As we continued with color week, we read the book Mouse Paint. We remembered the science experiment from the previous day on how the colors changed when we mixed the colors. We used the primary colors to make new colors using tempera paint, just like the mice did in the story.
This week is color week and we are having lots of fun with different colors! We read the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr & Eric Carle. We retold the story by creating paper bag puppets of the brown bear with the other animal characters in the story. You can get the paper bag puppets from Mrs. Ricca’s Kindergarten.
During math workshop there were activities that help students our to read color words, number words, and help students with their number recognition. Most of these activities come from the Moffatt Girls October No Prep packet.
Finally for our science experiment; students learned the word hypothesis and how to make a guess on what might happen as a result of an experiment. We took drops of a couple of colors in whole milk. Then we dipped Q-Tips in dish soap and then dipped the Q-Tips in the milk with the food coloring. The dish soap pushed the colors away and turned the colors tie die. The lesson plan can be found here.
To finish of the week of our fall unit, we read the story Autumn’s First Leaf by Steve Metzger and discussed the problem and solution of the story. We then talked about if we were the character Pointy, what fall color we would have liked to have been.
Later that day, we went on a fall leaf hunt. Students tried to collect all five of the fall colors. We took the leaves back into the classroom and sorted them by color and made a graph of our favorite leaf color.
Today as we continue our fall science unit we read the book Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington. Pumpkin Pumpkin is a book that follows a boy that found some pumpkin seeds that planted them and watched the pumpkin grow. Students learned different pumpkin science vocabulary and the life cycle of a pumpkin. Finally students retold the sequence of the story by putting in order the life of a pumpkin seed in a A-Z Teacher Stuff craft.
On Monday we started our unit on fall. During our calendar time we sang the song Four Seasons in a Year by Harry Kindergarten and came up with movements to go along with the song. Students had fun trying to guess which season Harry Kindergarten was describing.
We then created a read life venn diagram to compare and contrast summer and fall. Students did a cut and paste activity sorting pictures into seasons that they best fit in.
We read the story Clifford’s First Autumn by Norman Bridwell and made a list of fall activities that Clifford and Emily Elizabeth participated in. Then students made a text to self connection by writing about what activity from the story that they like to do.
Today we went through a Brain Pop Jr. lesson on fall and did a autumn leaves finger stamping art project. Students pressed their fingers into ink pads and made autumn leaf trees and picked which fall color they liked the best.
This week we started our All About Me unit about where our All-Stars can learn how to be proud about their individuality and get to know their classmates. Yesterday we got our All About Me Bags where students can bring it items from home and share about themselves. You can get the All About Me Bags here.
Today we read the story I’m Special, I’m Me by Ann Meek and then we started on our I’m Special student books that asks questions about students favorite color, how many letters in their names, what they want to be when they grow up. You can find I am Special books here.
As we finished up our apples unit in our class we read stories about picking applies and making things from apples. Some stories were fiction like The Biggest Apple Ever by Steven Kroll, and some stories are nonfiction like A Day at the Apple Orchard by Megan Faulkner. We also watched a video and sang a song about the life cycle of an apple. Students then made their own life cycle of an apple. You can find the Life Cycle of an Apple FREEBIE on teachers pay teachers here.
Students also got to help make hot apple cider by taking apple slices and putting them into a juicer, and they watched the juice come out the other side. I finished making the cider by adding cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice and letting it heat up in a crock pot.
Finally for writing, students wrote about if they liked apple cider by completing the sentence and drawing a picture about apples / apple orchards.
This week we started our apples unit and began the unit by reading the story Ten Apples up on Top by Theo. LeSeig. Then students picked a number and made a cut and paste art project that illustrated how many apples they can count up on top of their head.
We finished up our back to school unit last week with a lesson on cause and effect. We read the story If You Take a Mouse to School and labeled a cause and effect thinking map of the story. Then we did a cut and paste activity from Christine’s Stratzel’s TpT that illustrates the book as well.
The kindergarten all-star class got their first introduction to leveled readers using the Reading A-Z’s projectable books. We read the story The Classroom and learn the sight word ‘the’. Students learned how to use a picture to figure out unknown words. We used the smart board and read the book on the projectable version. We made a web thinking map outlining the main idea and details of the story. Students then sorted pictures of different items into three groups; school items, transportation, and clothes.
