Happy Halloween!

Well, the much anticipated day has finally arrived! Bonus: we did manage to get in some 'work' this morning before the festivities of the afternoon. :) In Phys. Ed., we engaged in our usual warm ups, stretching, and tag gams. Then, I kept the Kindergarten students on one half of the gym to do some assessments with them while the EA kept the Grade Ones and Twos on the other half of the gym. We worked on catching a ball with two hands, running and kicking a ball, balancing on one foot, skipping, and hopping on two feet. We finished off the class by joining back with the Ones and Twos for some races where they had to dribble basketballs across the room.

In Math, we did some quick review activities of sorting and pattern making activities with blocks and cubes so that students could show what they have learnt.

 

We read a couple of pumpkin themed stories today, too!

 

 

We couldn't go through Halloween without some more pumpkin explorations! During the open house, students were able to experiment with small pumpkins to see if they float or sink (they float).  So, today, we made predictions on whether or not one of our big pumpkins would float or sink.

 

Lo and behold- it sunk!! I think it turned out to be a bit of a faulty experiment and a larger container with more water would have created more accurate results. Lesson learnt!

 

They had more fun with the smaller pumpkins anyways!

We also did week 4 of our pumpkin observations and happily, someone recognized that they have changed colour. They aren't entirely orange yet, but they are getting there!

 

After they finished recording their observations, each student was able to choose a small pumpkin to decorate and take home. They had the option of paint, markers, or stickers. With the appeal of free choice time after this task was complete, everyone opted for the faster choices of markers and stickers.

 

Students were able to dress up in their costumes over lunch recess. Everyone had such great costumes!! We went to the library to exchange our library books, grooved to some Just Dance tunes (Monster Mash, Skeleton Dance, & Ghostbusters), and then went to the 3/4 room to join the other elementary students. We watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown together.

 

After that, we had our in motion break in the gym and parade of costumes followed by a Monster Mash Dance (thanks to the SRC!). I hope everyone had a fun time today, including a safe and happy evening trick-or-treating!

 

 

 

On our way to Halloween...

Good evening! I was not in the classroom this morning, as I was administering an early years evaluation assessment. So, a substitute was working with our class as I worked with them one on one. These are some of the activities they engaged with:

 

Halloween patterns!

An activity to evaluation the ability to follow directions and also understanding of special directions (above, in, below, etc...)

The students had pictures of each Halloween character to glue on the Happy Halloween page.

 

The Hallo-Weiner! There were some free books in the staff room yesterday and the Speech and Language Pathologist recommended this one. The dog in the story is teased by the other dogs until he becomes the hero! Students listened to the story and then worked on a response, sharing their favourite part.

 

We also read Big Pumpkin, which is a funny repetitive story about a group of Halloween characters who are trying to pull a big pumpkin. Each character believes that they are bigger and stronger and that they will be the one who can finally pull up the big pumpkin. In the end, they learn that they are better off working together. The pay off~ they all got to eat yummy pumpkin pie!

 

Of course, this story encouraged many connections to Halloween. Also, a discussion about the difference between a mommy and a mummy! Students then shared what they are going to be for Halloween and drew pictures of their costumes. I can't wait to see all of them dressed up on Friday! :)

 

Patterns, Pumpkins, and Posters

Happy Monday! We started the day off with some huge snow flakes, but that quickly melted away. I thought I would start off with sharing some  pumpkin artwork from last week: goofy pumpkin faces made out of construction paper! Also, thank you to all of the parents who came out to our Open House last Thursday night! Many of the pumpkin activities that I had set up in our classroom for the evening will be carried out this week with the Kindergarten class, so I will save that information for when we get to it. :)

 

This morning we started off in a unique way~ bus evacuation drills! I didn't realize it was for all students, which makes sense as we will all be on a school bus at some point for a field trip. We got to practice evacuations from the front, the back, and half of the people going out the front and half going out the back of the bus. We were paired up with the grade 12's, so we had a lot of 'big kids' to help us out! This meant that our gym class was about half the usual amount of time. We made the most of it with warm ups, stretches, and tag games!

 

It's a little early, but due to contest deadlines, we continued the discussions about Remembrance Day that began at our town library visit. Students shared what they could recall on the topic from that day or their own connections. Then, I read the first part of the story A Poppy Is To Remember. We brainstormed a few ideas for what we could draw on our posters (soldiers, poppies, the Canadian flag, and the word "peace" were popular choices).

 

 

In Math, we continued work on patterns by delving deeper into different types of patterns. I offered examples of AB, ABB, and ABC patterns on our Smart Notebook.

 

 

 

Students then worked on creating their own fall patterns.

 

Today, we also listened to and viewed the story The Runaway Pumpkin.

 

 

We also worked on a See/Say/Spell to review our PWIM colour words. I then read a Halloween themed book that follows the pattern of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Orange Pumpkin, Orange Pumpkin received a few giggles from the crowd! We also had fun predicting which character may be coming next in the story.

Afterwards, we reviewed the sight words in the sentence, "I see a..."

 

 

 Today, we mainly focused on the sight word "see" and students completed the following word work:

 

 

It was a busy, slightly wet, and fun start to the week. I love the week leading up to Halloween, as we get to do so many fun pumpkin inquiry lessons and read silly holiday themed stories! It's also a busy week for assessment, as report cards are out next week and it's time for the Early Years Evaluation. November will be here before we know it! Hopefully, the white stuff will hold off just a little longer... :)  

 

Pumpkins!!!

We have 2 new additions to our classroom~ big, orange pumpkins! There sure do make our original observation pumpkins look small. A lot of our lessons from now until Halloween are going to focus on pumpkins.

 

Today seemed to fly by, as we worked on an art activity in different stages today. First, students drew a night sky of grass, moon, and stars with chalk on a black piece of construction paper. Then, we walked with the grade one and two class to the public library. It is library week and we were invited to enter colour or black and white drawings in the Remembrance Day contest. Students were also recorded reciting various lines from the poem, In Flanders Fields. We were also treated to cookies and juice!

 

In the afternoon, we had our free choice center time. Students took a 'play' break to work on the next part of their art project~ painting a pumpkin with water colour paint.

 

This is the sample that I made along with the students to demonstrate the process.

 

We also watched a video about the life cycle of pumpkins. Students felt and lifted both our small and big pumpkins to help us brainstorm some words that describe pumpkins. We used these words to create a short poem about pumpkins.

 We also read a poem about pumpkins.

 

Then, we worked on our third week of pumpkin observations. As students finished that job, they worked on cutting out their painted pumpkins and glued them onto their black paper.

Now, we have really awesome pumpkins at night paintings on display in the hallway!

Thursday, I am attending a yearbook photography workshop, so we will have a substitute teacher in our classroom. The students will be working on some more pumpkin activities, which will lead into our pumpkin theme for the school's open house on Thursday evening. I'm looking forward to seeing how their next pumpkin art project turns out! Results to come...

Picture Day!

It was picture day today! So, after our photos were finished, we moved our gym class to our classroom. We enjoyed many body break videos, including some Just Dance.

 

In Math, we viewed  a couple of pages from our Math Makes Sense big book. Students pointed out patterns that they seen on the page. We also tried out some different movement patterns and people patterns, by rearranging each other in different ways to make a pattern.

 

After recess, students worked on their "This is me in October" self portraits. It's exciting to already see progress with printing and the ability to sit for a longer period of time to draw a more detailed picture. When they finished, they had the option of exploring the art center or the writing center. We also looked up some germs on the internet~ cartoon type germs and photos of real germs! They look really interesting and are very colorful. Some students decided to create their own germs.

Discovering stamps in the writing center!

They also found our new magnets today.

We read a funny story, "Bark, George."

 

We also did a See, Say, Spell activity to review our PWIM words. Then, a student who had missed our original shake out of the words was able to pick a colour word from the picture. We then read together "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

 

We began some sight word recognition practice. I showed them the words "I", "see", and "a" and created a few simple sentences on the white board from the Brown Bear story that they would be able to read (example: I see a red bird). Then, we focused on the word "I" and worked on a sheet where they traced, printed, rainbow wrote, circled, and cut and pasted the word "I".

Everyone looked great for photos today! It's so nice to walk through the hallways to see everyone K-12 dressed in their best clothes, hair curled, etc.. We have another four day weekend in K, as teachers have a collaborate learning day on Monday. Time to gather more exciting ideas from other Kindergarten teachers! I'll meet everyone back here next Tuesday. Have a great weekend!

Listening, Observing, and Hand Washing!

 

 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend! The students were very excited to share stories of all of the yummy food that they enjoyed.

 

We started off our day with practicing throwing and catching in Phys. Ed. We were able to play a game where each team's goal was to try and knock over the other team's pylons. During our calendar meeting, we reviewed what it means to listen with our whole bodies.

 

 

 

 After snack, we put our listening skills to the test with a read aloud. We ran out of time last Thursday, but today we were able to read A Plump and Perky Turkey, which is a very fun Thanksgiving story! Students worked on listening response sheets afterwards. They shared their opinion as to if it was a good story or not by colouring in either a happy or sad face. Then they drew a picture of something that happened in the story and told me a sentence to write along with their drawing.

 

 

In Science, we observed our pumpkins. One is starting to change colour, while the other is taking it's time! First, we reviewed our KWL chart and read some non-fiction information about pumpkins. We added to our "what we learnt" chart that pumpkins start as flowers and they grow in a pumpkin patch.

 

Then, we switched gears to Health and brainstormed some healthy habits. We watched two videos about hand washing (which they loved so much we watched them again later in the day!). Our school is a Germ Smart school, so we have posters about proper hand washing in each washroom.

 

The video suggested washing our hands for 15 seconds so we practiced washing our hands and singing the ABC song to get an idea of the length of time that is best for getting rid of those germs!

 

For the last period of the day we had library. Since everyone was so into hand washing (singing the song from the video as we walked down the hallway), I read Down the Drain by Robert Munsch. Students then picked out new books to sign out, which we looked over in the library. Then, we were back to the classroom for our talking circle and the end of the day was here before we knew it!

 

Giving Thanks

Today we focused on the upcoming holiday~ Thanksgiving! I like to take the spin on focusing on something that we are thankful for, as well as someone that we could say 'thank you' to.

So, we read the story Thanks for Thanksgiving (I had a few other great books lined up but we ran out of time!). We discussed some reasons why you may say 'thank you' to someone. Then we worked on thank you cards. The students got to chose anyone that they wanted to make a card for. They were given blank cards. They could choose to print the word "Thank You" on their card or make the words with letter stickers. It was very interesting hearing their reasons for saying thank you. :)

 

 

We had a lot to talk about during our morning calendar meeting. We received two piece of mail (which happened to conveniently lead into our card making activity). Firstly, we were invited to the town library for library week. Second, we received our first package from our Little Passports explorers! We received a letter from Sam and Sofia, telling us all about their trip to Brazil! They send us a photograph of a monkey that they had befriended, a piece of amethyst from an amethyst mine, a luggage tag, and some stickers. Very exciting!

 

I'm not sure who is more excited about our Little Passport packages- the students or me!

 

Early finishers during snack ventured into our literacy buckets for the first time today. They explored some magnet letters, but were very excited to discover bananagrams! They were super keen on spelling their names.

 

Our schedule today was a little mixed up because of working in an art project, but also we had a surprise presentation by the fire chief! We gathered in the library with the grades one to four students. Everyone was very eager to talk about what they know about what starts fires, fire alarms, and fire safety tips. We will have to get more into fire safety next week. We had to get back to our Thanksgiving art activity!

 

There were a few steps involved and I had some much appreciated help with making the handprints.

 

After last recess, we put together the body and head of our turkeys. It was our first time using white glue, but we survived! :) I think they turned out great!

 

While we were waiting for handprints to dry, we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. While they were watching it, I wasn't sure how much they enjoyed it. However, a lot of them mentioned the 'movie' when they discussed their favourite part of the day in our talking circle. They find Snoopy and Woodstock very funny.

 

 

We managed to fit in our free choice center time amongst these activities. Once again, the main hits were play-doh, house building, and road making for the farm toys. Someone came up with the idea to make a ramp for the farm vehicles, so some science came into play today. :) They did also engage in some role playing in the drama center after the presentation today. I heard a lot of calls to 9-1-1. :)

What a busy day! I am so glad that I document our days with photographs, as I had already forgotten some of our adventures from the day!

 

I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend, filled to overflowing with reasons to be grateful! Make sure that you say 'thank you' to someone this weekend. :)

 

 

Colours!

Hello Tuesday!

Here's a run down of our adventures from today:

 

In gym, we continued working on our throwing and catching skills.

We took a little detour from patterns today to explore the variety of ways that we can sort objects. We discussed some examples of sorted objects and decided that we can sort by colour, shape, and size. Students then could choose whatever they wanted to sort into two groups and explain their sorting rule.

 

In Science, we started a series of lessons that will focus on observing the characteristic of a familiar plant in October- the pumpkin!

 

We worked on building our KWL chart. First, we shared what we already know about pumpkins. Second, we came up with some questions for what we want to know. This part is a little tricky at first, as deciphering exactly what a question is can be a lesson in itself! My favourite question was, "What colour is the stem when the pumpkin is orange?" That question came as students were observing our two pumpkins.

 

We will be observing the pumpkins once a week until Halloween.

 

 

We added to our what we learnt paper too, as students were wondering why the pumpkins were green. One student offered up the information that they were still green because they are not ripe yet.

 

After last recess, we watched an Alphablocks video and a song about colours. Then, we read the story Red is Best and everyone shared their favourite colour.  

 

 

We began our first PWIM cycle today by shaking out words from our picture. We are focusing on colour words to help us work on our alphabet recognition and letter sounds. So, each student found a colour in the picture.

We then worked on completing this 'colourful leaves' picture. Students were to find the colour word on our PWIM board or poster about colours so that they could figure out what colour to use for each leaf. Before we knew it, it was talking circle time and time to head home.  

 

The theme of colour seemed to weave its way throughout our whole day today! With Thanksgiving approaching, we'll have to switch gears on Thursday. Until then, have a wonderful, colourful day.