Shadows

We began our unit on shadows last week and have LOVED every minute of it so far.  We used various light sources to create shadows, such as the projector in our room and the sun outside.  The kids really enjoyed creating different animals with their hands as well as different poses.

They have learned the three components for forming a shadow - light, an object to block the light  and a surface.  They have also learned how the position of the light on the object affects the shadow's size and it's position.

Here are our creations with the projector...

And these are our creations outside with the sun...

Because I am in love with silhouettes, we also posed for these to prove that a shadow reflects even the smallest details of your body, such as eye lashes.

Can you guess who's who???

Black History Month

We began our black history unit a few weeks ago which I noted here in a past posting.  We began with Martin Luther King, Jr., followed by George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks and then Harriet Tubman.

We wrapped up our unit this week focusing on our president, Barack Obama.  We learned all about his life in Indonesia and then Hawaii.  The kids were excited learning that he had two daughters not much older than them and one of the boys in the class was in awe when he realized that the First Lady's name rhymed with his mom's name! :)

I had been looking for the perfect opportunity to attempt a watercolor painting and I thought a portrait of Obama might be it.  I'm trying not to break my arm from patting my back so hard (ha!) - because I can't even tell you how thrilled I am about these watercolor results!  Check it out...

I think the kids felt like true artists when we were done with the paintings.  I see many more watercolors in our future.

To bring our black history unit full circle, we discussed what all the black Americans had in common.  Some said they all helped us - yes.  Others said they were all smart - yes.  But the message I wanted them all to leave with is that all of these black Americans wanted some form of peace - a better place for everyone to live united as one.  They each made an impact in their own way to bring all Americans together.

The kids thought about what they could do to bring peace to our country or to our world.  We made Peace Kids that displayed our messages so that our commitments to peace could be seen by all.

Our final display for Black History Month currently hangs in our hallway - just in time for Dr. Seuss Week, St. Patrick's Day and the beginning of Spring.  What goes up, must come down, I guess...I dream of cork covered walls to hang everything up all year long!

Dental Health

February is Dental Health Month!  We wrapped up our dental health unit today with a visit from the wonderful staff at Waccamaw Pediatric Dental Care.  This extremely friendly team, located in Conway, talked to our kindergarten classes about what to expect when visiting the dentist and how to best take care of our teeth.

They demonstrated the proper to way to brush our teeth.  The kids were thrilled to be practicing on a big, orange kangaroo who was sporting a full set of pearly whites.  I actually thought he looked kinda creepy - but shhhh...don't tell.

They also showed us how to brush and floss that hard-to-get "tooth dirt" off of our teeth (aka plaque).  The hygienist lathered her hands in icing to represent the plaque.  The kids brushed her hands in a circular motion to remove the icing from the fronts and backs of her hands.  When they were finished, the kids were able to see all of the plaque that was still present between her fingers.  The kids then took big rubber bands, representing the floss, and flossed between her fingers to remove the plaque between the "teeth."

I was so proud of everything our classes learned from this unit.  They answered all of the dentist's questions correctly and really represented our school well.  I think the Waccamaw staff thought so too :)

Prior to the dentist's visit, we did several activities to understand what good dental health is and what we need to do to keep our teeth healthy.  We began by graphing who had been to the dentist and who had not.

We then took dental health statements and decided whether they belonged on the "true" toothbrush or the "false" toothbrush.  For our first try at this, we gave educated guesses that we later reviewed after watching a cute video called Tooth Wisdom.  After the video, we checked our brushes and found that we only had a few statements on the wrong brush.  The kids realized they knew a little more than what they originally thought!

One of the statements on the "false" toothbrush read, "Drinking Coke will help your teeth stay white."
To test this theory, we did a little experiment.  We placed one egg in water over night and another egg in Coke over night.  The kids each gave their hypothesis on what they thought would happen to the egg in Coke.  The majority of them thought the egg would change colors while a close second thought the egg would explode.

The following day we examined the eggs to find that the egg in water was still white while the egg in Coke had turned a yucky brown color :(

This proved that Coke can stain your teeth and we should probably limit our intake.  To see if brushing would help the situation, we used toothpaste and a toothbrush and brushed the egg in a circular motion.

We brushed for two minutes (singing "Happy Birthday") and rinsed the egg to see what our results were...

Tada!  We did in fact see that brushing can get the stains off of our teeth.  So, in conclusion, the egg did change colors which we noted on our papers.

I love the hypothesis pictures of the egg exploding.  I think secretly the kids all wanted this to happen!

We continued our unit brainstorming foods that are good for our teeth and bad for our teeth.  We made a collage for each category by cutting out foods from various magazines.  The kids had no problem determining what was good and bad.  I did have one student ask me if candy corns were good since they had corn in them. Ha!  This is why I love kindergarten!

We also completed a sentence telling the importance of flossing.  The sentence read, "It is important to floss because __________________________.  Look how cute our writings turned out!

To throw in something really fun, we played Guess Who?  Teeth Edition.  How well do you think you would do in this game?

Believe it or not, many of the kids couldn't even guess their own teeth!  We still had a lot of fun trying to figure out whose teeth belonged to who...

And finally, we graphed and tallied how many teeth we all have lost.  I was surprised to see two of the kids had lost 6 teeth each!  We even had a few who hadn't lost any.  But the majority of the kids had lost one tooth.

This class sure is keeping the Tooth Fairy busy!  Here's to healthy mouths and beautiful smiles!