Service Learning Project

The Shoeman Water Project

As we work on creating strong citizens in our kindergarten communities, we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to teach service learning.  Starting next week we will introduce students into our “Wants and Needs” unit in social studies. After a week of talking about wants and needs with our students we will introduce them to our service learning project The Shoeman Water Project. With our service learning project we are inviting a guest speaker to talk with the students about the importance of the Shoeman Water Project and would like to extend the invite to you. Sherie Beardslee, the guest speaker, will be visiting Barretts on December 10^th at 2:15 in the library. By attending the presentation you too will have a better understanding of our goals throughout this unit. The Shoeman Water Project will also be incorporated into goal setting, book making and other social studies units throughout the rest of the year. We are excited to have you become part of our project and bringing in shoes to help raise money for fresh water wells in Africa. We will begin collecting shoes on the 13^th of December. More information will be passed along as we work together to create goals.

George “The Shoeman” is an urban cowboy whom sells donated shoes to a third world country vendor to sell in their homelands.  He uses the proceeds to build and sustain fresh water wells for children in African villages.

To find out more about George “The Shoeman” Hutchings of Ballwin and his shoes to water project, please visit www.shoemanwater.org/about/george-the-shoeman

Thank you for your participation and support!

K. Team

Creative (Shape) Collages

We have been looking very closely at the 2D shapes, their attributes, and where they are in our environment.  This week we put that all together to create some amazing collages that tie into our science seasons (year long) unit.  Each group worked to create a picture using shapes that represents their season.  They did an amazing job working together and using their shape knowledge!

Seasons Tree

We began a new page in our seasons packet yesterday just in time to enjoy a few of the flurries!  We are noticing the changes in our tree during these colder days.  The children observed the gray skies, the brown grass, and the bare tree.  Winter is definitely on its way...we even noticed how our clothes reflect the colder weather....bring on the hats and gloves!

Read-N-Munch

Thank you to all our wonderful families who helped make our November read-n-munch a soaring success.  The children loved the opportunity to read fall and Thanksgiving books and just relax with our wonderful readers.  We love books and we love our volunteers!

Sherry Norfolk

We had the privilege of hearing Arts Partner's story teller Sherry Norfolk.  She told us a story about a frog with a noise problem and how the wise old owl helped him solve his problem.  Ask your child what the setting was of the frog story and which character they played.  We had a baby frog, mama frog, dada frog, ducks, geese, and beavers.  The children had the chance to review the parts of a story (character, setting, problem, solution, and story language).  We are superb story tellers!

3rd grade buddies

Today has been a whirlwind of fun!  We had 3rd grade buddy time playing compare with dot cards and made thanksgiving cards for teachers and helpers we value from Barretts.  The children have become wonderful writers and are really adding words and pictures that illustrate their thoughts.  Their math is just incredible too!  I am amazed at the ways they are visually grouping numbers and comparing.  We have a lot to be thankful for in our learning!

Magnificent Mystery Reader

Today Josie's mom surprised us with several books from her families' favorite list (The Magic Hat-Mem Fox, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day, and Stone Soup).  We enjoyed her wonderful stories and some yummy tootsie pops! 

Super Shapes!

Today in math we reviewed the attributes of 2-D shapes.  We learned how to make our shapes using playdough and geoboards.  The children discovered that many shapes can be comprised of other shapes and can be easily shifted into alternate shapes.

Magical Magnets

The past few days we have been exploring magnets as a force of pushes and pulls.  The children learned the magnets contain poles (north and south) that create opposite attractions and cause metal objects containing steel to be pulled or pushed depending on their north/south charge.  We had the chance to explore the room with magnets and list objects that were and were not able to attract a magnet.  Today we tested the force of our magnets by trying to move magnets through objects like a chair, table, or clothes.  The children loved learning that they could push items across the floor by placing same poles against each other (remember, opposites attract, likes repel).  The children had a blast...science was pure magic!

Shape Hunt

Today in math we began our new unit on shapes.  Today we read a book called "The Shape of Things" and learned the vocabulary terms shape, side, and vertices (corner).  We learned at all shapes have sides but not all have vertices.  We were able to identify many of our 2D shapes while reading the book and concluded the lesson with a shape hunt in our room.

The children loved this introductory lesson and were intrigued by some new learning.  Did you know that squares are part of the rectangle family and that a diamond is known as a rhombus in kindergarten....

well, we do now!