Thursday, February 26, 2015

Project Lead the Way Family Night!

Thanks to everyone who joined us!

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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

#PLTWproud

Wahoo!  We have been using Twitter to share our Project Lead the Way thoughts and ideas.  We got this Tweet from @PLTWorg today and I wanted to share!  So proud of the kindergartners!
https://twitter.com/MrsPiltzK

Student of the Month

Star of the Week

Thursday, February 19, 2015

What is an Engineer?

After finishing our Jack and the Beanstalk activity for Project Lead the Way, I asked the kids today "What is an engineer?"  I absolutely loved their responses!  You can see all of them on Twitter @MrsPiltzK
We also used a fun new app, Chatterpix Kids, to record our ideas and post to our Kidblogs.  Please take the time to check them out - they really turned out great!

What Would You Keep Inside Abraham Lincoln's Hat?

Jack and the Beanstalk Engineering Fun

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, I Smell Engineering Fun! from Traci Piltz on Vimeo.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Jack and the Beanstalk Design Process

Today we continued our discussion of the Project Lead the Way Design Process as related to our Jack and the Beanstalk engineering challenge.  We discussed the process and added some photos to a paper beanstalk we made in our classroom. They did a great job!




New App!

This app is FREE for a limited time.  Very fun handwriting app allows kids to practice writing their letters, numbers, names and some words! 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sight-words-ninja-endless/id821374885?mt=8

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Valentine poem

We used this great website from Read, Write, Think to create this interactive Valentine poem.  Lots of themes to choose from ... encourage your child to work on a poem this weekend!

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

More Valentine Fun!

Ms. Heather came in to help us make a fun Valentine placemat project.  We will be able to eat our treats using the placemats tomorrow.

We also finished another experiment, observing what happens when we drop candy hearts into different liquids.  Thanks again to Curriculum Castle for this fun idea!







Star of the Week


Heart Counting on abcya.com

Fun counting game for Valentine's Day on abcya.com!


Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Candy Heart Experiment

We applied the scientific Design Process we are learning through Project Lead the Way to an experiment using candy hearts.  The kids had to predict whether or not the candy heart would float in water, and explain their thinking.




Thanks to Curriculum Castle for this awesome free experiment!

Friday, February 6, 2015

Valentine's Day - February 12th

Since there is no school on Valentine's Day, we will celebrate the holiday on our half day, February 12th.  Kindergartners are encouraged to bring valentines and any treats they would like for the class.  (We have 19 students).  You do not need to address the valentines - leaving the "to" part blank makes it much easier to pass them out!  :)  Encourage your child to practice writing his/her name in the "from" part. 

Finished Design Process & PLTW Thoughts on Twitter

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Updated Padlet for Project Lead the Way

As we continued exploring the design process, we added some more examples of the step "model" to our padlet.

Project Lead the Way - Jack & The Beanstalk Engineering Challenge

Today we continued exploring the Project Lead the Way design process.  We will be posting our designs on Kidblog today or tomorrow.


Wednesday, February 4, 2015

PLTW Design Process

We began exploring the Design Process of Project Lead the Way today, using the "Jack and the Beanstalk" engineering challenge.  Today we asked questions and sketched our explorations.  Tomorrow we will use pipe cleaners to "model" our ideas.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

100th Day Snack

The kids diligently counted out 100 snacks before they could eat ... :)



100 Year Old Portraits

The kids made these cute 100 year old portraits.  Here are a couple of examples.  (Ideas from Mrs. Jump's blog.)


A couple great games for 100th day on abcya.com

http://www.abcya.com/one_hundred_snowballs.htm


http://www.abcya.com/100_number_grid.htm



100th Day!

So far, 100th Day is off to a great start!  The kids made 100th Day Capes (an awesome idea from Mrs. Miner's kindergarten) and we counted to 100 using Harry's Kindergarten Counting Superheroes song!



















We also planned out how to make 10 groups of 10 toppings on our "hundredth day pizza"!  The kids are making some yummy looking paper toppings.  :)




The kindergartners enjoyed this video about Counting to 100 by JoJo's Circus.


We also played "Guess My Number" using the Counting Board app on our iPads.
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