Fall Phonics Fun

Today we took advantage of the beautiful 70 degree weather to go outside and do some phonics!Something about being outside of our regular classroom makes learning SO much more fun.

We headed over to the courtyard at the church across the street to play "Word Hop". The children were given words and had to hop from letter to letter on the sidewalk to make them.

They had a ball!

This activity was a great way for us to practice letter recognition as we had to find the letters written on the sidewalk. It was also a great activity for students who are tactile/kinesthetic learners and like to move with their bodies when they are learning or reviewing material.

After we played a few rounds, I let the children go with the sidewalk chalk...

I was also happy to see so many of them practicing writing letters and making words that we have learned in class. Writing is always more fun when you get to do it with chalk or markers, instead of paper and pencil!

Fall Scavenger Hunt

Today we went on a fall scavenger hunt. We got zipped up in our jackets (it has gotten so cold all of a sudden!) and headed out around town to find fall things. Each child had a scavenger hunt sheet where they were coloring in the spaces of the things that they found. We were looking for several different kinds of leaves, a squirrel, an acorn, a sweater, a jacket, clouds, a pumpkin!

Fall leaves were not hard for us to find at all! We found a lot on the ground and even some on the trees still changing! We found leaves that were already turned and some that were still in the process of turning. This reminded us of the story we read yesterday, Autumn's First Leaf where the leaves were jealous when their friend started changing, were even more jealous when he changed all the way, and then were all happy again when they had all eventually changed.

The squirrel and the acorn were a little harder to find. We had to sneak up very quietly to the park and look very closely to see the squirrels scurrying in the trees. When we looked very carefully we even got to see a nest that the squirrels have built there.

We weren't able to find a real pumpkin, but we found several pumpkin decorations downtown in different storefront windows. One of the children's favorite was the HUGE pumpkin painted in the town square for downtown trick or treat and the pumpkin fest. One child remarked "I have never seen a pumpkin that big!!!" It was really neat that we were able to catch that on our way back to school.

Our fall scavenger hunt was a success! We found everything on our list and even found a few extra things! This was a fun way for the children to relate the different seasons to their own experiences. Children were able to see and feel the things that we have been talking about in class like the leaves changing and the temperature cooling. What a great way to learn right in our own backyard!!!

Halloween Fun

Last week we spent time learning about and celebrating Halloween. The children always enjoy this time of year. We read lots of really silly Halloween stories and had a great time making pictures of what we wanted to dress up as for Halloween. I loved hearing all of their great ideas!

On Friday, it was favorite book character day at our school. The children were able to bring in one dollar to wear a costume of their favorite book character. I loved getting to see their ideas. We had two Ironmans (iron men!?), a lion, a scarecrow, Snow White, Dora The Explorer, and a train engineer!

Friday morning we made a special snack! Monster Mash! I told the children the story of the witch that showed up at my house with this wonderful recipe and then we added all of the yummy ingredients!

Here is the recipe in case you want to make some at home!

Witches Teeth (Candy Corn)
Ghost Toes (Marshmallows)
Ghost Eyes (Chocolate Chips)
Witch Fingers (Bugles)
Skeleton Bones (Pretzels)
Skulls (Popcorn)
Bat Eyes (Red Hots)
Spider Webs (Chex Cereal)

Friday afternoon we had a party complete with cupcakes, goodie bags, chips, and candy! The children had a ball!

I hope everyone had a very safe and fun Halloween :)


Favorite Halloween Stories :
The Little Old Lady Who Isn't Afraid of Anything
Arthur's Halloween
Clifford: The Costume Contest
The Hall-o-weiner
Who Will Haunt My House on Halloween
There's a Monster In My Attic
Froggy's Halloween
The Biggest Pumpkin Ever

Pumpkin Math

On Thursday, we got a little festive! This week we had learned about pumpkins. We learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin and read a great book called Pumpkin Jack. In the story, a boy's Jack O Lantern is left outside after Halloween and then new pumpkins grow the next year from his seeds that were covered with the fall leaves, winter snow, and ended up planted by accident.

We read lots of books about pumpkins and talked about how they grow and what we do with them. On Wednesday we cut out pictures of the different stages in the pumpkin life cycle and put them in order from seed all the way to pumpkin pie.

Friday I brought in a pumpkin and we had a little science/social studies/math lesson.

To incorporate science, we used our senses. We smelled the pumpkin and then I asked the kids to each come up and pull out some of its insides...




They all decided that it felt mushy and gooey! What a fun thing to test out!

Then we started getting out all of the seeds. I am going to bake them for the kids so we can taste them and then I am trying to persuade Mr. Tucker to plant a few in his garden so we will have pumpkins for our class next year, just like Pumpkin Jack!

Now to incorporate math, we did a little estimation. I asked the kids to estimate how many seeds we were able to pull out of our pumpkin.

We had a lot of guesses. Most of them were above 100, which was a good guess and great thinking because we have not even covered numbers that high yet! They all knew that there were MANY more than 10, which is what we have been working on. To count, I started by having each child come and count 10 seeds into the bag. This reinforced the concepts of one to one correspondence that we have been working on in Math. The goal was to count them all in and then see how our estimates measured up. However, in addition to our 10 hand fulls began to get put in so we didn't quite get to figure it out. I do know that there were at least 120 in the bag after each child put their 10 in and then there were QUITE a few left over!!

Finally to incorporate social studies, we made our pumpkin into a jack o' lantern. With Halloween coming up we will begin next week to look at the traditions associated with that holiday. We decided on using shapes to make our pumpkin's face. We used triangles for eyes, a circle for a nose, and a trapezoid for the mouth.

Who knew math, science, and social studies could be so fun?!

Going Batty!

This week in Kindergarten, we have been learning about bats. We learned many interesting facts about bats. We learned that bats help us out by eating up lots of insects like mosquitoes that bother use! We also learned that bats do NOT turn into vampires! Shew! Thank goodness!!!

While we were learning about bats we learned about the life cycle of a bat and also some characteristics of bats. Did you know that on their wings bats actually have 3 fingers and a thumb?!

On Thursday we read the silly story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat. It really has not much to do with bats, but it is always a fun favorite! After reading, we did some comprehension activities on the smart board. The children were asked to recall the things that the old lady swallowed and the things that she didn't-- what a great way to practice these important skills.

Today we read Stellaluna. We talked about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. What is cool about Stellaluna is that it is a fiction story that actually has real life bat fact in it. Afterwards, we did a smart board activity where we answered some questions about the story and put events in the story in order. We completed our lesson with a venn diagram comparing bats and birds. We learned that bats have fur while birds have feathers, bats are nocturnal, birds and bats eat bugs, and birds and bats can fly. I was so impressed that the children got every single one correct!

In centers this week the children listened to the story Bat's Big Game which is a great story about a little bat who wants to play on the winning soccer team so he keeps switching sides between the animals and the birds! It is a great lesson for us in how to tell the difference between bats and birds and is also really cute and funny!

Check out these great bat books:

Stellaluna
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bat
Zipping Zapping Zooming Bats
The Magic School Bus in The Bat Cave
Amazing Bats

Homemade Applesauce!

This week we were learning about the letter A so we learned all about apples. We learned about the different kinds of apples, what an apple tree looks like in each season, where apples come from, and made a graph of what color apple is our class's favorite to snack on.

For fun and for five senses, we made applesauce on Friday. We began by putting together the recipe. We talked about why it was important to do things in the correct order to make it come out the right way. This was a great lesson in sequencing and the kids did a fantastic job!

After we got our recipe we got started! First, we cut, peeled, and cored the apples.
Then we added Water, Cinnamon, and Sugar.

We had to let it cook for 3 hours. It was a long wait and we were not very patient, but our room smelled delicious!!!

After the apples cooked, we had to mash them up!

Once we got the apples all mashed, we had to let it cool and then

We got to eat the applesauce!

It was delicious! What a sweet treat! Not only that, but it was really fun to make it together!

Creepy, Crawly Fun

This week we spent time learning about those creepy crawly guys that you never want to have in your house...SPIDERS!


Mrs. Frutig next door was sweet enough to bring in her little pal Mufasa so we got to actually have a look up close and personal! The kids loved having her in our class, but I don't think we'll be getting one any time soon :)

This week we read lots of great spider books and learned lots of interesting facts. Did you know that spiders actually have blue blood or that they shed their skin as they get bigger!? Mrs. Frutig also brought in Mufasa's skin to show us. It was so interesting because it looked like an actual spider! We learned that when they shed their skin is very sensitive so we had to be very careful with Mufasa. We also learned how to tell the difference between insects and spiders because spiders always have 8 legs and 2 body parts . We played a fun game on the SMART board where the kids had to decide which pictures were of spiders and which were insects...they got EVERY single one!

We also learned about the life cycle of a spider. We learned that spider mommy's sometimes carry hundreds of teeny spiderlings on their backs until they are ready to take care of themselves. Any moms out there like to try that?

To practice our observation skills, we got out our journals and the children each got to come up to Mufasa and have a good look at her and then they drew her. They had to draw her the correct colors and with the correct parts. The pictures were great!

On Friday, we made spider sandwiches. They were DELICIOUS!!!

* If you notice that our whole class is wearing yellow, it is because our school participated in Livestrong Day to raise money for cancer awareness!*




Great books about spiders:


Dream Weaver by Jonathan London


Spiders byNic Bishop


Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin


The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle


The Magic School Bus Gets Caught In A Web