Caroling at Chamber of Commerce Meeting

The Happy Hounds and our friends the Spunky Monkeys were chosen by Mr. West to sing at this years Chamber of Commerce meeting. Both classes practiced, practiced, practiced for several weeks to learn all the songs. A big thanks to Mr. West for working so hard with our classes. We love music with Mr. West!!!

Talia sporting her new bow (and Christmas shirt). Thanks to Mrs. Lisa for making our Happy Hounds look beautiful (and handsome).

Marshall, Carter, Carley, Logan and Bryson enjoying the bus ride.

Alanna, Delayne, Shelby, Melanie, and Tor,i "Oh what fun it is to ride in big 'ole yellow bus!"



Trying to keep our excitment down as we wait in the stairwell.

Finally! Singing our first song, Five Little Snowmen.

It was difficult for me to get pictures without butting in front of the people attending the meeting. I figured that would be rude, so here's a few of the shots I got.

WOW!! What a great job they did! You can't tell it by Landis' face, but everyone had a great time.

Funtastic Friday!!

Friday December 3rd was packed with fun! We made gingerbread houses for our Funky Food activity. Thanks to Carley's family for providing the ingredients. Next we saw magician, David Ginn, perform. None of the Hounds got called up to help, but we all enjoyed watcing his tricks. Mrs. Hood got a new camera and we enjoyed posing for pictures on the playground. (Maybe now she can do a better job taking pictures of us and updating our blog.

Halloween Fun

We had lots fun getting ready for Halloween. We carved a pumpkin and everyone got a chance to "scoop the goop". Most Hounds thought it was fun, but some weren't too thrilled with the feel or the smell. Check out all the faces they made! Our science experiment for the week involved dry ice. We learned more about solids, liquids, and gases. There wasn't any hands on parts for the Hounds, but there were lots of "oohhs and aahhs"!

Farm Day

The Happy Hounds had a blast at farm day. We really enjoyed petting all the animals. Even Mrs. Lisa had her picture made with a baby goat! Thanks to Alanna's grandmother for bringing their goats and miniature horse. Thanks to Bryson's grandpa for bringing his really big tractor.

Shapes, Cake, and Volcanos

The Happy Hounds really used their brain power this week to explore shapes. Almost everybody knows the basic shapes, so we kicked it up a notch! We explored decomposing and combing shapes.

Harly and Shelby are working hard to combine pieces to make shapes.

Carley and Makinna's brains are smokin'!

Mrs. Lisa's group hard at work with pattern blocks.



Our Funky Food activity for this week was Unbelievable Upsidedown Cake.
So fun to make and even more fun to eat!








Our science experiment for this week, Purple Volcanos, was a blast. First we poured grape juice into the vases. Then we alternated adding vinegar and baking soda. The mixture fizzed, foamed, and changed colors as it "erupted".

Rectangle table working to get the baking soda in the vase.

Makinna, Talia, and Melanie waiting.......

How sweet! Carley and Carter working together.

Audrie, Alanna, and Bryson ready for some action.

Square table waiting.....

Fizzy Fun!

This is why we have Funtastic Fridays!!!

Watching it "erupt".

Oh What Fun!!!

So much has been happening in our classroom that the blog just can't keep up! Soo.. another slide show to show some of the fun things we've done.

Funky Foods: The first week of school we made Outrageous Octopi. Carley's mom brought the supplies and came to help. On Sept. 3rd, our food activity was Ten of Ten for the letter T and to help us practice counting to 10. Landis' mom and Audrie's grandmother came to help with that snack. Last week we made Icky Inchworms. Makinna's family provided the ingredients for the inchworms.

The biggest news to report from the Happy Hounds' classroom was Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and the Dish and Spoon ran away. It all happened on the last day of our nursery rhyme unit while we were at lunch. We came back to find Humpty all in pieces and a note from The King. He said that he had asked all his best horses and all his best men, but no one could put Humpty back together again. The Hounds came to his rescue! We broke the code and put him back together. This led us to a note from The King and DEAN. It told us to follow the -at family clues to chase down the Dish and Spoon. We had to be very quiet tracking them (yeah right), so they wouldn't hear us coming. The clues led us to the crab tank in the front office. Those two rascals were hiding on top of the tank! Makayla led us in a victory cheer.

Science Experiments: We are really loving the science experiments each Friday. Two weeks ago we learned about vortexes! We poured water out of a coke bottle two different ways; the glug, glug method and swirling it to created a vortex. We learned that in the glug, glug method the air and water have to take turns coming out of and going into the bottle. But, in the vortex method, the air comes into the bottle through the center of the vortex while the water is moving out in a swirling motion. Next, we connected two coke bottles and watched as a "tornado" was formed when we swirled the bottles as the water moved from one bottle to the next. We were surprised to learn that the "empty" bottle really wasn't empty. It contained air, that like the first part of our experiment, escaped the bottle through the center of the vortex.

Last week our experiment involved Color Changing Milk. First we pour milk into a plate. Next we put four drops of food coloring close together in the center of the plate. With a clean Q-tip, we touched the milk. Nothing happened. Then we put dishwashing liquid on the Q-tip and touched the milk. The colors exploded like fireworks! We learned that the soap makes the fat molecules in the milk start moving around and bumping into each other. This bumps the food coloring causing it to shoot out all over the milk.

Wow! Who knew you could learn such complicated stuff in kindergarten.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more happenings with The Hounds!!

Our first week of Kindergarten was fantastic!!! This slide show shows some of the fun things we did during the week.

We had lots of wiggles after being at home all summer, so we had to do lots of dancing. Our dance songs can be found on the Silly Songs CD you got at Open House.

Of course we had to have ice cream. I'm trying to convince the children that the days of the week are not Monday, Tuesday, Ice Cream Day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It's taking some work!

There's also a few shots of us taking a break on the playground.

Each group posed with their "Mat Man". We used the foam pieces from our Handwriting Without Tears program to make a person. Hopefully you've seen improvements in the way your child draws people. We are using these pieces to help us learn to make capital letters (big line down, little line across the top makes T).

Every Friday is FUNtastic Friday. We make a snack during Funky Food and have some type of science experiment. These pictures show our imploding can experiment and our school bus snack. We had to make monster truck school buses because I couldn't find any small Oreos at Wal-mart!

A New Pack of Hounds

Finally, Finally Finally! Pictures from our new pack of Happy Hounds. Our year has gotten off to a great start: Busy, Crazy, Fun, Interesting, Educational, Stressful, and many more adjectives. Now that things have settled down a little, I plan on doing a better job with our blog. Check back weekly for pictures and news from the Happy Hounds.

Bunnies and Eggs

What a week! We learned so much and had so much fun.

We read books and watched a video on oviparous animals. For those of you who haven't been to kindergarten in awhile, oviparous animals are those that lay eggs. We wrote Who Am I? paragraphs and drew a picture of our animals hatching from the "egg".

Karlie wrote: I am an oviparous animal. I live on a farm. People eat my eggs. What am I? (A chicken)

Levi wrote: I am an oviparous animal. I live in water. I can come up on land. I have a lot of big teeth. What am I? (An alligator)

We also wrote a story about what we would do if we were the Easter Bunny. The Happy Hounds exceeded our expectations once again by organinzing their story before they wrote it. They used a tri-folded piece of paper to quickly sketch the beginning, middle, and end of their story. Then they wrote the story and illustrated it.



Chaz wrote: If I was the Easter Bunny... I would go to Wal-mart and get the eggs. Then I would hide them in their yard. When I am done, I will go to church.


Rilee wrote: If I was the Easter Bunny... I would go to Target and buy the eggs. I would deliver eggs on time. I will go to Rilee's house and I would deliver toys and I would deliver candy.

We also learned about rabbits and hares. After reading a nonfiction book we listed information we didn't know about rabbits and hares. The Hounds then wrote about what they learned. Their informational writing exceeded our expectaions also! We made these crazy looking rabbits to go with our writing.

Our Funky Food activity for the week was "Birds' Nests" complete with eggs (jelly beans) and chicks (Peeps), Thanks to Amber's family for providing the ingredients for our snack.

For our science experiment, we tested the strength of an ordinary egg. We made a triangle with an egg and two blocks. Next we placed a cookie sheet on top of the triangle. Then we stacked books on the cookie sheet counting as we went. I can't remember the exact number of books, but it was somewhere around 30!

Also during this week, we made adorable sock bunnies. (Thanks to all who sent in socks).

FINALLY!! THE HUNT. All of our other activites were nothing compared to the 5 minutes (max) that we spent hunting eggs.

Jazmine and Kailea - which way do we go?

Tripp - how can I hold all these?

Oh! Look at all the eggs.

Mrs. Lisa's Easter gift!