Today was our second half day of school where we focused on kindness and learning how to get along together in the Kindergarten All-Stars classroom. We started by reading The Recess Queen and we talked about how Mean Jean wasn’t showing kindness, and Katie Sue showed kindness by asking Jean to play even though Jean was being a bully. Then we made a simple thinking map illustrating ideas on what we think kindness means. Finally we took what we learned about kindness and did our first time at free choice centers. Students practiced sharing, taking turns, and positively resolving conflict.
We also learned each others names by sitting in a circle and singing the song “Who Stole the Cookies From the Cookie Jar” while students passed around behind their back a toy cookie. We tried to guess who had the cookie by saying each classmates name by singing the song. Then we created self portraits while I showed students how to add more details in our self portraits. For example I encouraged students to draw hair, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
We read the book “Don’t Need Friends” as we continue with our friends and feelings theme. We learned about the academic vocabulary problem and solution. A couple of students came up and helped match pictures to the problem and solution and described each. Afterwards students colored their own problem and solution.
During free choice centers students were paired up with someone in the class and they learned their new friends favorite colored, and did hand print paintings.
To celebrate the letter B, we read the story Two Greedy Bears and talked about the importance of sharing. While reading students got to practice sharing and passed along the two greedy bears. Then we learned how to create a web thinking map that brainstormed things we can share.
We took our ideas and created a “share bear” and wrote our ideas using the sight words we’ve been learning. Students also drew pictures of what they could share in the bear.
We started our new unit on friends and feelings and to start us off we created a circle map on friends. Students were given the opportunity to illustrate our ideas as we came up with them.
Then we read the story The Little Red Hen and discussed on how the characters were not good friends. We used Popsicle stick puppets to retell the story as a whole group and students created their own Popsicle stick puppets. Then during free choice centers they got to retell the centers with their friends.
The next day we used sequence cards to put the story back in the correct order. Then students worked on cutting and pasting their sequence cards onto construction paper.
Little Red Hen sequence cards and character printouts found here.
As we finish up this week are moving onto transitioning from back to school to feelings and friendship. Yesterday we read The Recess Queen and created a character web to describe the two main characters in the story, Katie Sue and Mean Jean.
Then we used the character web to illustrate one of the characters. We also talked about how Katie Sue showed kindness to Mean Jean even though Jean was being a bully. In some of the illustrations you can see Katie Sue with a jump rope and Jean bullying other kids and looking angry!
Today we read the story Valentine Friends in celebration of our upcoming Valentine’s Day party. After we read the story we created a heart shaped web illustrating the main idea and details from the story.
In the story the characters learned how to make construction paper hearts, so we used the directions in the story to make construction paper hearts. On the hearts we wrote about one key detail we learned from the story.
With our new unit on Friends and Family we had a class discussion on things good friends do, the class helped me fill out a bubble map on friends.
Then we red a story about a character that had three friends. The story is called The Little Red Hen the version that is by Teacher Created Materials. The character dialogue is easily memorized by the students and they enjoy hearing be read aloud with teacher ‘acting out’ the goose, the cat, and the pig.
After we read the story we recalled the things we illustrated in our bubble map on friends and I asked the students if the goose, the cat, and the pig were good friends. I referred the students were we talked about how good friends help each other. To retell the story printed out character cards and action cards and students had fun acting out the dialogue and remember the sequence of making the bread.
For writing in one of our centers students completed a sentence by practicing writing the sight word ‘my’ and writing a friends name. Then they illustrated a picture of them with their friend.
As we start a new theme this week People All Around, People Up and Down; we learn a new comprehension skill known as sequencing. We read the story called My Best Friend by Pat Hutchins. We talked about how friends can be different and good at different things.
Then as a class we discussed important parts of the story and how to put parts of the story in order. Students were given three pictures from the story, put them in order, and colored them.
