Celebrating Chinese New Year

Kindergartners enjoyed our New Year festivities last Friday!  

Thanks to everyone who was able to come to our celebration yesterday!  I'd like to give a HUGE thanks (and 谢谢) to the parents who helped organize the celebration: Nasha, Meng, Ardra, Sharon, and many others worked hard to put together a presentation, a snake craft, and fun hongbao for all students to enjoy the New Year. 

Also, all of Glenwood was blown away by the amazing Chinese gate that Minfu Cheng (Alicia's mom) and TingTing Chu (2nd grader Bo Chi's mom) made by hand last week. 

Check out the photos below for great candid shots of our kindergartners celebrating Chinese New Year!

Are you ready to learn about Chinese New Year?

Our kindergartners sure have learned a lot about Chinese New Year...so this week we decided it was time for the students to become the teachers!  Students worked with Mrs. Jiang to plan a class book about Chinese New Year.  Students chose topics to write about, illustrated their topics, and then wrote about their topics in teams. We then decided to present their book using VoiceThread, a digital presentation tool.  This project helped our students study a wide range of Common Core and North Carolina Essential Standards.  Students practiced the following skills (and more!):

Research: learning new facts from text and other sources, synthesizing facts with background knowledge
Informative writing: Stating facts about a topic
Public speaking
Using technology as a communication tool
Cooperating in a team

Now that we've finished, its time to celebrate!  We will be sharing our kindergatrners' presentation with the other kindergarten and first grade classes so they can learn about Chinese New Year too.  And there was one group of people the kindergartners ESPECIALLY hoped could learn about Chinese New Year from them: their parents!

So, without further ado, here is All About Chinese New Year, by your kindergartners!

All About Chinese New Year

Fwd: A shape is just a shape until you add...

> It may be the first day back from winter break, but our kindergartners got straight back into the groove with super creative shapes! Students read the book Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert, which uses different shapes to make a new creation. Each student worked with their group to plan out their own creation. Then students used the shape word wall to learn how to spell the names of the shapes they used. Try having your kindergartner make and write about their own creations at home!
>

--
All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Giving Thanks!

Kindergartners got ready for Thanksgiving by reading several books together and brainstorming about what we are thankful for in our lives. Students used these ideas to make gifts for the people we're very thankful for: our families! Students made Trees of Thanks to record the many things they are thankful for, and then made a handprint turkey for our parents too.

Thank you to all of our kindergarten families who help our teachers and students feel so supported and cared for!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Living and Nonliving Thing Collages

Our kindergartners began their study of animals by looking at the similarities and differences between living and nonliving things. We watched videos, read books, went on scavenger hunts outside, and wrote in our science journals about these two categories. This week in science centers, students made collages of living things on green paper, and non-living things on brown paper. This was a great activity to develop students writing skills at the same time as applying our new science concepts! Students did a great job of stretching the sounds in each word out to label the items in their collages.

What living and non-living things can you find in your home?

Field Trip to Ganyard Hill Farm!

September Birthday Celebration!

Happy birthday to our students with September birthdays, Sydnie and John Henry! Students had a fantastic time playing Pin the Tail on the Gator. A big thanks to Sydnie's family for making this great game, and to both birthday families for coming in and helping us celebrate!