Ms. Marzoni's Class: Bears!!

This week was busy and fun! We learned the letter Ee, this is our fifth and final vowel to learn. We added a new book to our phonics libraries, "Ben Is Ten!". Have your child read this book to you this week, they are becoming great readers. We did many fun activities with this letter, we also enjoyed the book "Elmer the Patchwork Elephant." We created special elephants of our own as well.

We also enjoyed the book "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. We all loved this book and it was a great one to read during these cold days.

Our thematic unit was "Bears", and we learned many great things about bears! We discussed many types of bears and learned how bears and other animals hibernate. Annie and Moby from www.brainpopjr.com helped us as we learned all about hibernation. We also learned about animals which hibernate in different environments and drew pictures of these animals on our Promethean board during centers. We enjoyed learning about hibernation so much that many of the students wanted to "hibernate" all day! But of course, we were too busy to just sleep all day!

We also had pajama day this week. What a fun day!! Everyone dressed in their pj's and brought their teddy bears.

Our teddy bears stayed with us all day as we worked and had fun in Kindergarten. They were great friends to have visit our classroom.

Since we were already in our pajamas, we had breakfast food for snack! We enjoy waffles and syrup, a perfect breakfast for us on PJ Day!

We had a special surprise this week. Ty's dad, Mr. Todd, brought a real black bear to our classroom!! It was so cool! Mr. Todd went hunting in Canada and got this beautiful black bear, he made a rug from it and shared it with us! We shared it with all our friends and took lots of pictures. Everyone loved getting an up close look at a real bear, it had sharp claws and teeth, and its fur was very soft. Everyone thought it was awesome! Thanks to Ty and his family!!

Here we are in our cute pajamas!

As we were snuggling with our pj's and teddy bears, we also enjoyed some yummy hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows.

During the week as we learned about bears we created patterns with Teddy Graham snacks. We made different patterns using chocolate chip, chocolate, and honey Teddy Grahams. Then we had a taste test, everyone chose a favorite flavor. We graphed our results, as a class everyone like chocolate chip Teddy Grahams the best!

We also learned about polar bears and enjoyed polar bear snacks. To make these at home, you'll need an oreo cookie, white icing, mini-marshmallows, and chocolate chips. Cover the oreo with the icing, add the marshmallows for the ears and the chocolate chips for the eyes. And now you've got a yummy polar bear snack!

Here are some teddy bears we made by tearing paper and using button eyes and nose. The boys added a bow tie and the girls added a hair ribbon.

This week we did a fun science experiment. As we were learning about hibernation we discovered that bears eat a lot of food to gain fat to keep them warm throughout the winter. So we put some "bear fat" (shortening) in a ziploc bag and put it in ice. We felt how cold the ice was then put our hands in the "bear fat" to see how the fat was staying warm. Our hands weren't cold when they were in the "bear fat," guess the bears really know how to keep warm, eat lots and have a thick coat!