Learning About Living Organisms

In science we have had great hands-on experiences as we learn more about living organisms, their characteristics, and what they need to live.
Our field trip to the Pier Aquarium was not only enjoyable, but informative, as well. Our tour guide, Ms. Grace, talked with us about many of the sea creatures that live in the tanks there. We observed up close a large eel that was hiding in the back of one of the tanks. We learned what they eat and how they catch their prey. We found out where the mouth is on a sea star and were able to touch a several different kinds sea stars. We learned about clams, corals, and fish found in the waters of Tampa Bay, as well as those in the Pacific Ocean.

The finale was a trip to the waters edge.  Partnered with nets and buckets, the children found sea stars, crabs, and quite a few creatures still in their shells. This experience made for a great connection to our classroom aquariums, which now are home to fresh water snails and guppies.
Since 1988, nearly 4 million visitors have experienced the award-winning marine life programs, exhibits and touch tank at The Pier Aquarium in downtown St. Petersburg. In the spring of 2013 the Pier Aquarium will relocate to the John's Pass Village. Its new name Secrets of the Sea is a 13,000 sq. ft. marine exploration center housed on two levels of John’s Pass Village.  This one-of-a-kind marine attraction and interactive visitor experience combines real-time scientific research, hands-on experiments and living marine exhibits that reveal intriguing mysteries of the ocean.
Our trip to the Pier Aquarium is the springboard to our study of marine life which we will begin now and conclude in January.

Learning About Measuring in Math

As an introduction to the wide range of tools, materials, and activities involved in measuring, the children enjoyed looking around their homes in search of a measuring tool to bring in the show the class. We had tape measures, measuring cups and spoons, medicine syringes, a food scale, a ruler, and a timer. Mrs. Minke brought out a bath scale, a thermometer, a shoe measure, and a yardstick to share, also. We talked about the names of each item, where it would usually be found, and what it could measure. Each student wrote about the tool they bought in and how it was used. The tools were placed in a Measuring Tool Museum and the writing pieces were displayed on the bulletin board near the museum. The children had fun exploring the measuring tools, especially the retractable tape measures.

Ava explores measuring time.

Our first focus for measuring is to the measure length. We have been measuring both how long and tall things are with non-standard items. First we used teddy bear counters. We placed them in lines and counted how long the lines were. Next, we used our hands to measure various pieces of furniture in our classroom. Today we are finding objects in our classroom and recording those that are as tall as our chins, knees, and waists. We will also be comparing the heights of our classmates and recording those that are taller, shorter, and the same heights as the different children. We will discover how many steps it takes to  measure the distance between different locations in our classroom and on campus.

Brianna and Lili measure with teddy bear counters.

Noah and Briana measure with hand lengths.

Next, we will introduce using items such as toothpicks, blocks, and paper clips to measure the width of the tables in the classroom. Later, we will use rulers to draw straight lines and for our measuring activities, as well as measuring tapes.

Measuring is a real world application for writing numbers, number recognition, and  counting skills. It is also a great review of using numbers over 10.

Our Field Trip to Boyd Hill Nature Park

What a grand time we had at the park. the weather was perfect-mild and clear. Truly, Florida at her best! Ranger Ken was informative, and we all learned a lot about animals and their homes. We met a box turtle and all had a chance to pet a red rat snake. We learned that snakes are more afraid of us than we are of them.

On our nature walk we saw an ant lion, a water turtle, a heron, and a gopher tortoise hole. The picnic lunch was enjoyable, but the highlight of the trip for the children was the great playground that they had a chance to explore. The children were eager to stay longer, but, all too soon we had to return to school.  Perhaps they could return soon with their families. The park is lovely and has many special events to offer. Just next weekend there is a campfire with Santa that has been planned! What fun! Only in Florida!

Mrs. Kiernan took many photos which have been printed and glued onto writing paper. The children have each selected a photo that interests them. In Writers' Workshop they wrote great stories about our trip using the photos as a springboard. The setting of course was Boyd Hill, its animal homes, and a few playground snaps as well.  The visit to Boyd Hill also connects to our study of organisms.  We will be adding snails to the aquariums and a few crawling creatures to our terrariums.  Our classroom habitats are coming alive with much more to see and observe.

Our New Writing Unit: Small Moments quickly

Since August we have completed several units in Writers' Workshop. We launched our independent writing program in August by drawing pictures of events from our lives, including both those at school and at home. We used storytelling and details in our pictures to communicate our ideas. Next we moved to adding labels to our pictures and finally a putting the labels into a sentence.

Our second writing unit focused on making lists of things that went together, such as colors and pets. Our third unit involved taking our lists and turning them into booklets using sentences with patterns, such as "I see the cat. I see the dog, etc."

For the first part of November we were busy writing poems using themes around colors, animals, Thanksgiving, and other topics that interested the children.

Up until now we have talked about how to put your ideas into your words, how to use picture clues to reinforce your writing, and to work neatly. We have learned to be brave spellers to include challenging words to tell our stories and to spell the 30 sight words correctly that we have added to our Word Wall.
Today we began our fifth writing unit, Small Moments. This unit is similar to the Launching Unit we began in August, but with increased expectations. This morning we reviewed how to write a story in Writers' Workshop. Then I demonstrated an example by drawing a picture and writing a sentence about  the math lesson we had early this morning. The children quickly chose topics and went off to write independently for 20 minutes. What a wonderful job our writers did! Great stories! Great detail in the pictures! Neat work! Everyone read their stories with partners and was very proud of their work. Jake was especially eager to read his story to the class with the document camera. Tomorrow the class will learn how to take one small event from their lives and how to turn it into a three page story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our class is ready for this challenge! Awesome work! In addition, we will focus on having spaces between our words and including periods, question marks, and exclamation marks at the end of each sentence. The Small Moments unit will be great fun with much learning going on. It will continue through the end of December.

Friendship

An important part of kindergarten is for the children to learn to develop a wide range of skills for how to work and play with the many different personalities of their classmates. We want for them to make some close friends that they especially enjoy. Along with these friendships, the children will need to learn how to share, take turns, compromise, and develop empathy for their friends. They will need to exhibit kindness and helpfulness. Young children are naturally self-centered; but, to be a true friend, they will need to move beyond this and begin to think of the needs of their friends, too. How exciting it is to see our students learn what it takes to be a real friend.

But what about the rest of their classmates and their teachers? Do their feeling count, as well? Of course they do! Once a child has learned to consider the feelings of their friends, it is time for them to move forward developing empathy for their entire classroom community and then expanding into the world around them. How wonderful it is to see the class being considerate and respectful of others. In order to encourage the children to be inclusive to all their classmates, we have shuffled the table and carpet spots so that everyone is now sitting with new classmates. This changes the dynamics of the classroom atmosphere and allows for the children to establish new relationships. Some of these will blossom into new friendships as they work and play with different people.

As our children grow up, they will have an invaluable tool if they have learned how to develop positive     relationships with their peers, co-workers, bosses, neighbors, and family members. The old saying, "Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten," has a lot of truth in it.

New Poetry Unit in Writers' and Readers' Workshops

We have concluded our writers' and readers' workshop units last Friday with completing our best work ever. For most of October we have been looking for books that included pattern sentences. These books have phases that are repeated throughout the story. The books with pattern sentences are fun to read and are very helpful for children who are beginning to read. Their confidence and success increases once the children have figured out the pattern.

For independent writing, the class has been making their own little books with pattern sentences. We started off with everyone making books about the classroom, using the sentence starter, "I see the ..." We brainstormed ideas and then the children used their kindergarten spelling to fill in the blanks. Next we moved to sentences about the playground, "I like the ..." Later the children selected their own topics. These varied from Halloween, birthdays, princesses, gardens, foods, toys, etc. The children were taught to stretch out their words for spelling phonetically, use spaces between their words, writing small and neatly, and adding details to their pictures. We also talked about using a variety of other sentence patterns, such as, "Here is the ...," "Look at the ...," Come see the ...," "This is a ...," etc. These sentence starters helped to introduce and reinforce sight vocabulary.

As part of Poetry in the Park, we will we reading and writing poems over the next several weeks. Each child will begin a book of poems. As a class we will read a poem on a chart together several times. Then the children will be given small copies of the poem to glue and illustrate in their  poetry books. We will practice reading these poems throughout the rest of the year, adding new poems each week. Our focus will be poems between now and Thanksgiving, but we will continue to read and write poems all year.

The poems we will be writing will revolve around familiar topics, such as, colors happiness, friends, myself, and using our five senses. Here is an example:

Happiness sounds like ...
Happiness looks like ...
Happiness smells like ...
Happiness tastes like...
Happiness feels like ...

We will first brainstorm as a class lots of ideas for each one. Then each child will select an idea that he or she like and record it on their poetry papers. Each of their poems will be illustrated and later compiled into booklets for their Bag of Books.

November will be a busy month of learning for all of us!

New Unit in Science

Last week we began our new science unit which features an in-depth study of organisms. We used activities around the theme of pumpkins to build interest and as an introduction to the world of living things. We have talked about the life cycle of pumpkins, read many books featuring pumpkins, planted pumpkin seeds, weighed pumpkins, measured pumpkins, checked to see if they would sink or float, and visited the pumpkin patch.

Now we have moved beyond pumpkins to list other living things. We have made charts of how plants and animals are alike and how they are different. Next we will be studying seeds. We will use four of our senses (see, hear, smell, and feel) to examine some seeds, and to compare how they are alike and different. Next we will talk about what plants need to live and be healthy before we plant four different kinds of seeds. Daily we will watch how our seeds grow and change. In a few weeks the class will be divided into groups of four to work together to set up terrariums and aquariums for each group. (Let's keep this a secret for now!) This will lead into our study of comparing animals and what they need to live and be heathy.

The unit on organisms contain 17 separate lessons and will continue into January and February. Some will be conducted in each kindergarten homerooms and others will be part of our weekly science activities in the kindergarten common area on Thursday afternoons with our science parent volunteers. These lessons all include hands-on activities, discussions, observations, predictions, and journal response writing.

What a meaningful and exciting way to study living things. Let the learning begin!

Math Everyday with Everyday Math

Our math curriculum is built around the mathematic program called Everyday Math. One of the key math activities each day is the calendar report. We record the date including the month, day and year, along with the day of the month in tally marks. We graph the weather each day and count the number of days we have been in school. Today is Day 40 of kindergarten. We practice saying the days of the week and will be including the months of the year soon. We also read the schedule for the day.
Most of the calendar activities are directed by the two calendar captains, a class job that rotates weekly.

Calendar Captains, Brianna and Duran, update the calendar each day this week.

Leading us into addition and subtraction, our lessons have included activities with More and Less.  Activities include dominos, number cards and comparing items in the classroom such as, there are more girls and less boys, or there are more books and less clocks.  These activities help build a foundation for addition and subtraction, while developing a number sense.

Franco and Ava use dominos to compare more and less.

As we move into the teen numbers the children have added 11 - 20 to their number cards.  We take every opportunity to count beyond ten.  Last week we tallied 45 items donated to the Salvation Army Homeless shelter's pantry.  What a teachable moment to use tally marks. Today the children partnered up to demonstrate what 11 - 20 looks like with our fingers.  One partner held up tens fingers while the other partner held up one finger so the pair together made eleven fingers. We continued for all the numbers up to 20. We practiced using our strong thumbs to hold the remaining fingers and stretching tall the ones needed to make 8 and 9, along with 18 and 19.

Forty-five tallies for us, forty-five food items donated to the Salvation Army Shelter pantry.

Jake and Nicholas partner to display the teen numbers. Here is what 17 looks like.

As our work with patterns continues, the children will move from AB patterns to AABB and other varieties that repeat themselves 3 times to display the pattern fully. We are making patterns using colors, shapes, sizes, objects, numbers, and letters. These lessons develop concepts that will help them later to understand skip counting.

In the classroom we often transition to line or to a new lesson with activities that practice these concepts.  It offers great mental math opportunities and fills a minute or two with a learning activity while taking turns.

While our focus for math lessons is early in the morning, math activities are often sprinkled throughout the day. Not only do we have math everyday, but we have math related activities integrated with our other lessons during the rest of the day.

Buddy Reading with Our Second Grade Friends

Today was our third visit with Ms. Deegan’s second graders to buddy read. To prepare for the visit, the second graders select books that would be of interest to kindergarten children and practice reading them with expression. Our class reviewed their Unit 1 writing books, entitled Launching, which contained the writing they did in September, along with other books they have made themselves since August. Each second grader was partnered with a kindergarten student to read together. They were able to share their books, use reading strategies to help decode words, ask and answer questions, and enjoy each others company. This second grade/kindergarten partnership will continue on most Mondays throughout the year with different reading and writing activities. Sometimes our kindergarten class will visit the second grade classroom. The children do a wonderful job working together and look forward to visiting each other’s classrooms! 

Fiona chose a quiet reading spot.

Jake and Ave share a partner.

Kai shares his writing.

Briana and Noah with shoulder parnters.

Lili and Mariana's turns.

Duran uses his tracking finger.

Franco points to a favorite page.

Nicholas selects from his
 Bag of Books.

Brianna shares her small
small moment writing.

Jaiden finds a new book.

Word Works in Kindergarten

Daily our class talks about words: hearing, reading and spelling them. Each student has a personal dictionary in their seat pocket which we have been working in since August. These dictionaries include enrichment words which each child has chosen to illustrate as examples of each letter sound. So far we have added words that begin with s, r, t, m, p, n, and a. Our focus letter this week is c. Next week we will work with words that begin with b and d. We use letter sounds to help us read and write words.

Today we started to talk about words that rhyme with at, such as cat and rat. We are practicing reading and spelling words that are part of this word family. We began with the word ending "at," and added letters to build new words. Tomorrow we will begin Our Word Family books where we will record on the first page the words that rhyme with at. Over the next few weeks, we will work on additional pages for other word families, such as the "ad" and "am" families. Seeing and hearing the patterns in words help the children to better understand how words are made.

We are discussing how words go together to make up sentences. We count how many words are in sentences and how many sounds are in words. This is especially helpful to young writers as they begin to put their thoughts down on paper in Writers' Workshop.

In Readers' Workshop we are learning strategies to use when encountering a "tricky word" in a sentence. We are practicing sounding out words, checking the pictures for clues, and thinking about what word would make sense in this story.

All of these activities are working together to build strong readers and writers. What great progress each child is making!

Learning About Pets

Mrs. Kiernan and I are excited to have our students read our blog this week. We hope that they will have  a chance to read it every week, as it contains the news about what we are doing in class and has photos of our classroom activities.

Starting last week we began learning about pets. We have been talking about which animals would make good pets and which ones would not be good pets. We have read and recited The Animal Store, by Rachel Field as well as graphed our favorite pets. Our visit to Animal House Pet Shop on Friday, was both fun and informative. We were shown a wide variety of pets, both common and exotic. A class favorite was the rabbits. We enjoyed watching them hop around in our circle, and we even got to pet them.
This Friday, each student will select a pet that they wish to study. The children will be in groups of between two and four students. The groups will read books, talk to friends and adults, and even use the internet to learn more about the pets they have chosen to study. We will want to find out about the physical characteristics of the pets, what they eat, what they need to live and be healthy, and why they could make a good pet. We will share our information with our classmates by making teaching posters using a variety of art materials.
The choices of pets available to be studied and researched are: dogs, cats, parrots, fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, and snakes. Students, be ready to tell me on Friday which pet you want to study.

We Are Reading Every Day!

Ava reads from the morning message. The class has
found words they can read and have circled them. 

Kia, Brianna, and Sophia choose five "just right" books for their
Reading Baggies. We book shop once a week.The children read privately,
with partners, and with the teachers from books that are on their reading levels.

Each day the class is introduced to a new facet of reading. Stories of high interest are read to the class by the teachers using story books, big books, poems, songs, and our daily class news. The children are encouraged to participate by acting out the stories, by storytelling, and by reading along with the teacher. The children are learning to decode new words by looking at the letter sounds, by studying the pictures for clues, and by thinking about what words would make sense in this story.

We have started a Word Wall with ten high frequency words that we have been learning to read and spell. Soon we will add more words to our study of high frequency words. In a few weeks we will begin our study of word families. These are words that rhyme and that follow a standard spelling pattern, such as cat, hat, and bat. These words will be recorded in our special Word Families books. This study will continue all year and will include about forty different word families.

We are also beginning a Book of Poems. Copies of poems and songs that we have read several times will be placed in these books to be reviewed and enjoyed through out the year.

Yes, we are class full of readers! It is fun to learn to read!

Color Day in Kindergarten

Rainbow of Color Graph

Ava and Briana share their favorite color work.

What fun it was for the children to be invited to wear their favorite color to school last Thursday. We were a rainbow of colorful shirts, shorts, and dresses. In math we made a life-sized graph of our favorite colors and then recorded this information on a paper graph which now decorates our bulletin board. We traced and cut out paper dolls to look like us using people colors for our skin. We dressed them to look like us  with our favorite colored clothes. These are now placed around our color graph for the beginning of our unit on "Our Favorite Things" in social studies.

In science we talked about that for our eyes to see colors, there needs to be light. We are discussing what color eyes each of us have and will look in mirrors to study the part of our eyes along with their colors. We will make a second graph of our eye colors to accompany our favorite color graph.

In Spanish we are learning to sing Los Colores with Ms Diaz-LeRoy. In Mrs. Rowe's art class we discussed that if we have the primary colors of red, yellow, blue, black and white, this will allow us to create all the other colors of the palette.

Many of you may have noticed our renditions of Harold and the Purple Crayon hanging up in our classroom.  Coming soon will be an another favorite, Brown Bear Brown Bear. This rythmic pattern book reinforces the color words using a story we can all read to each other.

Science in Kindergarten

 Brianna, Jaiden, Fiona, and Sasa at the My Body table.

 Sophia, Mariana, and Franco explore Earth Science.

 Jake, Brianna, and Kia with magnets, motion, sink and float at the Physical Science table.

Noah, Lili, Duran, and Nicholas explore Life Science.

Science is taught in our classroom class daily, and is also expanded weekly in the kindergarten common area. Our homeroom science is part or our classroom environment. We have been exploring fruits along with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Mrs. Kiernan has served a wide variety of fruits for us to enjoy as part of our morning snacks. We have a fruit learning center which includes puzzles, games, and activities. Science in our homeroom involves a learning center, classroom lessons, and activities and is often integrated with reading, writing, and math. The center is changed about once a month. Following our fruit unit, we will move into learning about which animals would make good pets.

The science activities in the kindergarten common area are held every Thursday afternoon. The kindergarten teachers set up three to four science stations for the children to explore. Parent volunteers are especially helpful and valuable when assisting the children with these science activities. Each class rotates to the K hallway for a half hour slot. Last Thursday was our first opportunity to participate in these lessons. Our opening science lesson was on the topic, "What is science?" Before moving to the hallway, the children brainstormed in their homeroom what they thought was studied in science. They had only a few ideas. When we proceeded to the hallway, the children found four tables representing the four areas of science: life, physical, Earth, and the human body. Each table contained hands-on materials to explore that were related to each table's theme. The children all had papers on clipboards for recording one item from each table. The children drew the pictures and the parent helpers printed the labels on the recording sheets. These papers have been saved and will be placed in each child's science journal.

We love exploring and learning about science!

What Is a Marble Jar?

In our classroom Mrs. Kiernan and I are encouraging the children to make good choices and to be more responsible for their actions and behavior. To promote a positive atmosphere here at school, we are watching and listening to the children, hoping to catch them "doing the right thing." Besides verbally acknowledging positive behavior, the students are asked to take  marble out of the "Marbles to Earn" jar and place it in a second jar which is labeled "Do the Right Thing." This is a great honor and the children eagerly add new marbles to the jar. These compliments can be earned as whole class, as a small group, or by individuals.
The teachers are looking for good manners, kindness to classmates, cooperation with peers and teachers, positive attitudes, being good role models, etc. Only grown-ups can pass out marbles.
Each Friday we will be counting the marbles our class has earned, incorporating math into the activity. I dumped out all our earned marbles into a pile and starting pointing to each marble as I counted. Many children thought I was doing a good counting job until one student suggested a better strategy. Sophia thought that if I moved each marble as I counted, I would be sure to have the correct count. We talked about using this counting strategy instead of simply pointing to the objects to be counted. Later in the school year, we will learn other counting strategies.

For the first seven days of school, our class earned a total of 53 marbles. What a great job, class! We are off to to a terrific start.

Opening Days of Kindergarten

Mrs. Kiernan and I are enjoying getting to know our new class, and the children are busy settling in. They are eagerly learning our kindergarten routines and the new expectations of their new class. What a joy it is to observe them exploring our classroom and enjoying so many of our activities. The children are making new friends and becoming reaquainted with old friends. Everyone is settling in nicely, including the teachers, and looking forward to a great year in kindergarten. We are off to to terrific start.
This is the time of year when the teachers are getting to know the children socially and academically through both observation and informal assessment. This will help us with our planning for the upcoming weeks and months. Once we know the various levels of the children, we will be able to help them reinforce these levels and then move on to learn new skills and concepts.
Kindergarten is a great year of fun, learning, and growth of all!

Recording Our Bird Projects Using Voicethread

What a great job our class has done completing their study of birds! The children have worked in teams of two or three, sharing information and ideas. After choosing the birds that they wanted to learn more about, the children have read bird information books and posters. They have each visited the kindergarten web site that Mrs. Minke developed to learn more about their birds. After the research was completed, the children each completed a seven page information book which covered lots of related facts about their birds that are listed in the book's Table of Content. The students included a labeled diagram of their birds. One page talked about how each bird looked, including the bird's colors, size, and distinguishing characteristics. Other pages included where they live, what they eat, and a fun fact about their birds.
Using the IPads, Mrs. Kiernan has photographed each child in our class with their bird projects. Each child created a huge stuffed model of their bird made out of paper, along with either a clay sculpture  or a puppet of their bird. Each child created computer story with facts about their birds along with  drawings. Then students then recorded their information on the IPads using Voicethread. This is being made into a slide show for our parents to view on Wednesday afternoon.

Learning about birds has not only been informative, but also enjoyable. Many student listed this project as their favorite part of kindergarten.

Buddy Reading

Practicing the books we have selected to read.

Our JK buddies gather on the rug.

Mrs. Minke's students read to a partner and move to a new JK student.

Once every week or two our kindergarten class has read books with Ms Deegan's second grade class. This experience has been a most enjoyable and eagerly anticipated event all year. The second graders have read many stories to their kindergarten friends. They have encouraged our students to actively listen to their books and at times have prepared comprehension questions for the young listeners. The second graders have been wonderful role models for our class. They have also been wonderful teachers as they listened to our kindergarteners read stories to them. They have been patient, helpful, and encouraging. We have also shared projects and reports together, and even made two alphabet books together. Many of the kindergartners have developed friendships with the students in Ms Deegan's class. Buddy reading has been a very successful activity for both grades.

Now it is our turn to be the "Big Kids' as we read books to the junior kindergarten children. The JK students have enjoyed coming up to the "Big School"to listen to our stories. This gives them a preview of the kindergartens to help ease their transition for next August. It's also a great way for our kindergarten children to practice their reading skills.

Portfolio

Earlier today our class had the opportunity to join our second grade reading buddies in the computer lab.  Students paired up to view their  2nd grade partners digital portfolio.  Presenting their collections through Voice Thread, the children listened to and viewed accomplishments and personally favored work selected from the 2011-2012 school year.  This offered kindergarten the chance to see a wide range of assignments chosen, hear the reflections of their partners, and comment of the final production. 

As we near the end of the school year, we too are selecting from photos and favorite works to reflect upon.  These reflections showcase each child's shining moments and capitalize on saving the work for an audience.  They illustrate the cooperative teaming we practice at school, the connections between school and home, and the wonderful memories created in kindergarten.

Our morning moved from the computer lab to the art studio where what do you know...we illustrated our art portfolio covers.  The children are very excited about using these to bring home this year's art work.

Cooperative Teamwork

What great role models we have in our parent volunteers.  Last week several of our kindergarten fathers volunteered their time to work on a project for Mother's Day.  The first phase was completed in record time and their teamwork was second to none.

In the classroom we foster cooperative teamwork skills throughout the curriculum.  Children are encouraged to participate by sharing their strategies, ideas and opinions.  We follow by paraphrasing their contributions.  This helps clarify ideas, express support,  and energizes the direction of the task.

When the children are given opportunities to share their reasoning, they are differentiating their own ideas and showcasing their strengths. When working as a team, they often independently delegate who will be recording, drawing, and presenting their team's ideas.

 Pride in their group work is priceless.  We celebrate each child's contribution and cooperative effort. The completed project is a reflection of this effort. The students are not only helping each other learn academic material, but learning how to work as a team. They are learning the give and take, the compromises, that make teams operate effectively. Whether the children are constructing block designs together, researching topics on the internet and recording the new information that they have learned, or building a complicated tower, they are learning how and why to work cooperatively together. The team can share the work load, and the finished product is often better than what any one of the individuals would have produced on their own. Plus, it's more fun!