Sea Life: Sharks...

We are learning about all kinds of sea animals. This week we are learning about Sharks. Sharks are fascinating creatures Here is some of what we have been learning:

Our teacher made this video, but you can try making one of your own at Discovery Channel's: Shark Week Video Mixer. Give it a try, it's fun. You will need a grown up to help you. If you make a video that you want to share, be sure to send us the link.

Here are a few more interesting sites: Sharks, Shark Facts, Shark Information. If you find a site you think we might enjoy in Kindergarten, we hope you will share it with us.

What is a fish?....

We have been learning about fish. We know the things that make a fish a fish! These are the things we know:

• All fish have gills.


• Fish are cold-blooded.


• They have a back bone or skeleton.
  
• Most fish have fins.
  
• Most fish have scales, but some don't
  
• Fish live in water. Some fish live in salt water, other fish live in fresh water. Salmon and eels can live in both types of water. Salmon have their babies in fresh water, but live in salt water. Eels have their babies in the salt water, but they live in fresh water.

Here are some fish we like:

Visit our Sea Life Page

Telling Time...

We are learning about clocks and how to tell time. We know about the face of the clock, the hour , minute and second hands. We are pretty good at telling time on the hour. We are trying to get the notion of how long seconds and minutes are. To count a second, we stick the word "Mississippi" in between each number. In other words we count, "One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi, Three-Mississippi, etc. We know that it takes 60 seconds to make a minute and 60 minutes to make one hour. We have a "teaching clock" in our classroom. We watched this video to help us with our learning too:

Sea Life...

We are so excited! We began our Sea Life unit on Monday. We brainstormed things we think we know about the animals that live in the sea or ocean, the things you can see there, and the things you can do there. We used Kidspiration to keep track of our thoughts.

AM thoughts:

PM thoughts:

Check back with us often to see what we have learned about Sea Life!

At Home Movies...

From time to time we will be able to watch school related videos right from our own computers. The same folks that bring us the Discovery Channel, have made videos available to teachers and students. You must have the pass code to view the movies at home. You should have received a paper from me with the pass code on it. Look for the icon on the right side of our blog to access the Discovery Student Center. You will see a screen like this:





Enter the pass code and your name. Be sure to hit the submit button when you're done watching the movie. It will send me an Email telling me that you watched the video. Have fun and look for more videos on other topics soon!

We Know Birds...

We have learned a lot of interesting facts about birds. Watch our voicethread and you can find out some of what we know about birds...

Bird Watching...

Over the past few days we have been learning all about the birds we might see in our neighborhood. We made binoculars out of paper tubes and went for a nice long bird watching walk. We spotted a lot of birds we know and a few we didn't know. We worked with a partner. We had a pair of binoculars, a sheet for tallies, and a clipboard. We went all around the school yard looking for robins, sparrows, blue-jays, cardinals, hummingbirds, other (mystery) birds and nests. We found a lot of robins, sparrows and "mystery" birds. We didn't see any cardinals, blue-jays or hummingbirds. It was a very windy day, but we had fun!

Annual Fun Fair...

On Friday, April 4th, we had our 12th Annual Fun Fair. This year our theme was "Rock and Roll". As always, our community pulled together to help make our event a great success. We had volunteers from our families, staff and many local vendors to donate time and prizes and food. Thanks to everyone for helping to make Spring Trail School a great place to be!

More about Robins...

Today we returned from "Spring Break". It was so good to see everyone and know that we missed one another. We began making a book about BIRDS. Can you guess which bird we put first in our books? Yes, the robin! Many of us have spotted them all over the neighborhood. We visited a web site by a lady named Julie Corsi. It's called The Robin's Nest. Ms. Corsi had the exciting honor of having a pair of robins build their nest right below her bedroom window. She could watch each day as the robins built their nest. Even more exciting was the fact that she was able to watch, day-by-day, the growth and development of baby robins, from egg to wings! Take a few minutes to enjoy all the photos and details she provides at "The Robin's Nest". Cornell Lab of Orinthology has a recording of the "song of the robin". It's pretty cool!

For our book we used images of robins to help us get the colors and backgrounds just "right". We followed a step-by-step method for drawing. Look for our images to appear here later in the week. In the meantime, you can learn to draw a robin (or similar birds) by following the directions in the video. You can choose to draw your bird on the computer using a program like Paint, or grab a paper and markers. Either way give it a go and have fun:

Young Artists...

We continue learning to work with the Paint program. We are learning to control the mouse to create more detailed drawings and works of art. We welcome any contributions to showcase in our "Art Gallery". Feel free to use whatever drawing program you have availble to create your works of art. Save your work as a "JPG" file and send it to us. If you don't have access to a computer or prefer to draw with markers on paper, you can take a digital photo of your work and send it. We already have a contribution from Issac of Oregon. Thanks!