May 29, 2014

Aloha and happy summer! I cannot believe that this school year has already come to an end. What a wonderful year of Senior Kindergarten this has been! I am very impressed with all the hard work put out by the kids this year and I am so proud of all of their accomplishments!

We had quite the enjoyable final few days as we wrapped up the school year.  On Tuesday we watched the movie "Wall-E" with the first graders in the cafeteria. We then talked and wrote about how we can help the earth, just like Wall-E did. We had some great ideas! Here are some examples of what we brainstormed:

"I can help the earth like Wall-E by picking up trash and I can pick up cans and put it I the recycle bin."

"I can help the earth like Wall-E by picking up trash on the ground and throw it way in a trash can. I will not ever throw trash in the ocean."

"I can help the earth like Wall-E by take out the trash in the ocean."

We also had time on Tuesday to do some "street art". We got to decorate the sidewalk by our classroom with some wonderful chalk pictures.

We ended our day on Tuesday with a special reward recess for everyone who completed their reading logs for the entire year! Congratulations to Colten, Jennifer, Lawrence, Keanu, Nelena, Mahealani, Marianne, and Naturally for each reading more than 180 books this school year!

On Wednesday we read a book titled, "The Night Before First Grade". It is a rhyming story just like the famous "The Night Before Christmas". The kids loved the book and we super excited when they were told that they would each get a copy to take home as their own. Be sure to read it Sunday night on August 3rd, which is OUR night before first grade!

Thursday was our paniolo themed Songfest. The kids did awesome performing their dance routine to the song "Cotton-eyed Joe". A big mahalo to everyone who came out to support us! Did you know that the teachers like to perform too??? Our amazing VP Mr. Ha'o put together a great music video of all of our staff here at Kealakehe Elementary. You can copy and paste the following link into your browser to view it for yourself!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwnHiFiUtwTlUjBoSnpsMm1fY1E/edit?usp=sharing

This has been an incredible school year and I feel so blessed to have had your children as my students and feel even more blessed to have them again next year in first grade! I wish you all a fabulous summer and I will see you all again come August!

Love,

Ms. Jennings

P.S. Don't forget to read this summer! Your child can win cool prizes by registering with the BookIt! Summer program. Just their website at  www.bookitsummer.com

May 23, 2014

Aloha families and friends!

This week we started learning about our seventh and final continent: Antarctica!

 No one lives in Antarctica due to the extremely cold weather, so we focused our learning on the few species of animals that live around the coast of this frozen continent. We began with the cute and lovable penguins. On Monday we started by writing down what we already know about penguins. Here is what some of the kids said:

On Tuesday our class got to see a dress rehearsal of the school play production of "The Wizard of Oz". It was a great show and we even got to see one of our classmates perform! Colten did an excellent job as Red Bee - one of the narrators for the show.

After we returned to class from the show we all got to write about our favorite character from "The Wizard of Oz". Many of the kids chose Glenda the Good Witch as their favorite character.

"My favorite character from The Wizard of Oz is the Good Witch. The Good Witch is my favorite because she is pretty."

"My favorite character from The Wizard of Oz is Good Witch. It is my favorite because she is my brother's best friend."

"My favorite character from The Wizard of Oz is Glenda. She is my favorite because she is good."

We also continued our study of penguins on Tuesday, which included learning the different body parts of a penguin.

On Wednesday we moved from penguins to orcas, more commonly known as killer whales. Orcas live in arctic waters like those in the South Pole. Each student colored an orca and created their own puzzles. We love puzzles, so it was a lot of fun!

On Thursday we were introduced to the art style made famous by Piet Mondrian. We looked at some of his artwork and noticed that they all had similarities. They consist of squares and rectangles and he painted using the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. It seemed simple enough so we all gave it a try! Here are some samples from our class artists:

We also finished our study of the orcas on Thursday with a fun craft! Here is how it turned out:

Finally, on Friday we had our perfect attendance assembly. Congratulations to Colten, Janet, and Doris for getting perfect attendance for 4th quarter, Jennifer for getting perfect attendance for the whole 2nd semester, and a super duper congratulations to Mahealani for getting perfect attendance for the entire year! She never was tardy or missed a day of school!

As a reminder, if your child has not brought in a white t-shirt for Songfest, please have them do so by Tuesday. 

Have a great three day weekend and Happy Memorial Day! See you all Tuesday!

May 16, 2014

What a fun-filled week we have had! We started off the week by learning about the wonderful artwork style of "word pointillism". This is a style of artwork where the illustration is created through the use of word. To draw a sun you write the word sun over and over again in the shape of the sun. To draw a cloud you write the word cloud over and over again in the shape of a cloud. Here are some exemplar pieces from our class:

This week we also continued our unit of study on Australia by learning more about the koala. Did you know that a koala is not a bear, but a marsupial, because it has a pouch. Baby koalas are called joeys. Koalas also sleep about 18 hours a day!

We have also been getting ready for first grade by learning the parts of speech. We made a sentence patterning chart all about koalas and then wrote our own sentences with it.

Here are some awesome sentences that were written!

This week we received a letter back from our kindergarten penpals in Finland. We wrote them awhile back telling them about what our school life is like in a Hawaii. Here is their response to our letter:

Though they live on a different continent they are very much like us!

On Thursday we had our field trip to WHEA - West Hawaii Exploratory Academy. It was so much fun! Our favorite thing by far was seeing their black tipped shark and watching a puppet show about the danger of plastic bags to sea turtles. The turtles think that the plastic bags are jelly fish and eat them!

Here are some pictures of just some of the many cool things we experienced on our field trip!

Touch Tide Pool:

Robots:

3-D Printer:

Puppet Show:

A Big Mahalo to Mrs. Lolo for donating a case of water bottles and a bunch of bananas and apples for our field trip! We certainly stayed hydrated and nourished!

Songfest is coming up soon on Thursday, May 29th. Please remember to send a white t-shirt with your child to school before hand for the performance and have your child come to school on Songfest day wearing dark shorts or pants. We have been working very hard on our performance and can't wait to make you all proud!

Have a wonderful week and see you all on Monday for our final full week of school for the year!

May 9, 2014

Aloha P2 family and friends! We kicked off this week celebrating Boys Day. We all made samurai hats out of old recycled newspaper. Thank you to the Oco and Clarke families for your donations! And all the boys got invited to have lunch in Mrs. Noyes first grade class. Everyone enjoyed getting to create their hats, as well as painting them, and the boys really enjoyed feeling special all day.

This week we also got to learn a little more about Australia. We learned that they speak English just like us, but they have a different flag and money system. We also got to go on Time For Kids and see what a day was like for a boy that goes to school in Australia. Did you know that his school gets "tea time"? Also we learned that there are a lot of koalas and kangaroos in Australia, there's even an island named "Kangaroo Island"!

On Friday, we said our "good-byes" (for now) to Aunty Carman and Ms. Ku'ulei. Aunty Carman will be back in the classroom with us next year in first grade (2014-2015), and we are keeping our fingers crossed that Ms. Ku'ulei (who will be "Mrs. Steinke" next school year) will get a job at Kealakehe Elementary next school year so we can still see her around campus and say "hi" to her.

We hope everyone has a great weekend! Please don't forget that next week Thursday (5/15) is our field trip to WHEA. All students will have to wear closed-toed shoes and bring a home lunch and a water bottle. If you have any questions please feel free to ask Ms. Jennings. See everyone on Monday.