100 Days of FUN!

February 7 marked the official 100th day of school! Can you believe we've been in kindergarten more than 100 days now?!? We had a blast celebrating all week long! 

Celebrating 100 days naturally lends itself to lots of different lessons in math. We read the book "One Hundred Hungry Ants" and demonstrated the different ways the ants lined up.

Another fun -- and yummy -- lesson dealt with popcorn. We counted out 100 popcorn kernels and then predicted how many would pop vs. how many would remain unpopped.

Once our predictions were made, we got out a hot air popper and watched the kernels pop!

One by one, we counted the popped pieces of popcorn. Once we got to, say, 40 we knew we could cross a couple of inaccurate predictions off the list. This was a great review of greater than/less than!

We ended up with 87 pieces of popped corn. We calculated how many away from 100 that was, and also calculated which student's prediction was closest. 

Lest you assume 100 is all about math, we challenged our students to write 100 words! They were able to look around the room and write down 100 different words that they saw printed anywhere in the room. This activity, sometimes called "write the room," was a lot of fun!

The highlight of every 100th day celebration is dressing up like an elderly person -- a 100-year-old person! The various interpretations of this were hilarious!

He said he was a 100-year-old wizard.

Stay tuned for photos from our awesome 100 projects and our special 100's snack! 

Arctic activities

January's unit of study was Arctic animals (we threw penguins in too, even though they're actually Antarctic animals ...) and we had lots of fun as we learned how God made them specifically to live in these cold climates. In one such experiment, we demonstrated how penguins' feathers are designed to repel the water (as opposed to absorbing it). We took identical paper penguins and colored one completely with crayons, then we sprayed each one with water and compared the results. The wax from the crayons kept the water from soaking into the penguin!

Any day you get to squirt water is a good day, right? The following week, as we studied polar bears, we learned how blubber keeps polar bears, whales, and other arctic animals warm. We made a "blubber glove" of sorts, using ziplock bags and crisco shortening. The students stuck both of their hands into a bowl of ice, but one hand was protected by the glove. The ice was COLD, and it was amazing how warm the protected hand felt, even when immersed into ice!

We also played a literacy game with polar bear paws ... aka white tube socks! While the kids were in library one afternoon, I put pieces of paper in a big circle, each paper with a letter of the alphabet written on it. We put on our polar bear paws then marched in a circle to music. When the music stopped, we had to pick up the paper, say the letter, and then say a word that started with that letter. While the academic exercise was pretty easy for most of our kiddos, picking up paper with tube socks on their hands wasn't!

There were also a few fish on the floor ... these were just "freebie" spots, but the students loved it when they landed on a fish instead of a letter!

Best answer of the day -- H and V ... for Hickory Valley!

Love these kiddos and their love for learning!