Welcome To Kindergarten!

I am so excited to welcome you to Ms. Sara's Kindergarten Crew.  The classroom is set up, the pencils are sharpened and everything is ready.  Now all we need are the new, curious, kind crew members.

I am looking forward to year of learning, thinking, wondering and becoming kind, helpful friends.

Celebrating Our Learning

First graders invited their parents to our Celebration of Learning of our Learning Expedition, The World is Our Garden.  Students were the tour guides through three different stations to answer our guiding question:

What helps our garden thrive?

Students started their tour in the outdoor classroom to teach their families all about soil, earthworms and compost.

Families listened closely as our garden experts shared their learning.

Next, our experts headed to our classroom to teach families about garden pollinators and their important job for our garden.

Students shared their non-fiction garden pollinator book which included many non-fiction text features that students had studied.  A high quality garden pollinator puppet allowed students to share their learning in a new and creative way.

Finally, we ended our learning tour in the learning commons where students taught their parents all about garden plants and pollination using a hand made 3D flower.

It was so wonderful to see such empowered students who were excited to share their learning and their passion to save the bees!  

Thank You!

Fox Creek Community we thank you!  Students participated in our annual Fox Trot fun run to raise money for our specials programs (art, P.E., music and technology).

Students collected pledges by contacting family and friends to help support the cause.

 Students persevered to run laps and as a crew we ran over 600 laps!  Wow!

We cooled down with some water and a popsicle.  I love when our crew has the opportunity to do hard things.  Students ran harder than they thought they could.

Our goal was to raise $50,000.  Thank you Fox Creek community for helping us exceed that goal as we raised $60,000.  Thank you for supporting the amazing work that happens at Fox Creek each day.

EL 's "A Better World Project"

We started our Better World Day with an all school assembly in the gym.  Students reflected on various kindness readings to get our minds, hands and hearts ready to focus on kindness for our community kindness walk.

We were reminded that we are crew here at Fox Creek.  However, our purpose today was to spread kindness to our Fox Creek community outside of our walls.

 Fox Creek students hit the streets to drop a kind note at our neighbor's front door.  Our day was met with cool weather and rain drops.

The weather did not stop our acts of kindness as students ventured into neighborhoods with joy and adventure.

Bee Expert

Students were so excited to meet our local bee expert, Jessica Goldstrom from The Bees Waggle.

During the first out of 6 visits, students did the hard work of a scientist by closely observing different flowers.

During this visit, students learned all about pollination and how new seeds are made.

They enjoyed learning about the parts of a flower and how pollen is transferred.  We look forward to many weekly visits from our local expert.

Gardening

Thanks to the amazing spring weather this week, we headed outside to plant our cool weather seeds (lettuce, kale and spinach).  In our second case study about plants, students have been learning about what plants need to thrive and the parts of a plant.  

This week, students learned about what grows best in Colorado and sorted fruits/vegetables by warm weather and cool weather crops.  Students then decided what they thought we should plant in the garden.  Each student wrote a persuasive paragraph to convince our 1st grade crew on what we should plant.  Strawberries were a crew favorite!

During the warm day, we discussed how gardeners must tend their garden.  Each student was tasked with pulling weeds and turning the soil before we could plant.  The students took ownership and pride in their hard work.

Students were so excited to get to plant and look forward to harvesting our healthy lettuce, spinach and kale.

Plant Parts

We have been learning all about plants and the parts that they have.  What better way for our first grade botanist to share his/her learning than through play.  Botanists collaborated with a small group to use pattern blocks to show the parts of the plant.

Each group used their own creativity and perspective to make a variety of plants.  Students had 30 minutes to collaborate together.  Our collaboration muscle is getting really strong.

Both students and I thought that this was much more engaging assessment than a worksheet.  I loved to see the creativity, critical thinking and collaboration.