Mobile Dairy Farm

Galatas kindergarteners took a quick field trip to visit a mobile dairy farm. We walked from our school to the church next door to see a real live farmer and his dairy cow! The kids were convinced we walked a really long way and one student assured me, "Don't worry Miss Bates. We didn't lose Galatas School. I see it right there!"

The kids watched excitedly as Farmer Larry introduced us to his dairy cow, Missy. He explained the important job that farmers do and why dairy products are so important to keeping our bodies healthy. He explained about how a cow is milked and he gave a live demonstration. We were amazed!

What a fun mini-field trip!

Have you seen the Tooth Fairy?

We know she's close by. We have lots of loose teeth that she's waiting to collect.

We've done our part by putting wanted posters throughout the school. We've got every classroom on the lookout.

Have you seen her?

*More photos of our Dental Health week coming soon!*

100 Days - Hooray!

The 100th Day of School is a huge cause for celebration! We excitedly celebrated this special day with lots of math, writing, and art activities in K5.

Every day during our calendar meeting we add a "stick" to the place value pocket. When there are 10 sticks in the ones pocket, they are bundled and moved to the tens pocket, modeling how place value works. This is a foundational concept for not only counting, but addition and subtraction as well as higher level math skills. Today we got to bundle all of our tens bundles into one HUGE bundle for the hundred's pocket. The kids were thrilled!

We count daily - by tens, ones, and fives. We'll soon add counting by twos.

For our 100th Day celebration, we had a full day of activities designed to support skills in counting, patterning, and place value. First, we played a game in pairs called "Roll to 100". The students took turns rolling the number dice and recording the number they rolled in the grid.

After rolling 100 times, I showed the kids how to color each square according to a key. The goal with this activity was not only to practice number writing, counting, and cooperation, but to allow students to look at their numbers as data. By color coding them, the kids were more clearly able to see which numbers were rolled most and least frequently. As an extension, the kids were challenged to graph their information - they did wonderfully!

**PS - Although it looks crazy, my shirt is a nod to this special day - it has 100 bows!

In the afternoon, we worked in small groups on art and writing activities. We made 10 groups of 10 "jellybeans" (thumbprints) in a jar.

We made wild-looking hats to celebrate! Each of the 10 strips has 10 items on it - 100!

We read around the room and wrote 100 words.

We predicted what we'll look like when we are 100 years old! I can only hope I hold up as well as some of these drawings predict. They all made me smile!

We also ate a special 100's day trail mix that included 10 items of 10 different kinds of snack.

Whew - - we were all exhausted after such a busy day! We look forward to the next 100 days of school being just as much fun. Happy 100th Day from K5!

100 Collections

To celebrate the 100th Day of School, students created a collection of 100 items and share it with their classmates. Our 100's Museum was also on display for Galatas Open House for parents and families to enjoy. Here are the proud students with their projects:

Thank you to all of the families who participated in this fun celebration!

The Mitten

During our study of winter, we read two different versions of the traditional Ukrainian folk tale, The Mitten. It is such a charming story and we loved hearing it again and again!

We retold the story using paper puppets for each animal and placing them inside a "hand-sewn" mitten. The children attempted punched their own holes (with PLENTY of adult help!) and I taught a little sewing lesson using yarn.

The kids did a great job lacing and using their props to retell the story of The Mitten. Be sure to ask your child to tell you the story at home!

As a class, we made a "thinking map" of all the characters in each version of the story.

Then each child made his/her own map. I just love their drawings of each animal!

These thinking maps helped us sort through the similarities and differences in each version of the story. I cut apart my own thinking maps so each animal could be placed in the correct spot on our Venn Diagram.

We've added the books to our treehouse library where the children can read for pleasure. I've also written the lines of the story onto sentence strips to be sequenced in our pocket chart literacy station. We will continue to return to this story for many more weeks since we enjoyed it so much!