End of First Quarter

     We have survived the first quarter of school.  Most of the students have gotten the routine down and are able to check in without assistance.  There are no tears and everyone is able to quote the rules.  However, we sometimes forget to apply the rules in our actions.  The Me Boards were beautiful and informative.  We did the last Interview on Friday.  The Me Books will be coming home shortly.  You will be amazed at how the drawings started off a little rocky and at the end they were labeling their pictures.  Another thing we have completed are the lowercase alphabets.  Enjoy their hard work!  Look at the progression of their fine motors and detailed pictures.  I marvel at their growth and enjoy their many honest comments.  Thank you volunteers for coming in to read to our students.  We'd like to send a special thank you to Ms. Becky for bringing a variety of music, dance and singing to our classroom.  Aunty Rose volunteered to listen to the students read their little readers.  She will be leaving for a while and we are looking for another volunteer to do this from 7:50 am (check in time) till all students are done.  It takes about 1 hour or less.   Please follow the Homework schedule and use the sight words flashcards that you have made.  Students should be able to recognize the words easily.

Busy Classroom

The students do so many things during the course of the day. Here is just a sample of how they work in pairs. It is amazing to listen to how they are able to teach one another and watch their patience. While in centers they are required to do assigned tasks. We have been doing our interviews.  Each child uses their ME BOARD to tell about what they want to be when they grow up and their likes/dislikes. When they are done their classmates can ask  questions about other things they would like to know about them. We are compiling the individual pages to make a book of all our classmates.

PMRF Firefighters

Thank you PMRF Firefighters for coming in to teach our children about fire safety. Aunty Janis and her assistant always does an excellent job teaching the children about ways to prevent fires. She also has the students practice "STOP!", "DROP!" and "ROLL!". Students have learned to crawl below the dangerous smoke filled room to safety. It is always exciting to watch their faces as the Firefighters put on their heavy gear. They are given step by step details about how each part of their suit protects them from the hot fire and how they can be found with their special beepers if they get separated while fighting a fire. Each student was given a goody bag which had a special whistle, a fire hat and a shiny sticker.

Recycling Presentation

September

Time is flying by so quickly. The students have all adjusted quite well and are able to do their morning routines with very little reminders. There are just a few tearful moments for some who are not use to doing things out of the routine.
Jeannie Yoshida, along with Pat Gegen, our very own PTSA President came in to reinforce "RECYCLING". Thank you for reminding our students to wear their recycle t-shirts on Mondays. We are integrating graphing to see if we can get 100% students wearing their recycle t-shirts. They will be able to help you sort the recycle items and hopefully encourage less items going into the landfill. We sang and danced to a song about recycling. I think Pat enjoyed it more than the children.

Our Classroom Visitors

 

Pat Gegan came in to speak to us about recycling and gave each student a recycle shirt to use on Mondays.
Mrs. Hadley comes in to read on Friday's.

Look what we do in school!

First Day of School!!

Welcome Back to School

Welcome to the 2010 - 2011 school year! I am looking forward to a great school year with you all. This year I will be using this blog to communicate with the students as well as with parents. I encourage you to subscribe to the blog and check back regularly to see what is going on in the class. I will try to post pictures as often as possible as well as updates for parents and some assignments and assessments for students. Please feel free to contact me anytime with questions or concerns.

Aloha-
Mrs. Sakuda

Yummy, Yummy. . . Stone Soup

Today we finally made our STONE SOUP!! The children have waited patiently all semester for this project and today it came to fruition. They learned that Stone Soup was actually made to teach others about sharing and kindness. The children each brought in one ingredient to add our stone soup. We had no idea what would actually go in to our soup until this morning when we met together to add our yummy ingredients to our stones.

We had lots of different herbs, spices, vegetables and even some pasta. A couple of our students even brought us some bread to enjoy with our soup. If your child doesn't like vegetables you might want to make stone soup. . . they all enjoyed the mushrooms, beans, peas, tomatoes, etc.

Take a look at our pictures and if you concentrate real hard, maybe you can smell our delicious soup.

P.S. The first couple of pictures are from our ice cream making yesterday. We got so excited about making the ice cream we forgot to take more pictures.

Stone Soup

As one of Mrs. Herbig's final "duties" in our class,  she will be making Stone Soup with the children tomorrow (5/5).  Each child needs to bring one (1) item from home to add to our soup (except stones).  Please do not go to the store to purchase anything, just have them look in the cabinet or refrigerator and find something they think would make our soup delicious!  We will share our findings and hopefully create something yummy.

Connecting with our Community

  With all the wet weather, Friday ended up perfectly sunny and off we went on our Community walk.  Parents were patient and worked with their groups on recognizing buyers/sellers, needs/wants and services.  It was a HUGE surprise as we walked by and were invited by the Kalaheo Fire Station Unit for an impromptu demonstration.  The workers in some of the businesses were waving and watching as the students walked by.  Thank you everyone for supporting our students once again for a most enjoyable week. 

Community Centers

We have had such a fun week playing in our Community Helper Centers. The students had an opportunity to be doctors/patients, police officers/criminals, postal workers, grocery store employees/buyers, and play in the beauty salon. Tomorrow we will cap off our week with a walking field trip of Kalaheo Town. Here are some pictures from our week.

More Easter Egg Hunt Pictures

Aloha Parents-
Click on the link below for more pictures of our Easter Egg Hunt that were taken by one of our Kindergarten parents, Renee Kester. . . Enjoy!

Easter Egg Hunt

Pictures of our Egg-venture

"Egg-cellent" Ending

     This was one of the most "egg-citing" week for our children.  Traci Sullivan came in twice this week to do some experiments.  They learned that AIR IS HEAVY and that COLD AIR beats WARM AIR.  They practiced making scientific observations, predictions and recording results.  We also reviewed math (addition, number recognition/writing), writing skills (beginning, middle, end) and making Dental Health goals to have better teeth.
     The students loved watching our Principal drop their homemade contraptions and having Mrs. Herbig open them to see if it was SAFE or not.  They cheered loudly as each egg was safe!  Thank you for helping your child.
      The entire Kindergarten ended their busy week with an afternoon Egg Hunt.  We appreciate all the donations of plastic eggs and treats to stuff them.  There were about 1,500 eggs and each child was able to hunt for 14 eggs.  Rain almost put a damper on our plans, but luckily the sun peeked through just in time and the parents covered the Kindergarten playground with a rainbow of eggs. 

More Egg Fun!

We had so much fun today making an egg in a nest and dying Easter egg.

Students got to crack their own raw egg and pour it into a bread nest.  They watched it cook and of course enjoyed eating their  creations.
Students also spent the morning dying eggs and learning how to mix colors.
Thank you parents for sending in the boiled eggs!

A special thanks to Aunty LeeAnne, Alicia Sams, Tammy & Mel Tapucol, Adrianne Blackstad and Traci Sullivan for helping us.

Check back for more classroom pictures of today's events.

Announcements for the week of 3/28 - 4/2

Today begins our EGG-citing, EGG-science week and Dental Health Week!
So far we have soaked an egg in vinegar and made some predictions of what we think will happen as well as observed with our 5 senses. We have also made Apple Smiles and soaked in egg in Coke.

Here are some announcements for this week:

-If you have not sent in your child's permission form please do so ASAP
-Report Cards go home today
-Tuesday is PE - Don't forget to wear shoes
-Students need to bring 2 hard boiled eggs by Wednesday morning for egg dying
-Thursday students need to bring their egg in their contraption.
-Easter Egg Hunt on Thursday.
-Friday is a HOLIDAY

Fruit Salad. . . Yummy, Yummy!

This past week we learned about how parts can make a whole.  We learned what different parts (numbers) can  make 10 and 5 using our counters as well as how to make equal parts out of a whole.

To reinforce the lesson we made fruit salad on Thursday afternoon.  Students cut our WHOLE fruits into different and equal PARTS.  Each PART made a WHOLE fruit salad.  Of course the best part was getting to enjoy the "fruits" of their labor.

EGG -cellent Science!!

Beginning on Monday, March 29th through April 1st the Kindergarten class will be having an EGG-cellent Science week!!  Each day we will be doing a different EGG-speriment, culminating with an EGG hunt on Thursday afternoon.

Donations of the following are needed:

• Plastic Eggs
• Candy and other trinkets to fill the eggs

Volunteers are needed (If you are able to volunteer, please comment on the blog below):

• Wednesday - Cooking & Dyeing Eggs (8 a.m. - 10 a.m.)
• Thursday - Egg Hut (12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m.)

We are also doing a family project as part of the EGG-cellent science.  We would like you to work with your child in creating a "contraption" that will keep a raw egg from breaking when dropped.  This is part of our science unit of gravity.  The students will be conducting an experiment using their contraptions on Thursday morning.


The criteria for this project is:

• Students must use only recycled materials 
• Contraption should be no bigger than 5" x 5" x 5"
• Due on Thursday, April 1st
• Please have raw egg in the contraption when student brings it to school on Thursday.