Mosaic Math

We began learning about area in math this week. Our culminating project was an art piece using squares and a mosaic technique. First the students used paper squares to create designs of specific areas. We worked together to solve problems like, Can you create a letter L that has an area of 8 squares? Next students used the sqaures to create an individual art piece. They figured the area of their artwork and hid the answer under a little flap.

Then the students got to explore the "art museum" and try to guess the area of each art piece before checking their answers. They did so well! I loved watching them collaborate and discuss how to figure the area of each piece.

Making Butter

As we learned about farms and products that come from farms, K4 and K5 students had the opportunity to make butter. We all agree that farmers in the pioneer days had a hard job! We started with the basics: cream and salt in tightly sealed jars.

Then the fun began! We cranked up the tunes and shook those jars with all of our might! We worked in groups and passed the jar around like musical chairs.
Shake it!

After about 10 minutes of hard shaking, our cream solidified into butter. Everyone got to take a look...

And have a taste!

Egg Hunt

Our kindergarten egg hunt was a huge success! This year the kids hunted for "sight word eggs" - checking off the words from their lists as they hunted. It added an element of reading to our fun egg hunt and also ensured that we would have more than 30 seconds of a mad dash to the eggs.

To collect our eggs, the kids turned regular gift bags into bunnies. I was happy to let my kids get the scissors and construction paper and go! They did an incredible job - the students ALWAYS create better artwork than I could ever model for them.

The only thing better than one bunny bag is... lots of them!

We hunted for our sight word eggs on the playground and the sight of all of those eggs was almost more than they could bear. I attemped to get a photo of the starting line, but I was nearly trampled when we let the kids go! There were hundreds of eggs to hunt and they sure didn't waste any time!

In the end, we were happy bunnies! The kids did a wonderful job reading their sight word eggs and showing off all they've learned so far in kindergarten. Yay for K5!

Visit with Vegas & Tyde

We had two special guests at Galatas School today - Vegas and Tyde! Our second grade teacher, Mrs. Hughes, brought her horses to school today to visit us. We listened carefully as Mrs. Hughes explained how to feed, groom, and care for the horses.

Mrs. Hughes even showed us how to clean the Tyde's hooves!

After Mrs. Hughes shared about how to take care of Vegas and Tyde, we were able to pet them! These are our classmates with Vegas:

Rip Roarin' Rodeo!

Our Kindergarten rodeo was an enormous success and all of the cowboy and cowgirls had a boot scootin' good time! Please enjoy some of the photos I took during the rodeo:

We pledged to the American and Texas flags, just like they do in real rodeos.

We performed two songs and the ever-popular Chicken Dance!

The classes competed in three events: the stick horse relay race, the barrel race, and the chuck wagon race.