This week we’ve been learning about and focusing on spiders. For science & math; we watched videos and read non-fiction books about spiders.
Then students completed a survey on whether they thought spiders were scary or neat, then we graphed the results and drew our own spiders. We also learned the song “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and made our own hand painted spiders to go along with the song.
We read the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and retold the story using an old lady puppet and animals to put into the old lady’s mouth. Finally, students illustrated the main character and the other characters to make a character map.
During writing we’ve been learning the basics of writing a letter. First we read the story Franklin’s Halloween. Then as a class we worked together to write a simple letter to our parents inviting them to our Halloween party. Then we used that letter to create a Halloween card.
We learned about graphs last week and how to analyze data. We wrote about what we wanted to be for Halloween and drew a picture on a pumpkin cut out. Then students took their pumpkin and put their pumpkin into one of three categories; fun, scary, or superhero. Then students fill out their own individual graphs and describe which category is greatest, and which group is fewer.
We read the story The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams and to help us tell the story we used musical instruments. For the shoes we used a woodblock, tambourine for the pants, maracas for the shirt, castanets for the gloves, and rhythm sticks for the hat. During free choice centers students got to retell the story on their own using the instruments.
During math students did a roll and draw to draw a scarecrow like the scarecrow in the story and learned the shapes that they drew. They added details to the picture after they drew the scarecrow.
Students also made paper plate jack-o-lanterns like the scarecrow face during art time and part of free choice center time.
Last week we finished up our units on fire safety and community helpers. We made flip books to illustrate what kind of community helpers we can be and then we wrote what we want to be when we grow up. Students practiced adding details to their pictures by using community helpers cut out as a basis for our pictures.
This week we’ve been talking about helpers in our community and the tools they use to do their job. We watched the Community Helpers video on Brain Pop Jr. Then we picked different community helpers and sorted their tools.
We also read the story Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann and students retold the story during free choice centers with paper bag puppets that we made.
We finished up with fire safety week with a variety of different activities. We learned about the different tools and items that fire fighters use by reading the book Firehouse Dog and then they learned about how to use labels by labeling different fire fighter items. We also made and read fire a safety words book.
For writing we discussed the things we’ve learned about fire safety and made a list. With the list we then wrote about about one thing we could do to stay safe in case of a fire.
The month of October is fire safety month so we have been learning what to do if there is ever a fire, as well things that we shouldn’t play with. We started on Monday with fire safety related literacy & math centers from Having Fun in Primary. There were also a few centers from Home School Creations.
We discussed how there are things that are not safe for kids to touch or play with, we then sorted pictures into two categories ‘safe to touch‘ and ‘not safe to touch‘. During free choice centers students got to sort the pictures on their own, working with a partner.
Finally today we read the story Stop Drop and Roll by Margery Cuyler and made a firetruck craft courtesy of Miss-Kindergarten.
Last week on Friday we finished up our color week unit. Each day of the color week we focused on a specific color, and each day we added a page to a color book that we created. On each page students colored pictures of items that could be that specific color, we finished up the book on Friday. To find other things that can be other specific colors; we cut out pictures from magazines and glued them onto a piece of construction paper.
Throughout the week during shared reading we also read color themed related books such as; Bear Sees Colors, White Rabbits’ Color Books, Seven Blind Mice, Pete the Cat, ect. When students had free time they explored the books on their own.
The Kindergarten All-Stars 