A New Year, A New Barrel of Monkeys

Well, we are off to a new year. We have a new set of Spunky Monkeys and we are finally settling in. Check out some of the new kids. Jonathan, Desiray, Miguel, and Dustin were not here at the beginning of the year, so we will have to add there pictures later.

Field Day 2010

We had a fun day at field day. It sure was HOT! Here is our rainbow of Kindergarten students...but who is that crazy teacher standing up on the left? I think she is going to jump!

Eric Carle and Pancakes

We have been reading lots of Eric Carle books for our author study. Friday for Funky Food, we read Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle and made...YUP, pancakes.

After reading the book, we decided that we did not have to make pancakes like they did in the book. In the book, the boy had to thresh and grind the wheat, milk the cow, gather eggs, churn the butter, and other things. Thank goodness Martin's mom sent in Aunt Jemima pancake mix...just add water! But we still have to whisk it all together.

Then, Mrs. Martin got busy on the cooking. I had to throw some "flour" on my face to make it look harder than it was.

In the book, the boy ate his pancakes with strawberry jam. I couldn't believe I actually had some in the refrigerator. So almost everyone tried their pancakes with jam and syrup.
Nathaniel tried it both ways. He dipped his in the jam.

Emilee wanted jam on top of her pancake.

Caitlynn and Colton liked theirs with syrup best. Aiden just likes to eat!

Gutsy the Fox

Gutsy the Fox came and entertained us earlier this year and we were lucky enough to have him again. He came Thursday to get us pumped up about the CRCT!

Gutsy encouraged us to do our best on the CRCT test.

He wanted us to get a good nights rest. Be focused. And eat a good breakfast. He wanted us to know how important reading and math are for our future too. He had us do math problems and figure out ways that we read in our lives, like reading a menu at a restaurant. Of course, we had to dance and shout to learn it all!

Not only did the kids get to enjoy it but the teachers had to get involved too. Here is Mrs. Riddle getting down!

And Mrs. Sims.

But the coolest thing was all the tricks Gutsy performed. He slam dunked the basketball like we are going to do to the CRCT. He even jumped over some kids and dunked the ball! We thought he was AWESOME! We had hoped to get our class picture made with him, but he was already taking a nap! Shucks!

Rock Collections and Critters

We brought in rock collections for our unit on Earth Materials. We used view finders to observe, compare, and sort our collections.

Andy, Jacob, and Taylor

Martin, Colton, Caitlynn, and Aiden

Martin and Colton

Reyne

We then, painted rocks and added wiggly eyes to our rocks to make rock critters.

Then it was time to write in our Learning Logs. First, we did a quick graphic organizer (GO) on the beginning, middle, and end of our stories. Emilee is finishing her graphic organizer. Then, we used the GO to help us write a story about our rock critters.

We had a lot of critters named Rocke and some great stories!

Dirt! YUM!

Let me start by saying, we ate dirt, sand, rocks, soil, and worms last week. And it was good!

We have been learning about Earth materials. So we have brought in rock collections to study. We have compared sand, soil, and clay. But the best was getting to eat it all on Friday.
We layered mud, then sand, added more mud, and then soil and rocks. To top it off, we added worms and more rocks. Check out the layers above.

Then we got to chow down on those Earth materials.
Taylor above

Nathaniel can't wait to eat!

Remote Controllers

We had a blast with our science experiment last week. I'm sure you heard all about it by now but if not, you need to ask your Spunky Monkey. If you would like to do this experiment at home, all you need is a pop can and a balloon.

First, you need to blow up the balloon and then rub it on your head to get a lot of static electricity.

Next, place your pop can on its side and slowly place balloon next to the can. You may have to move it around the can. If you have enough static electricity, your can will move.

The monkeys had soooo much fun trying this experiment out.

We found out, it worked better on the tile floor or the table better than on the rug.

We also found out that some of us are full of electricity more than others.

Reyne's hair was sticking up because of all the static electricity!