Apologies for the long time between posting. Things have been busy at home and at school. As we start our first International Baccalaureate unit we are learning about fall-time traditions such as Halloween traditions. We read an informative text called Celebrate Halloween. We discussed how one Halloween tradition was to dress up in costumes. Students wrote stories about their favorite costumes. The sample writing below says “I like the unicorn”.
For math we created a class bar graph to show what kind of costume is our favorite costume. Students put a sticky note above the category of the costume that they will wear during Halloween, or their favorite costume. We discussed the category with the greatest number of students and the category with the least amount of students.
For art we did two projects; Frankenstein paper plates and Frankenstein puzzles.
Sorry that this post is happening so late, things have been super busy in the Kindergarten All-Stars universe.
Last week Wednesday was Halloween and what a busy time it was! We started out the morning by reading The Vanishing Pumpkin. We cut, glued, and colored the problem and solution of the story. The problem of the story was that “The Old Man and Woman’s pumpkin that they had been saving for pumpkin pie, disappeared.” The solution to the story was that “The wizard had taken the pumpkin to carve a jack-o-lantern and he also made them pumpkin pie.”
Then we got dressed up in our costumes and carved pumpkins. We got to feel the squishy pumpkin insides and count seeds!
Afterwards we did Halloween stations where each student got to choose from 3 different activities; paper bag puppets, hanging ghosts, and Halloween paper plate masks.
At the very end of the day all classes Pre-K-2nd grade participated in the annual Halloween costume parade. Students had a great time walking in the parade and watching the other classes as they went along.
Today we read the book Curious George Goes to Costume Party by Margaret & H.A. Rey. Students then wrote about what they wanted to be for Halloween. As a class we graphed our choices into three categories and then compared which group was the greatest and which group was the least.
Today we read the story The Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything and used musical instruments to retell the parts of the scarecrow that follow the lady.
For writing students wrote stories about a spooky night. Some students chose to write fiction stories, and some students chose to write about things that really happened.
For art students used a dice and matched numbers to shapes that they have to draw. They draw each shape as a part of a body of the scarecrow. As students complete this activity they start to notice how they are drawing the scarecrow in an unusual way.
Finally students were given the instruments and the book to use at our dramatic play center for free choice centers to retell the story on their own.
The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything Visuals
We began our Halloween theme today. We started by playing a candy corn ten frame smart board game from the website http://www.abcteach.com. The game starts where students are presented with a number of candy corn in a ten frame, they answer how many candy corn they see, and click on the trick or treat bag to find the answer. The final part of the game students are present with a number and they add the correct number of candy corn to the ten frame.
Then students were given a Candy Corn Ten-Frame book. They colored the candy corn in the book and matched the correct ten-frame to the the page that they are working on.
Ten-Frame Candy Corn Book Cover
Yesterday completed another Halloween season with Kindergarten All-Stars. We had a busy day starting with the morning class rotations. Each class rotated through each teacher to participate in games, activities, and crafts. In my classroom we played Halloween games. We played one game called zombie 4 corners. In zombie 4 corners one student covers his/her eyes while other students walk around the room like zombies until Halloween music stops. Once the Halloween music stops the class runs to a corner in the room and those students that hid in that corner have to sit down. This continues until there is only one student is left.
Our second game was a candy corn relay race. Students carried as much candy corn as they could in a spoon and placed it into a bowl. They took turns doing this until time ran out. The team with the most candy corn in their bowl won.
Then in the afternoon we carved pumpkins, counted the seeds, and felt the insides. Students got to use their sense of touch to describe what the inside of the pumpkin felt like.
After our pumpkin carving we enjoyed treats & snacks and participated in Halloween crafts. The crafts included coloring pages, hanging ghosts, paper bag puppets, and paper plate masks.
Finally at the end of the day our whole school grades PreK-2 participated in a Halloween costume parade! It was great to see all of the smiling faces and fun costumes!
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 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.
