Yesterday as we continue to learn about apples and how they are an important to our community and our state, we read a story called The Biggest Apple Ever. We learned how to identify a problem and solution in a story and created a co-constructed chart that identified the problem and solution of the story.
Today we read a number book called Ten Red Apples where in the story each farm animal ate one apple from the apple tree until there were zero apples left. Then students worked on completing an emergent reader that counted apples one at a time from one to ten by writing the sight word that we’ve been learning so far this week, see. Students learned the repetitive text to help them learn how to read one word at a time.
For science we continued our discussion on living things and we talked about how apple trees are living things and apples are part of the apple tree that contain the seeds. We also learned about the different parts of an apple and we created and labeled a diagram of an apple.
All these apple activities come from my apples mini-unit found here.
As we continue with our IB unit on Who We Are we are learning about what we harvest during the fall time. Today we read about children taking a trip to an apple orchard. In the book we learned about how apples grow. For our learning target this week we are learning how to retell stories or parts of stories in the correct sequence. We then created a life cycle of the apple. We also learned the song Way Up High in the Apple Tree where students practiced subtraction with every apple we ate in the song.
This week students learned how the weather and seasons determine our activities and how we live. Students learned that during the fall time we harvest food such as apples for winter. For reading, we read a nonfiction book called A Day at the Apple Orchard and created the life cycle of an apple.
During math students talked about matching quantity with numbers and number words. They read the emergent reader book Apples in the Basket and worked on being illustrators for the book. They drew and colored the matching number of apples to the correct page.
Students also learned the song Way Up High in the Apple Tree that introduce students simple subtraction story problems by counting down each time the boy eats an apple. Ask your children to sing this song to you!
In Kindergarten we’ve been learning about how to subtract. Â We started off with playing a subtraction game on http://www.starfall.com where students practiced learning how to take away a quantity and solve the equation.
We then read the story “Will You Be My Valentine?” and then created subtraction story problems about getting valentine candy.
 
Today we read the story “Bear Stays up For Christmas” which is a book that is from the same Author’s and the same characters as one of our favorite books “Bear Snores On”.  Both books also has the same kind of format with its repetitive text and rhyming.
As we read  “Bear Stays up for Christmas” we used our prior knowledge of “Bear Snores On” to predict what would happen next in the story.  Together then we made a whole class venn diagram about how both stories were the same and different.
 
For math we continued on with our topic of composing and decomposing the number 10. Â Kindergarteners wrote addition story problems about baking Christmas cookies, and the 1st graders wrote subtraction problems about baking and eating Christmas cookies.
 
We read the story The Great Turkey Race and discussed problem and solution in the story.  For math we learned how to connect math with story problems and then wrote our own math story problems.  The Kindergarteners learned how to write addition math problems while the 1st graders reviewed subtraction.
What a busy and fun few days we had for Valentine’s this year! Â We started off by making subtraction stories about chocolate candies.
Then for our Valentine’s Day party we decorated envelopes for our friends to put Valentines in, passed out Valentines cards, had snacks, and made Valentines with our friends and wrote why they were our friends.
We have been learning quite a bit in math this past month! Â In Kindergarten we’ve been learning how to measure using standard / non-standard units. Â First grade we have been working on Geometry learning about symmetry, congruence, and making bigger shapes using smaller shapes.
 
As a spiral review our K-1 All-Stars have also been completing centers reviewing their addition and subtraction facts. Â Kindergarteners were allowed to use counting bears to help them with the concepts.
We read the story The Great Turkey Race and created our own subtraction story problems to connect it to the story we just read. Students cut out how many turkeys started out on the farm. They crossed how many turkeys ran away and wrote how many turkeys were left.
Sometimes a black sharpie and a copier can be your best friend as a teacher. We have been learning commutative property of addition and fact families of addition and subtraction. So I made the following worksheet along with number cards (three cards for each number sentence) that students could cut out and glue onto the correct spots. It turned out well I think!
The Kindergarten All-Stars 