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.