Well, I just realized I haven't posted anything for a while, so I need to go back a few weeks. We covered a lot of things in the past few weeks from spiders to pumpkins, fire safety to monsters and migration to sleeping bears! Let's get started on what we've been up to in Kindergarten!
We read the book
"Amazing World of Spiders" by Janet Craig and learned about what spiders can do, what they have, and what the are. We filled out a Top Down Web about spiders and the children wrote their own (from mine) to take home and tell their families what they learned. I was very impressed with how they were able to copy from my Top Down Web onto their own paper that I found as a
freebie.
We also did some more on the life cycle of a pumpkin from a
Pumpkin Mini Unit by Mrs. Ricca. They really loved this unit!
We had some new Daily 5 activities out. We have started doing Listen to Reading. They are very excited when they get to go to this area! Thank goodness I have a TON of books on tape :) So I now have 4 out of the 5 Daily 5 components up and running!!! I am holding off on Read to Someone until after Christmas. I want them to be able to read a little better so they aren't just fooling around with a buddy. They love these Find a Letter pages. Unfortunately, I found these a month ago and can't find who I got them from. If you recognize anything I can't find a link to, please message me below and I will fix it :) The sight word practice comes from a
Fall Literacy Freebie from Jennifer Elliott. Some of the children did a great job reading the words. Some were just at the copying stage, but that was fine too!
We also celebrated Fire Safety week and week late. Our local fire department came to speak to the Kindergarten and First Grade children. They were so excited that they brought the ladder truck with them! When the presentation was over, they lifted the ladder up over the kids and the school! It was pretty cool!
I wanted to post some picture of Fundations. We do Fundations every day and the children are doing so well with proper letter formation and remembering the story for each letter (ex. a, apple, /a/) We played a game where each child had either a key picture or a letter. They had to find their match and put their puzzle together and say the story together. We also do Echo Find Letters. I call out a sound and they need to point to the matching letter on their magnet boards. We also practice our vowel sounds and stretch them out to really hear the sounds. I was very excited with their mid unit results. One child even scored 100%!!!
We read "
Go Away Big, Green Monster" by Ed Emberley and then made our own big, green monsters. I guess I figured out a way to cover their faces for the website! :) We also made these
booklets to add to their reading boxes! We used the interactive pocket chart that is included with the booklet, I just forgot to take pictures of it. They LOVED the chart! I have pictures of another one coming up.
To finish up our unit on 2D shapes in Investigations, we played a game where I chose a number and they had to use pattern blocks to make a design with ONLY that many objects. They were very creative!!
On to Halloween! My team dressed up as Pete the Cat from 4 Groovy Buttons! We each had a different number of buttons and held up our groovy button sign in our school parade! I love my new team:)
We started talking about Hibernation and Migration last week. We started off by watching some videos on youtube about hibernation. I never knew how many things you can find videos about on youtube!! The children got to watch a cartoon-like video explaining where different animals hibernate. We watched one showing a real bear family getting ready for hibernation. You could hear a pin drop in the room! We made a 2 column notes poster showing which animals hibernate and which migrate. We then completed a
sort for the children to take home. My favorite part was our sleeping bears. They came out SOOOO cute!!!
In our new unit in Investigations, we made a Counting Book. The children had to draw 1-6 of the same object on each page. We had ice cream cones, flowers, trees and cars! They did a great job and will be available to see at Conferences.
Here is the other
interactive pocket chart I have out right now. They love these and I hope I can find more of them! They get so into acting them out! This one is 5 Little Monkeys.
And lastly, a tribute to our heroes. The children brought these home to fill out with their parents. We made a bulletin board in our wing to hang them all up. I have only hung up ones from my class and it was already very full! I will post pictures of it next week when we have more heroes up on the wall.
Happy Veterans' Day weekend!
