On Monday we started our unit on fall. During our calendar time we sang the song Four Seasons in a Year by Harry Kindergarten and came up with movements to go along with the song. Students had fun trying to guess which season Harry Kindergarten was describing.
We then created a read life venn diagram to compare and contrast summer and fall. Students did a cut and paste activity sorting pictures into seasons that they best fit in.
We read the story Clifford’s First Autumn by Norman Bridwell and made a list of fall activities that Clifford and Emily Elizabeth participated in. Then students made a text to self connection by writing about what activity from the story that they like to do.
Today we went through a Brain Pop Jr. lesson on fall and did a autumn leaves finger stamping art project. Students pressed their fingers into ink pads and made autumn leaf trees and picked which fall color they liked the best.
This week we finish up our unit on weather and seasons. We also continued our study on tall tales and we read a story called Snow Globe Family. One of our reading skills we have been learning is how to visualize parts of the story or make mind movies. So I read part of the story to them without showing them the pictures first. Then we came up with the things we visualized in a class list.
We then created our own snow globes and wrote about what we would do if we lived in a snow globe. We hung up our drawings and writing in the classroom.
Today as we continue our unit on Season & The Weather; we learned a new book genre called a tall tale. During our teacher read aloud portion of the day, we read the story called “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”. It is a story that is written as a tall tale told by a grandpa with a big imagination.
At our writing station during centers today, students wrote their own tall tales about the weather and told which season they would happen in.
In our reading program we’ve been learning about the weather and seasons. As we work towards becoming independent readers we’ve begun to read decodable books that focus on the skills we’ve been learning during our phonics time.
Our book this week focused on different types of weather found in spring called “What Is It?”. Our students first spent time practicing the book during the “read to others” portion of the day, and then got the option to practice independently reading the story.
We then discussed the story and the main character, Lin. Students discussed what type of weather Lin liked, and what weather Lin didn’t like. They used their inferencing skills to use the pictures to help them come to their conclusions. Then students illustrated their findings showing which weather Lin liked and did not like.
Continuing on with our Winter / The Four Seasons theme, we learned a new song / poem called The First Snow. We learned new winter vocabulary and practiced memorizing the words as we sang along to the song on CD.
Afterwards we cutout a picture of the boy from the song and helped him get dressed to go play outside. We colored and cutout the different winter clothes and discussed the correct sequence the boy would need to put them on.
Finally we wrote directions for others on how to get dressed for winter, and during centers students could create Venn Diagram to compare and contrast winter to summer!
We read Jan Brett’s The Mitten and discussed the characters of the story. We also retold the story by remembering the correct sequence and we retold the story using a blanket and masks. After the retell, students wrote about their favorite character.
As we get closer to the first day of winter, we’ve been locating when the first day of winter is on the calendar. We’ve also been discussing the changes in weather we’ve been noticing as winter approaches. Today we read “Clifford’s First Snow Day” and started a Venn Diagram displaying the differences between Fall and Winter. We will complete the middle part tomorrow.
Afterwards we cut out a picture of a boy and helped him put on his winter gear. We discussed as a class which items should the boy put on first. The student’s learned that they couldn’t put on the boys boots first because his boots would get in the way of the snowsuit.
After students finished dressing their person, then they wrote directions for how to get dressed to go outside in the winter. Student’s learned ordering words such as first, next, then, and last.
To celebrate our first snow in Shaktoolik we read the book called Snowballs and learned about different types of snow people you can make. We then got together as a class an and discussed what are the steps to making a snowman. Kindergarten and 1st grade wrote their own directions as 1st grade continues to learn about Expository Writing. Student’s also got to paint their snowman after they were done writing their directions.
