A much anticipated part of each week is time with our third and fourth grade reading buddies.  While we don't always read together (our butterfly mobiles were created during this time), many weeks this is just what we do.  This is a great opportunity for kindergartners to form relationships with older children in the school and to foster a love of reading by sharing books with others.  We change partners periodically so children will get to know several buddies well and we are fortunate to have several siblings as reading partners!

On Friday we wrapped up our Structure and Function unit in science by designing and building paint brushes.  Students were presented with the challenge of creating a better paintbrush.  Their first step was sketching several designs and choosing the one they would like to make.

Then they were invited to go "shopping", choosing from a variety of materials to build their paintbrushes.  Some of these included dowels, craft sticks, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, foam, pom-poms, and feathers.  Once materials were gathered they set to work building, resulting in a wide range of new paint brushes!

At the end of the day they were given an opportunity to test their finished products.  Finally, after using their own brushes and observing the creations of their classmates they were asked to think about changes they would make in their design if they could make the paintbrushes again.

To help us practice sight words this week we made a class book called "Animals in the Forest".  The book has a predictable pattern and includes the sight words here, is, in, the, can, you, see, look, and at.   Each child created a forest back ground using water color paints and then glued on a colored picture of their nature name animal. We will use the book to help us practice reading these words in context.