Last week we had two different themes in Kindergarten All-Stars. We celebrated color week and also learned about fire safety and how firefighters help keep us safe. We read the book “Stop, Drop, and Roll” and discussed different ways we could keep ourselves safe if there ever is a fire at our houses or at school. Then students wrote about what they learned.
During Social Studies we used one of the fire safety strategies, don’t touch hot things, and we sorted items based on if they were safe to touch or not safe to touch.
We also combined our unit on fire safety with color week and worked on matching numbers with the correct color words and coloring a firefighter page. This helped student learn how to read color words as well as number recognition.
For art students students created fire trucks with the words Stop, Drop, and Roll to display another fire safety tip on what to do if our clothes catch fire.
Last week we learned about holiday traditions at home and around the world. The first day we watched a video about what holidays are and how people around the world celebrate them differently.
Then we read informational texts about Diwali and Las Posadas and drew pictures of symbols that represented three different winter holidays. The activities for winter holidays can be found here.
Sorry about the very long delay. Things have been super busy.
As part of our Who We Are International Baccalaureate unit, we talked about the holidays and how many different cultures celebrate different holidays and with different traditions. We talked about Thanksgiving and how one of the ways to celebrate Thanksgiving is by sharing food and being thankful. We read the story Stone Soup as a class. Then as a whole school, each class brought in an ingredient and we had Stone Soup together as a whole school.
Just to catch everyone up on our Thanksgiving unit last week:
We used the Scholastic First Thanksgiving Virtual Field trip to learn about the Wompanoag Native American tribe that made friends with the Pilgrims and helped them survive the winter. We compared the Pilgrims Daily life to the Wompanoags Daily Life. The comparisons included food, houses, clothing, chores, and games.  We also created pilgrim hats and turned them into headbands that we wore out to the buses.
During math we’ve been learning about shapes and how to design patterns. We created a native american head and shirt. Then we used real pattern block to practice making our own design for the shirts. Then we used paper pattern blocks that we glued to decorate the Wompanoag’s shirt. Last we counted how many of each pattern block we used and wrote it on the recording sheet. You can find a FREE COPY of this activity here.
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.
We continued to learn about food groups and the importance of having a well balanced meal. We watched Sid the Science Kid’s video on food groups where the students sorted their lunch into different food groups.
After we watched the video we made our own lunch boxes and picked out a “balanced meal” that contain all five food groups. Students pick 3-4 items and put them into a cut out lunchbox.
On Friday we read The Very First Thanksgiving Day.  We wrote about the different vegetables, fruits, and meats we would put in our cornucopia and trace and cut our own foods.
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Last week we learned about the difference between needs and wants. Â We watched the lesson on Brain Pop Junior then we made Christmas stockings that displayed needs and wants from pictures on magazines.
We read the book Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland.  Then we brainstormed things that we were thankful for and wrote about it on a big turkey paper.  Then students partner read the emergent book A Funny Bird and students circled the sight words that they’ve learned, then colored the pictures.