Ms. Segura's Kinder Stars!

FREE BOOKS! Reading Is Fundamental gave every kindergarten student a free book. We love to read!


A student types her sight words on our "cow" keyboard.



A student finds a sight word on our Wordle screen.

We celebrated our 100th day of school with various activities.

We learned that energy is a push or a pull. It can also change due to the amount of momentum exerted. It may be a soft push/pull or a hard push/pull. We experimented with energy using marbles, straws, toy trains, doors, and paper airplanes. We even played a really fun on-line game that demonstrated the difference between a hard and soft push. Below are images from our paper airplane experiment.

FYI: Gt testing will begin this week and continue into next week.

BLAST OFF! Before a space shuttle is launched there is a countdown. Well, we are also counting backwards in our classroom during math. So we thought it would be fun to also spell our names backwards. It was a somewhat confusing concept at first but we got it and it was a lot of fun.

Wow, I can't believe it has been over a month since I last blogged. Well, let me catch you up on some of the things we have been doing in our classroom. Your kiddos are currently studying the night sky. We have already learned about the moon, the sun, astronauts, and rockets. We had a lot of fun making our own craters using marbles and flour. I can't believe I didn't take pictures of that. We did however, record our data and draw our findings like real scientists do. It was kind of messy but we had a lot of fun.


PHASES OF THE MOON




The earth's moon is covered with craters.






Here are 2 of my students spelling words on the "moon" using the overhead projector. This center is very popular and has the kiddos spelling many different words including my name!

Today we read a story called "Where's the Fly?" It shows the location of a fly in relation to the world at large. It was a very interesting book about geography and spatial relationships. I decided to show the students the school's location in
relation to our world. We used Google Earth to locate P.F. Stewart. Below is a snapshot of an aerial view of our school.

Today we completed our winter group assignment. We read and talked about all things winter! We then worked in groups where each student was responsible for drawing and labeling a winter object. Some of us drew snowmen, bare trees, mittens, scarves, winter caps (which the students call beanies), and coats. Each group then presented their creations in front of the class and spoke about why they chose their winter object. Jacob, Destiny, Adriana, and Joshua worked well together!

Last week we started learning about the winter season. We read a winter story: The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and brainstormed our ideas about winter. This led to a creation of a winter web using a software called Kidspiration. The students chose all of the pictures and dictated the captions. I have to say that I am impressed by what they came up with.

Wordle is a web based program that you can use to create fun word clouds. We use it during our reading block to learn our sight words. Try it! It's fun and it's free. Go to www.wordle.net and click "Create your own". Below is a screen capture of a sight word wordle we created. We have even used it for our morning messages.

.....you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man! Ahhhhh, gingerbread fever has found it's way into our classroom. We are reading fun stories and completing various gingerbread inspired activities at our centers.
Aaron and Kevin are playing a game called "dice roll addition." Each player rolls the dice, adds the number of dots, and colors in the corresponding number on their gingerbread man.



A student visits the ABC center and enjoys an alphabet matching game.



A student draws and writes about the gingerbread man in the writing center.



Victoria loves to read and make up stories in the library center.



A student creates gingerbread art using various materials. Cute pink pants!!!



Destiny shows us how to play the snowflake memory game.





Sadie and Natalie complete a sequencing activity.

Stewart Elementary recently hosted a career on wheels (COW) day with great fanfare. Your children learned about various professions from many different industries. A few class favorites were the SAPD, SWAT team, and the park police. We even visited the Radio Disney van where your children learned the latest dance from the Hannah Montana movie.

We recently studied the decomposition of a pumpkin and were surprised by the results. We took daily observations and recorded what we saw. It went from a cute medium sized orange pumpkin to a flat gray, black, and white mess over the period of three weeks. We finally decided to throw it out after it began to liquefy and smell really bad. I uploaded the pictures in order from day 1 to day 13 but for some reason they did not come out that way. Sorry!

November is quickly coming to an end and December is fast approaching. Wow! Time sure does fly by when your having fun. This past month we learned many things about the autumn/fall season. We also learned about harvesting, trees, leaves, and Thanksgiving. On one of our many nature learning walks we collected many different types of leaves. Some of us had small ones while others had very large ones. We observed our leaves and learned that they are made up of different parts. Leaves have a petiole, tip, blade, midrib and veins. After we recorded our observations we made colorful leaf rubbings. We had so much fun! Enjoy your kiddos fabulous work!