Friday, September 6, 2013

First Five For Friday

Well, I'm taking the plunge and doing my first Five for Friday and linking up to Doodlebugs!! (I sure hope I'm doing it right!!)


It sure seems like it would be easy enough, so here it goes...

We've been working on states of matter in my classroom and, yes, I teach Pre-K, so trying to explain the difference between solid, liquid, and gas have been... interesting :)

So we started out with a little cooking/science activity that the kids seemed to LOVE.



We started it out by making lemonade and blue ice cubes (of course they had to predict what would happen when the blue water was put in the freezer). Then, when snack rolled around, we pulled the lemonade out of the fridge and the ice out of the freezer and talked about how the fridge isn't cold enough to freeze things but how, in the freezer, the molecules (yes, I'm teaching them the word molecule!) group so close together and move so slow that it turns into a solid. Then they got to put lemonade and an ice cube in their cup and predict what would happen. Of course they said melt but, what they hadn't counted on was what would happen when it melted... the blue ice cube mixed with the yellow lemonade to make green lemonade!!

 
They were a little weary to try it but, after a few brave ones did and realized that it was the same, they loved it!


Then we talked about where we live (we're working on our My Community unit) so the kiddos had to write their city, state, country and planet on paper (the words were already there, they just had to trace), cut them out, and glue them in order on each of the colored flaps with the smallest (their house) on the red flap all the way to the largest (their planet) on the blue flap. It was pretty time-consuming (like one day activity turned into two) but they got it done and they were adorable! So adorable, in fact, that they took them home that afternoon before I got a chance to get any pictures :(


On of our biggest things we've been working on is our number of the week. I have a set of laminated tagboard posters that I hole-punched and hung from a curtain rod on my wall so we could reuse them each week and, one of my favorites is my number poster. Each week, when we introduce our new number, we use our number poster and the kiddos help me fill out the poster with the various representations for the number (ten frames, base ten blocks, tally marks, objects, numeral, number word, number before, number after, and addition sentences equalling 4). They are getting so good at them!! We then of course use the corresponding number booklets to reinforce the info (found here).


And the best part? It was a payroll Friday for us which means... payroll breakfast!! I have a sign-up genius set up for all the staff in the building and, each staff member signs up for 2 different payday dates (there's 5 slots for each date so they're not on their own) and then, each payroll Friday, we all get breakfast!! Not a bad way to end an INCREDIBLY long 4-day week!!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Katie









2 comments:

  1. Aww, what a great idea - I love the payroll breakfast! Nice way for teachers to spoil themselves!

    Alison
    Teaching Maths with Meaning

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  2. YAY!!! Love the science activity Katie :)

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