We are learning about plants and gardens, so who better to make an appearance than Peter Rabbit?
Peter Rabbit is "naughty deluxe" so most of us wrote that if we were Peter we would listen to our Mothers and not go into the garden. But yet.......here are our Peter Rabbits right in the middle of the pea patch!
When we came into class today, there was a table full of vegetables with a note to try to find the seed of each plant. Oh my -- what fun! We had some students who had not seen some of these vegetables in their whole form! (And remembered that strawberries wear their seeds on the outside!)
Some of the seeds were hidden inside of the plant but we found them!
The corn was a big hit! We really wanted to plant it once we got it off of the cob and Mrs. Stensland said yes! Woo Hoo! This was so interesting to us!
We put our bean seeds into a wet paper towel and sealed them into a baggie. We framed them and hung them in the sunlight -- and are hoping they will sprout!
Surprise! Two of my former kindergarteners (now third grade and first grade) brought in their baby pygmy goats for us to play with! We just pushed the tables aside, covered the floor with dollar store table cloths and laughed, and laughed as the goats entertained us! (They are so cute!)
The Manwell Family is so great! They let each of us hold a goat, and answered all of our questions. I have never seen 26 five year olds sit so still -- the goats were hilarious jumping, head butting, and giving a few kisses to the children!
We planted our own "kinder - garden" today! We are growing MAMMOTH Sunflowers! We are so excited and will spend some time each morning watering our seeds with spray bottles!
Mrs. Stensland told us that the job of a stem on a plant is to bring water and nutrients up to the plant. We decided the best way to remember it was to try using a capri sun to model it -- so the pouch was the roots and soil, the straw was the stem and we were the beautiful flower at the top. Kindergarten is so much fun!
After we pretended to be a plant we started an experiment to see if we could tell that a flower was actually taking water up the stem. We put six white carnations in different colors of water, and see if the flower would change colors. The red changed first, and we were beside ourselves!
Today for snack Mrs. Stensland told us that we would have to eat a WHOLE plant! Roots, stem, leaves, flowers and seeds! UGH! We were so nervous! But then we put it all together and loved it!
On Friday we did a special art project to display on Grandparent's Day (April 25th). We looked closely at our vegetables and did a oil pastel and water color still life. It was so much fun and they turned out great! Thanks to Mr. Miller, Mrs. Ching, Mrs. Kevis and Mrs. Lauby for helping us !
This was the inspiration for our Grandparent's Day project! Please come and see them on the 25th!
We read the story "planting a rainbow" and decided to plant our own rainbow. Mrs. Stensland made 48 cups of jello and we are rooting radishes in them.
Look! Our beans have sprouted in the window greenhouses! Wow!
Who spilled the magic beans? Look what grew in our room overnight!
A note! (and some HUGE footprints coming down the beanstalk!)
We read the story "Jack and the Beanstalk" at circle, and then all of our learning centers came right out of the book! We had to find objects that were longer, shorter and the same as the giants footprints!
In the story the man who sold Jack the beans asked him if he knew how much five was -- and Jack replied two in each hand and one in my mouth! So our math center was tossing five two colored beans to see all of the combinations that could equal five!
In our story there was a hen who could lay golden eggs! So our sight word center had golden eggs filled with sight words to read and record!
Our science center was dissecting fava beans to see if we could find the little sprout inside -- it was really fun to be a scientist and dissect that BIG bean!
Our adventure may be over, but we are still on the look out for that GIANT!
Our mammoth sunflowers are just starting to pop up. Our classmate Owen brought a jar of worms to add to our Kinder-garden. We thought it was a great idea and learned a lot about worms from Owen!
Oh what a difference a weekend makes! We came in today to six inch seedlings and we watered them like crazy! Owen's worms worked! We could see the roots through the clear tub -- so interesting!
It was earth day today and we came in to some very interesting centers! We sorted trash based on how it was going to be recycled, and built flowers from their parts on ink stamps and even looked at our corn seeds sprouting in our little tub! Fun!
Mrs. Stensland whipped up some globe cupcakes which we thought were great! We also had a little bottle of water, and saved the bottles to "reuse" later. We are friends of the earth! (and Mrs. Stensland thought she was pretty cool with those cupcakes!)
We did a science experiment with packing peanuts! Mrs. Stensland told us that when she was little that packing peanuts never went away -- they were not biodegradable. But that now some packing peanuts are able to dissolve. So we took two types of peanuts and decided which ones were biodegradable. It was really fun and interesting to see what some genius came up with using cornstarch!
So much great conversation about our processes to explore this question, and fun to try to "break down" the non-biodegradable peanut. We are scientists!
We took advantage of a sunny day to plant our jello rainbow radish starts. Out we went to find the perfect place in the courtyard to plant our little radishes!
Jello makes a beautiful starting medium for our seeds, but we have to get these in the ground before the mold over takes the seeds! Some found a perfect spot to plant where you don't even have to get your feet dirty!
Uh Oh! Mr. McGregor wrote in one of his letters to us that there were rocks and pebbles in his garden -- we found some in our garden too, so we made sure to move them out of the way of our radishes!
