Welcome to

The K-Kids' Ocean Page

We will be studying the ocean until our March vacation. We divide up our ocean study by looking at the 4 basic layers in the ocean: the shore, the sunlight zone, the twilight zone and the midnight zone. We will learn about the many different creatures which inhabit each of these layers. This is one of our favorite units to study! Check back often to see lots of pictures of what we are doing in our classroom.

We began our study of the ocean by asking the children what they already know about the oceans. These are some of their responses:

You can swim in them

You can surf in them

You can play thunderball in them

You can surf big waves

You can go water tubing

You can find shells

You can find starfish

You can go scuba diving

Scientists can look at fish

It is salt water

There are different kinds and colors of fish

There are lots of fish

The water is bluish

You can go on a whale watch

This is the beginning of our layers of the ocean bulletin board. We will be adding animals to each layer as we study them.

We have a lot of new things to look at on the discovery table!

We made funny fish faces to use on our door.

We read the book Rainbow Fish and made our own beautiful fish to hang from our ceiling.

We've been busy this week making many different fish to decorate our classroom. We made new fish to hang in the cubby room, with first AND last names now. Some of the children worked on paper plate fish and on beautiful sand pictures, as well as painting fish at the easel. We will be adding many new projects every week, so be sure to check back.

Some of our other activities this week have been building wonderful castles in blocks, especially when the weather stayed too cold to go outside and predicting whether or not the groundhog would see his shadow. Our graph below is about half done, with an early Spring taking a decisive lead.

We've been finishing up our sorting and classifying activities in math this week. The children worked very hard on Venn diagrams made with different colors and shapes of pasta. They are all displayed in the classroom and you will also find more pictures on our math page.

This week we have been making beautiful fish- out of old cds!

We also made very sparkly sponge prints.

We have 3 new visitors in Kindergarten! Our hermit crabs are Hermie, Spiky and Shiny. Hopefully we can get a few pictures when they're not asleep, but they are a little camera shy right now.

We finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins on Monday. These are just a few of the pictures of our favorite parts. Stop by the classroom to see the rest!

Mr. Popper and penguins

I like when they had snow and ice in the house.

I like the part when the Poppers opened the windows.

I like the part when they dived.

Some of the beautiful wood or clay sculptures came back from the art room today!

Our hermit crabs seem to be adjusting to the classroom. Today Shiny was racing up and down the rug, and even Hermie and Spiky ventured out a bit. We asked the children to figure out how many legs they have and they worked hard to see what was hiding in the shells.

One other project that we started today was to make necklaces from tiny shells and sculpey clay.

This week for sharing time we talked about what we like to take to the beach. Thank you to Mrs. Beggs for the great idea! The morning after their sharing time, each child was asked to pick a paper cutout of a person, make a bathing suit for it and also make whatever they had said they would like to bring to the beach. They did all of their own work, including writing a sentence about what they are carrying to the beach. We are about half way through our class, and have begun to put them up on our door- the mitten people are heading home.

I like to bring a surf board.

I take my sand toys.	I bring my friends.	I bring my sister.
I brought my shovel.	I take my bike.	I brought my magnifying glass.
I bring a shovel.	I like to play on the beach with my beach ball.	I brought a shovel.
I am bringing my beach toys.	I bring my super vision.	I bring a lot of shells.
I will bring [my] boogie board.		I brought my shovel.

Our hermit crabs, getting a bath!

We started to make a new paper quilt for February and our ocean study. One of our pieces will be a Florida blue crab. They were a lot of fun, and very messy to make.

We are starting to add some shore animals to our bulletin board. This week we added some beautiful starfish.

We have been having lots of fun in math working on number sets. We have brainstormed giant lists of things that come in 2s, played probability games with special 0,1,2 dice, built towers of 20 , practiced writing 2 and traced a friend's body and drew and labeled all the parts of the body and the clothing that comes in pairs. Below is a picture of the Shark group, working on labeling their drawing and one of the finished product.