Halloween Party

We ended last week with our school's annual Penny Carnival and our classroom's Halloween party.  For those of you who don't know, the Penny Carnival is a fundraiser put on by the 5th grade students to raise money for 5th grade camp.  They have games and prizes for the younger students to play.  The only requirement is that the students have to pay a penny or two. Needless to say, it was a hoot! 

Thank you to my room moms, Amy and Lynette, for all the time and creative thinking you did to make our Halloween party a success!  The students and I had a great time. I am so grateful for all of the parents and grandparents that helped out and visited on Friday, as well.



We have been working on creating and extending patterns so the students made patterns with their snack on Friday.  They did a great job with this as you can see. 

This is the only class picture I managed to take on Friday - sorry it's a little blurry. The kids looked awesome though!

Julia getting her face painted at the Penny Carnival by a 5th grader.

Keagan playing the sucker game.

A few girls waiting in line during the Penny Carnival.  The 5th graders did a great job organizing and creating games for us to play.  The kindergarteners seemed to really enjoy it.

Jacob and Trevor in their costumes. Don't they look great?

One of the games my room moms planned for our party was a donut eating race.  The students LOVED watching and playing this.  Who wouldn't do anything for a donut? :)

Of course, I was an Owl for our Halloween party.  These are a few of the kindergarten teachers I get to work with every day.  They are wonderful and I am so glad I get to work with them!

Pretend Play

Last week the kindergarten staff in our district attended a 'Play' conference.  It may sound funny but we learned about the importance of play time for young children.

I have decided to incorporate Pretend Play time into our daily shedule.  It is very similar to the free-choice centers we had at the beginning of the year.  During this time, the students are given an opportunity to interact together using toys, craft supplies, Play-Doh and most importantly, their imaginations.

With Halloween just around the corner, my mom made orange and green Play-Doh for our classroom. A group of students chose to use it today during our Pretend Play time.  They decided to re-create the pumpkin patch from our field trip on Monday.  

Some of the girls made pumpkins and a sun while the boys made vines, gourds, corn and people.

After talking to the students about their scene, I asked if they could tell a story about it.  Keegan and his creative mind came up with this story. You'll have to press play and watch the story below.

As you can see these students know how to play! They are very artistic and creative. Nice work friends!

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

I was reminded once again how blessed I am to work and live in Michigan.  I love where I live and I love that I was able to experience the beautiful fall season outside today with my students.

A light breeze filled the air and the warm sun shined down on us as we went to Nyboer's Pumpkin Patch today.  Thank you again to all of the moms who volunteered and came with us.  I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to come join us.  The students loved having you with us, too!

Once we got off the bus, we took a wagon ride around the pumpkin patch.

The students were able to pick a small pumpkin.

They also had a chance to pick two gourds. We learned about two types of gourds: spoon gourds and bowl gourds.  Both of which the Native Americans used to eat with. 

Levi and his gourds.

A few students showing off their gourds.

After we learned about the different types of corn, gourds and pumpkins we boarded the bus and headed back to school. It was a great day!

Investigating and Making Connections

Hello Owl Room Friends!

The students had the opportunity to do some investigating this week! We looked at different earth materials (pebbles, soil and sand) using microscopes, a balance and their 5 senses. After a little bit of investigating, we discovered that pebbles weigh more than soil and sand. We then planted pumpkin seeds in 3 containers, each containing a different earth material.  Each day we observe our samples to see if the pumpkins grow better in one earth material over the others. So far nothing has happened...

I love this picture of Noah relaxing in the reading nest. Doesn't he look comfy?  Now that is what I consider curling up with a good book.

I read the story, Wemberly Worried aloud this week.

After we read the story we made connections about the things Wemberly worries about and the things we worry about.  The students had so many great things to share and their artwork was very impressive!

We've been trying to remember the months of the year, when our birthdays are and how to read and write our first and last names.  Take a peak at this video of the kids singing the months of the year. They sit down when we sing their birthday month.  They love doing this and they're getting pretty good at it, too!

Snack Time

Each morning we spend about 5-10 minutes eating a snack.  Each student has their own snack mat to eat on.  We started using a different snack mat that aligns with our new math and science units.  The kids had the Cheez-It snack mix today.  I noticed that each student sorted their snack a little bit differently.

 

A few students sorted by color, while others sorted by shape and size.

Take a peak at how Lucas sorted his snack in the video above. 

Zoo Phonics and Popcorn Words

We have been working hard learning our letter names and their sounds.  Every day we practice our letters and their sounds using the Zoo-Phonics program.  If you are a parent you have probably caught your child singing this song once or twice when they get home from school.  Gabe, Lily and Kierstin did a great job singing the song and doing the motions for the class on Friday.  You can see their awesome moves in the video below.

In addition to working on our letter names and sounds, we have been learning new site words, or popcorn words as we call them because they pop up when we read and write, each week.  

The students put 'the' in sentences that describe fall.  They then created a fall scene using paint and Q-tips.

This was the cleanest paint project I've ever done.
No cleaning of paint brushes = a huge time saver.

Today we reviewed what a good friend is and how we can be good friends to each other.  The ideas on the anchor chart are just a few of the ideas the kids came up with.  Later today after our discussion about this, I heard Elliot say, "Joseph, you are so good at puzzles. I like working with you." I love hearing things like this and seeing our learning put into action.  Keep it up owl friends!

It Feels Like Fall

We welcomed fall this week through a variety of different activities.  We went on a nature walk and collected leaves to look at under our microscopes in science, we ate pumpkin bread and we even painted fall trees using Q-tips and paint.  The students continue to build positive relationships with each other and their learning continues to amaze me.  Way to go owl friends!

I am so proud of all of you.

I read this story to the students and they thought it was so funny.  I remember loving these books when I was a kid, too.  

After we read the story, we practiced retelling what the old lady ate with these props.

One of our popcorn words this week was 'like'.  The students practiced writing and recognizing the word 'like' in variety of different ways.

Another one of our popcorn words this week was 'see'.  The students worked on building sentences using spaces between their words and using the site words we have been learning about. 

We started learning about pumpkins today.  Gabe pointed out to the class that both pumpkins and apples have seeds.  We then created a Venn diagram and had a discussion about how apples and pumpkins are both similar and different.  I love how Gabe started this discussion.

 After we learned about the life cycle of pumpkins and how they grow, we practiced organizing pumpkins on the Smart Board from smallest to largest. 

5th Grade Buddies

When I was in college, I had the opportunity to volunteer in Mr. VanKampen's 5th grade class at NG.  This year I am now teaching in the same building as Mr. VK and we thought it would be great for our students to meet and connect - his 5th graders and my kindergarteners.

Our first attempt at this was a success!  The 5th graders came into my classroom to read their favorite stories to my students.  My students loved this.  Each child had a "buddy" and my students were so impressed by the 5th grader's fluency and expression.  This was a great experience and so fun to watch.  Now my students look for their 5th grade buddies whenever we're walking in the hallway. 

Two buddies reading together.

Hello October!

Hello October and hello to everyone who checks this blog.
Here are a few of the things we have been up to this week:

We continue to work on learning how to write our letters.  This week we learned how to write the letters Hh, Kk, Ll, Uu and the number 4 using the Handwriting Without Tears program. 

We have been working on spelling our names and writing our names with a capital letter in the front and lowercase letters everywhere else. We even traded names with our friends and practiced learning the letters in their names.

I decided to open 2 new centers this week.  This is the rice table.  The students were SO excited for this - you would have thought it was Christmas in the Owl Room.

Another center we started this week is floor puzzles.  These are giant puzzles that lay on the floor.  The students were working so well together on putting their pieces together.

They're almost done!

Johnny Appleseed's Birthday

Last week Wednesday was Johnny Appleseed's birthday! The kindergarten team at our school decided to have an apple themed week.  We learned all about Johnny Appleseed, the parts of an apple, taste tested apples and much more.  My inspiration for many of these activities came from my teaching partner and of course, Pinterest.com! We had a great week and so many memories were made. Thank you to all the mom's who volunteered Thursday afternoon during our apple centers.  You made our Johnny Appleseed centers a  huge success!

We began our week by learning about the parts of an apple and the life cycle of an apple.

At our first apple center the students measured their apple with blocks, wrote the color, and made an apple  print of their apple using paint.

Creating a sentence using popcorn words.

These are hanging above our lockers. Aren't they awesome!?

At the second center, the students taste-tested green, yellow and red apples.  They had to pick their favorite and graph their groups results.

Tasting the apples and using their senses to notice differences and similarities between the apples.

At the third center, the students created a book about apples.  They had to count and color the correct amount of apples in each basket.

At the fourth center, the students made Johnny Appleseed hats. Johnny Appleseed wore a pot on his head so our hats looked like pots. They were so cute on the kids. I wish I would have taken more pictures.

 At the fifth center, students cut out apples of different sizes and sorted them into 3 categories (small,medium, large).  When they finished they were able to play a game where they rolled dice, counted the number of dots on the dice and colored the apple with that same number. They really liked this game!