Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

We love celebrating Read Across America and the life and work of Dr. Seuss in Kindergarten! 

We kicked off Read Across America week by reading many of Dr. Seuss' best loved books including The Cat in the Hat.  We enjoyed comparing and contrasting that silly cat's antics in The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Came Back.  Then  we created our own cats and our own adventures!

The Cat's red hat also inspired a hat themed STEM building challenge!

We met and then created some pretty interesting feet in The Foot Book.

We read about and cooked up some green eggs and ham.  Not everyone loved them, but we tried them just like Sam I Am.

We also read about and compared the adventures of Horton the Elephant.  The Cat in the Hat inspired us to write some silly stories, but Horton inspired our hearts.  After reading about Horton, the selfless protector, we took time to think of some ways that we could be more like Horton.

After a few weeks of living and breathing Seuss in the classroom, we created some of our favorite characters and create classroom graph.  We love those Things!!

Kindergarten also had an opportunity to celebrate the universal love of authors everywhere with a fantastic storybook character parade and Seuss themed pep-rally!

Kindergarten is Beary Fun!

Winter is the perfect time to learn more about the wild, ferocious, hibernating mammal-- the bear!

Children spent a several days working together in small groups to research different species of bears.  We used QR codes and iPads to learn about bears from all over the world--and we learned some pretty interesting facts!  Did you know that a polar bear's skin is actually black? Or that sloth bears eat termites?  Or that sun bears have ridiculously long tongues?

After completing our research, we worked together to create some pretty amazing multi-media art to show what our bears look like and where they live.  (I really wish I had pictures!  We were up to ears in paint and glue and tissue paper.  It was very loosely controlled chaos, so no pictures.  Sorry!)

While most bears should not be approached in their natural habitat, we read about one kind of bear that is always up for a little human interaction--the teddy bear!

We loved reading and comparing the many adventures of Don Freeman's Corduroy. 

And because we LOVE to write, we created our stories about Corduroy.

We also read and compared several different versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  One of our favorites was The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett.  In this Arctic themed version of The Three Bears, the bear family lives in an igloo.  So, we tried our hand at engineering an igloo of our own using sugar cubes and icing. 

We also taste tested some porridge.  Most of us decided we would not mind having some porridge for breakfast in the morning! 

We wrapped up our bear unit with one of my absolute favorite Kindergarten activities-- stuffing our own teddy bear!  After we stuffed our bears, we used our newly acquired measurement skills to complete a Teddy Bear Birth Certificate for our new teddy bear friends.