look for salamanders, play imaginary games, and have fun. Sometimes Mrs. Laskowsky's class joins us and there is plenty of room for everyone in the woods. The video shows what we did together a few days ago.

Can you see what we are learning when we play together in the woods?

The KinderKids shared their hopes and dreams for kindergarten at the beginning of the year. There are many things they hope to do and learn: play with friends, go on trips, learn about water creatures, learn about math, paint pictures, use an iPad, learn to spell, make new friends and go to the ocean. Look at each person's hopes on their own blog.The KinderKids needed to figure out how to work and play together so that everyone gets to do all the things they hope to do this year.

Mrs. Knee asked this question - What kind of rules do we need so we can all do lots of things. The KinderKids had many ideas and Mrs. Knee made a long list of what everyone said. There were too many rules to remember. Someone noticed that some of the rules were about taking care of friends. Some rules were about taking care of the school and our room and the earth. There were even rules about taking care of ourselves.Now the KinderKids have only 3 rules - Take care of yourself, Take care of friends, Take care of the classroom, the school and the Earth. Three rules are easy to remember. The KinderKids also know what kinds of things they need to do to follow the rules.  We made a movie to show everyone about our rules.

We read "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynold's and then we wanted to make lots of dots. We tried many different ways to make them. We used paint, and markers, and colored pencils. We made Dot Pins with Sculpey to wear on Dot Day. We used coffee filters, markers and water to make some interesting dots. Even our Deerfield Fair Projects was a dot! We rolled colorful scrap paper and glued the rolls on our own silver circles. Then we glued the silver circles on a giant dot. Mrs. Laskowsky's class made some too. We are going to put this in the fair so everyone can see it. Maybe they will want to go and make their mark too.

Look who's been spotted in kindergarten. There are 18 new KinderKids in Mrs. Knee's class.

Things have been very busy in the KinderKids classroom and Mrs. Knee has been busy too. That is why there have not been any new blog posts in a while. We worked hard on our bird projects and you will be able to see some of our work on our blogs. We are still interested in learning about birds so we are watching the Decorah Bald Eagles web cam. We are waiting for the first egg to hatch.

We celebrated Valentine's Day with a lunch in our classroom that our parents made for us. We even had a chocolate fountain. Yum! Then we opened our cards from our friends. It was a great day.

Our school had a Jump Rope for Heart activity. We did this with our 8th grade big buddies. We jumped for 45 minutes.

We learned about making maple syrup and went on a field trip to Mrs. Knee's house to see the maple trees, the buckets and spigots and the sugar house with the cupola.

Our latest project in being involved with the Flat Classroom Project. We will be working with other students in different parts of the world and getting to know them better. We made a video to help them know who we are and what we do. It is called our Handshake to others.

We are interested in learning more about birds. We know some things about birds and talked about those things in class. Mrs. Knee wrote down our words and then used the computer to make a Wordle from what we said. This is it:

Keep checking our blog to find out what we are learning about birds. We have a wiki that will help us learn about birds and we will use it to share our information. Click here to go to our BirdSmart Wiki.

Today was our 100th day of school. We have 80 more days of school left. We are learning to count to 100 and we need to practice so we can get better at it. We made hats with 100 things on them. We also made necklaces with 100 pieces of cereal. We each have a small book with 100 animals. We had so many things to count. It was a fun day.

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Shaun, Max and Owen used Sock Puppet on the iPad to show how to count to 100 by tens.

How do you celebrate 100 days of school?

Our playground is icy and it is hard to play when it is so icy. We are lucky because we have a large woods to play in too. There is still some snow in the woods and we had fun playing games and making houses with sticks. We are still wishing for lots of snow to fall but until that happens, we are happy to play in the woods.

Here are a few pictures from our recess time in the woods.

We finally have a bit of snow to play with at recess. We made a few snowmen and even tried to sleep in the snow. We want more snow so we can make snow forts and slide down our big hill. If we have enough snow, we might even use the school's snow shoes.

The Kinderkids had so much fun making monsters, they were eager to try one more way. Using paper towel and toilet paper rolls and cut out pieces of paper, their monsters once again showed their creativity. The idea for this came from an article in Parent's magazine.You can find more information here.
These are just three examples of the Tube Monsters. Look on each child's blog for pictures of the other monsters.

We are reading lots of books about monsters. Two of our favorites are If You're a Monster and You Know It and There was an Old Monster. These books inspired us to make our own colorful monsters. We drew and cut shapes for the head, body, arms and legs and glued them together. Then we added faces, horns, tails and other things to make our monsters look great.

After reading The Monster's Party by Joy Cowley, we decided to tell about things that our monsters can do. We tried to think of different things the monsters could do. We hope you like our monsters and like our ideas for what they can do.

We have added one more routine to our Daily 5 work. It is called Listen to Reading. We have lots of stories on iPods and on the computer to choose from. We use Tumble Books on the computer. We can hear the words and follow along when we watch the screen. With the stories on the iPods, we listen to the words and turn the pages of our books when we hear the signal. Listening to Reading is something else that helps us become better readers.

We are learning to write stories about what we know and things we do. We wrote this message together during our writing time. It is about the monarch butterflies we have in our room.

We had some monarch caterpillars. The butterflies lay eggs on leaves and they hatch into caterpillars. They eat leaves. They eat milkweed.

                     The caterpillars go into a chrysalis. First they turn into a J.The chrysalis is green and then it turns black. When it is black that means it's almost ready to hatch the butterfly. When the butterflies come out, they hang upside down to pump up their wings. When they hatch their wings are all crumpled up and they have a fat body. If the butterfly is a boy, it has a black dot on each wing. The girls don't have any black dots.

                 We let the butterflies go. A butterfly flew on to Shaun's pants and then flew to Max's shirt. Some of the kids got to hold the butterfly. The butterflies are going to fly to Mexico.The butterflies have to go there because it is too cold here in Deerfield. They rest in trees. You can watch them in the sky. The butterflies will come back. When they come back we might find them again. We put tags on the butterflies to help the scientists know where they came from.

Every day after snack, the KinderKids do Me Moves . Some people don't know about Me Moves so we thought we would show you what we do. We watch the DVD on our white board and follow the motions. Some of the KinderKids like to do Me Moves on top of our Bilibo chairs and keep their balance. Me Moves helps us relax and get ready for our work. We do math after Me Moves.

We even teach our families how to do MeMoves.

There is a wonderful group of students who go to school in Brisbane, Australia. Their teacher is Mrs. Marrinan and they are the 2M Gems. Mrs. Knee and Mrs. Marrinan are good friends and the Gems became good friends with last year's class. The Gems want to be friends with us too.

We are studying geometry. We went for a walk around the school to find shapes. We took pictures and chose some of them to put in this VoiceThread. Can you help us find more shapes in our pictures?

Earlier in the year, we started a wiki and asked our friends to add their names to it. We counted the names for each letter and made this wordle with the information. The largest letter had the most names. Which letter had the fewest names? Do you know why some letters are missing?

You can find a wordle for each letter on the Names Wiki.

After the KinderKids heard about Chris' sled dog racing, they were curious to learn more. Chris invited his grandparents to the classroom to tell about sled dog racing. They brought a sled and even Babe, the dog that helped Chris win his races. Thank you Grandpa Bob , Nana and Babe for helping us learn.

One of the KinderKids thought it would be fun to fall into the soft, deep snow. Mrs. Knee took the video and then decided to have a little fun too!

Our friends, the 2M Gems and Mrs. Marrinan skyped with us and told us about how they celebrate Christmas. It is summertime in Australia and many families take a vacation to the ocean for Christmas. We thought it would be fun to learn more about Christmas in the summertime. We compared their customs to ours and learned some interesting things.

You can see some of the things we did for our celebration in this Animoto video.

You can see the words to the Aussie Jingle Bells here and can listen to the first verse.

We are missing a few turkeys. We will add them soon.

We have been a part of Rock Our World . The theme for Rock Our World - in"TOON"ational was Peace. We talked about peace and how we could make peace happen.We read books about peace. We made a video about peace using Animation-ish. Everyone in the project also used Animation-ish to make their videos about Peace. The videos were shown at the Family Day on Saturday November 20. We came to school with our families for this event. We were interviewed about Rock Our World by Carol Anne McGuire. She started Rock Our World in 2004. Click here to see the recording of the Rock Our World family event. We are the first school on the recording.

This is the animation we made about Peace.

We loved Rock Our World and hope we can do it again.

Our exploration of nature began on the nature trail behind our school.  Ms. Doherty took groups of three children at a time out on the trail to collect items for our class nature collection.   After  our collection was complete, we decided to sort what we had collected; we ended up with many different groups. We glued most of our collection down to create our nature collages, and constructed hanging mobiles with the rest of the materials!

Tell us what you think of our work!

We went on a hike. We went up Blue Job. We went on the school bus. Some moms and dads came too. It was very long. The mountain is in Strafford NH. We saw the fire tower at the top. We found lots of different colored leaves. We found leaves and rocks and sticks. Everything was so colorful.

When we got to the top, we took a little break and then we went to a different part and then we ate lunch.The teachers brought the snack. We needed to eat out of a paper or plastic bag.  We wore coats and jackets because it was freezing up on the rocky bald hill. It has no trees on top. Mrs Knee brought plastic bags in case it was rainy and we could wear them. It was a little rainy. We had to hike back to the school bus to finish our lunch. After we went to the mountain, we went back to school.We went uphill on 2 mountains because Mrs. Knee said we were good hikers. We were so good at hiking. It was very fun and we loved it. We want to do it again. It was awesome. The teachers were so proud of us. The teachers were awesome too.

written by the KinderKids at literacy time today

We decided to make mini pinwheels. We learned how to "paint" with Crayola markers and water in art and used that technique for the paper we used for the pinwheels. We worked with Mrs. Laskowsky's class to make a picture of the world. We put our project in the Deerfield Fair so people could see it. We won a Blue Ribbon for our work.

We are 21 new KinderKids who have begun their school year. We are eager to learn, make friends and explore. Here is a peek into some of the things that have been happening in our classroom. We look forward to sharing throughout the year. Come back often. Leave a comment. Tell us what you think.

For Our Moms from Maria Knee on Vimeo.

We are helping to educate people about taking care of the earth for Earth Day. Mrs. Knee went to the Lovin' Spoonful Restaurant to borrow some bags that they use for their customers. She brought them back to school for us and the other kindergarten classes. Two second grade classes joined in our project. We decorated the bags with messages about taking care of the earth. On Earth Day, when the Lovin Spoonful customers pick up their food, they will take it home in beautiful bags and learn something about how to help the earth.

Mrs. Knee got the idea for this from the
Earth Day Groceries Project. It is a project that promotes environmental awareness in a school and its community. Students decorate grocery bags and then return them to a grocery store. It is a free activity that thousands of schools around the world will be involved in on Earth Day, April 22, 2010.

Last week, during our shoe greeting, we noticed that we are all wearing many different kinds of shoes. Some were wearing flip flops while others were wearing tie shoes, slip ons and other kinds of shoes. We sorted and counted our shoes and now we are interested in what shoes other children wear to school. Will you please answer our questions by going to this link?    We will collect the information for about 10 days.Thank you for your help. We will share our results in a later blog post.

We have a new global project called Voices of the World. Voices of the World was created by Sharon Tonner from Dundee,Scotland to connect children together using their voices rather than the written or typed word. It was also created to enable children to develop an appreciation of different languages, accents and dialects from around the world. Each month, everyone will have the same task to complete in their own language. At the end of each month, we can go to the Voices of the World site to listen to each class present the message.  Visit the map  to hear and see where everyone in this project is from.

Get a Voki now!

Earlier in the year, we watched a video from Mrs. Cassidy's class about making patterns. We have been working with pattern in math for several weeks. So we decided to make a video to show what we learned. We worked with a partner so one person could film the video and then we switched. Everyone made a pattern and explained what they can do. We hope you enjoy seeing what we learned. Thank you to Mrs. Cassidy's class for giving us this idea.

We are halfway into our school year. We have a half of year left until the end of school. It is wintertime in New Hampshire and there will be lots more cold days before spring. The Gems in Brisbane, Australia just finished their summer vacation. It is hot there now and they are starting their new school year. We made this message for the Gems because we want to be their blogging friends.

We are talking about snow in our classroom. Today we thought of words that go together with snow. Can you think of anymore?

We love being outdoors and we are lucky to have lots of places to go. We have flat places to make snow angels. We have a big hill to climb. It is good for sliding. We make forts and houses in the piles made by the snow plow. We can also go to the rocks by our classroom and play on the snow piles. What do you do for recess at your school?

We have math workshop in the morning everyday. We make choices from the math shelf. Our math work can be counting, pattern and sorting work. Here are some pictures of our math activities.

Our classmate Jacob had a house fire last week and he can't live in his house anymore. He needs all new things because of the fire. We read the book A Chair For My Mother by Vera B. Williams about a house fire. Friends helped the family by bringing them new things. The family saved money in a jar for a long time so they could by a special chair for the mother. Jacob said the story is like the fire at their house. Lots of people helped his family. Jacob said that he doesn't have any of his books because of the fire. We decided to collect money in a jar just like the story. When it is full, we will buy new books for Jacob. Lots of people are helping us collect the money. The jar is getting full and we wonder if we will get so much money that it will overflow. Soon we will buy some books for our friend.

Fall in New Hampshire is a colorful season. We are lucky that our school has such beautiful surroundings. Recently, we went for a hike in the woods on the Blue Blaze trail. It goes through the woods and around the pond. The fall colors were just beginning to be bright. We hope to take another walk soon to compare the changes.

     The Kindergarten classes worked together on a project for the Deerfield Fair. We read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons and connected our project connected to the book. Mrs. Knee taught us how to do needle felting, using a very sharp needle and wool. Needle felting is fun. Our class made the spring and winter tree. We also made the little bird that held the sign.

     When the project was finished, it was displayed in the School Building at the Fair. The judges gave us a blue ribbon for our work. Yippee!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The KinderKids made applesauce and enjoyed it for snack.

Everyone in the class hopes to learn many things this year. In order for everyone to be able to learn and work together, we need some rules. We've been talking about the rules we need so that everyone gets to do what they are hoping to do. We had three pages of rules but that was too many to remember. We noticed that some rules were connected and in the end, we have only four rules.

We started the school year with 5 buttterfly eggs. We watched 5 caterpillars eat and grow, eat and grow for several weeks. Four caterpillars changed to butterflies. One caterpillar was not strong and did not become a butterfly. We learned that our butterflies will migrate to a warmer place. They will meet hundreds of monarch butterflies and they will fly to Mexico. We hope they have a safe trip.

Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go to Mexico.

The 2009 KinderKids talked about things they hoped to do in school this year. We call them our hopes and dreams.

 What are your hopes and dreams for your school year?

Our new school year has begun. The classroom is full of new friends who are beginning to learn to work together.

Let me introduce the 2009 KinderKids to you.

The KinderKids invited their mothers to the classroom for a Mother's Day Celebration. They made fresh squeezed lemonade and served it to their moms. As part of their Rock Our World-What's Cookin' project, the KinderKids made a cooking video to teach others how to make fresh squeezed lemonade.

Happy Earth Day

from the KinderKids

On Friday, it was Grandparents Day at school. We invited our grandparents or another special guest to come have lunch with us. After lunch, our guests joined us in the classroom. We sang some of our favorite songs for them. Thank you everyone for visiting. We love you.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

We have been reading several books by Mo Willems. We started by reading "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus". Mrs. Knee has a collection of Mo Willems books and we keep asking for more. We learned how to draw the Pigeon from the Mo Willems website.There are lots of fun things to do at the site. Mo Willems even has a blog! In a few days, you can find the pictures we drew on our own blogs.

Do you read Mo Willems' books? Which ones do you like?

The 2M Gems are in Brisbane, Australia. They visit our blog and make comments. We visit their blog too. When we are in school, the Gems are sleeping. When they are at school, we are home and getting ready for bed. We can never talk to them when we are in school.
We had a Curriculum Night and came back to school at 6:00pm. The Gems were just starting their day at school. We set up a video chat so we could finally meet our Australian friends. They had several questions for us and we had a few for them. It does not snow in Brisbane and we talked about playing in the snow. The Gems wear uniforms at their school. They all had blue shirts. We think it is fun meeting students from other places. We were glad that we could meet the Gems.

Yesterday the men from Green Pages installed our ActivBoard. Today we had a morning message on the board. We answered a question by writing on the board. We did our check-in on the board too. We used the board at math workshop. We love our new ActivBoard..

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

This weekend Mrs. Knee worked in the classroom and left us this message. We read it when we came to school. We like the way the room looks but we are really excited for the change that will happen on Tuesday. Tuesday is the day that the Promethean people are coming to put our new interactive white board on our wall.

Do you have an interactive white board in your classroom? If you do - tell us how you use it.

This week we received the first of several "digital tools" for our classroom because we are part of the 2008-2009 Digital Tools Grant from the NH Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology. The grant is funded through the NCLB Title IID Program and we are one of four classroom at our school to receive the funding. The KinderKids are excited because they will have new things to help them learn and they are very excited about the Roamer robots. After observing the demo program, the KinderKids wanted to teach the robot something. We all went to the hallway to figure out how to program the robot to go to the end of the hallway. The KinderKids are learning about measurement, estimation, geometry, problem solving and collaboration while using Roamer. They learned that there is some work to making a robot move and go where they want it to be.

What do you think about this work?
Do you think the KinderKids are involved to their work?
Are they enjoying themselves?

We have lots of snow this winter. We love to play outside. We are lucky because we have two places to play. We can play near our classroom. The snowplow makes big piles near the rocks and we love to climb on them. We like to make houses there. Sometimes we go to the big hill to slide. The snow is deep so we have a hard time walking. We also make snow angels and climb on the snow piles. It is always fun to play in the snow.

What do you do in the winter? Does it snow where you live?

We have blogging mentors from the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. They connect to our classroom by commenting on this blog. We are thrilled to have made such good friends through blogging. We fondly refer to them as our college friends from Canada.

On Friday, we met and chatted Amy and Janine, two of our U of Regina friends through a video skype call. It is like using the computer to make a phone call and we can see each other while talking. We had a little bit of trouble with our video connection and then Amy and Janine had some trouble. We went outside to play while waiting for them to get back in touch with us. Amy and Janine quickly solved the problem and we chatted for a bit before we had to go home. We love our blogging friends and hope we connect with other friends real soon.

Jeff Peneston is a teacher from NY who is going to Antarctica. He invited classrooms from around the country to make a flag that he can take with him aboard the icebreaker ship named Oden. Jeff will work with scientists in a program called PolarTREC. Jeff will fly the flags from everyone on the ship and take pictures for us to see. We will check on Jeff during his trip by reading his on line journal and looking at the pictures he takes. He will begin his trip on November 25. We are reading the journal of another PolarTREC teacher. She is Robin Ellwood and she is a teacher in Rye NH. She is part of a SCUBA diving crew working under the lake ice to collect information about the conditions on the bottom of the lake. We enjoy the pictures in Ms. Ellwood's on line journal.