This week we read many different gingerbread stories (Gingerbread Man, Boy, Baby, Bear, etc). The first story we read was the classic version Gingerbread Man. We retold the story using character cards and then did a cut and paste activity that showed the correct sequence of the story.
Then we brainstormed things that are scary to us and filled out a web thinking map answering things that we would run from. We then took our brainstorming, picked one thing that was the scariest and wrote about them.
The next day we looked at different ways to write the story of The Gingerbread Man. We made a list of different action verbs and then made gingerbread men with a mini verb booklet.
Last week was Thanksgiving and we did many activities related to the holiday. We read the story I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie and used pictures from Texas Kindergarten Teacher to retell the sequence of the story in our bellies.
For partner reading, students read the emergent reader book Thanksgiving and then completed the sentence at the end of the book writing something about Thanksgiving that they liked.
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
This week is Polar Express week! We started the week with reading the book Polar Express by Christ Van Allsburg. After we read the story we retold the story with sequence cards by putting the cards in the correct order. Then students completed a cut and paste activity to retell the sequence of their story. Polar Express retell came from Simply Kinder.
As we finished up our Thanksgiving activities last week, we read some more books about the first Thanksgiving and learned more about Native Americans and Pilgrims. For math we’ve been learning about 2D and 3D shapes, and how to make bigger shapes from smaller shapes. We made Native Americans designs from pattern block shapes.
During poetry time, we read the poem Five Little Turkeys using retelling cards and turkey pictures. Then students filled in missing words using number word sight word knowledge. The Five Little Turkeys book and cards came from Kindergarten Fever’s TpT.
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.
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.
