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.
This week we began our IB Unit “Who We Are”. This unit looks into how our environment can influence our roles and responsibilities. We started this unit talking about how families are different. We read the story What Makes a Family and created a thinking map identifying the main idea and details of the story.
In the story we learned that families can be all different sizes and with different types of family members. We created an apple tree that illustrated the number of family members that live with us.
We also read another book called When I am Old With You about a boy talking about all the things he likes to do with his grandpa and wants to do with his grandpa as he continues to get older. We talked about how not all families like to do the same thing as other families. Students then drew pictures in their journals what they like to do with their family.
On the last day of our gingerbread unit we read one more gingerbread story and retold the story by putting pictures back in the correct sequence.
We also made gingerbread dough and students helped cut out their own gingerbread people. After they were done baking the students came back from specials surprised to find that their people had run away! After they caught all their gingerbread people, they got to decorate and eat their creation!
As we continued to learn about caribou we also read other fiction stories including Olive The Other Reindeer.  We filled out a bubble map that illustrated four ideas of our favorite parts of the story. Then students chose one part of the story that they liked the best and wrote about it. You can get the writing activity here.
 
 
One student wrote “she was riding on his sleigh”, and another student wrote “My favorite part of the story was when she got on the bus.”
At the end of our unit students partner read a Rudolph emergent reader that talked about things that Rudolph saw. Students colored the pictures based on the color words that were in the books. They also made reindeer headbands. Headbands can be found here and emergent reader books can be found here.
 
 Our Title 1 team put on a pajama party and invited parents to come and read to our class.  This also helped launch our class into our day & night science unit.  We started out by enjoying cereal for snack and then for drop everything and read, students got to snuggle with their pillows and stuffed animals.
Finally our class built blanket forts, listened to a bedtime story on the SMART board and had our parents read to us at the forts.
Then starting this week we learned about what causes day & night. Â We read a non-fiction book about what makes day and night and watched a video on youtube about how the earth rotates and revolves around the sun.
As a class, we created a venn diagram that show things you can see in the sky during the day and during the night. Â Then the class filled out their own venn diagram in a cut and paste activity. Â At the science center students got to explore the concepts of day and night using a globe.
 
We did not have school in Martin Luther King Jr day, so we spent the rest of the week celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.  We started by watching a Reading Rainbow reading of a picture book about Martin Luther King Jr.  Then we created an anchor chart and wrote about what our dream is.  (“My dream is that everybody would get along.”  “My dream is that people all would be nice.”  “My dream is my brother would be nice to me”)
 
Finally we watched a Martin Luther King Jr. video on Brain Pop Jr, and played a sequencing game where we put parts of MLK’s life back into the correct order.
Last week we finished up a fun unit full of Thanksgiving activities. Â For our word work we created a flip book with repetitive sight words and things that you do on Thanksgiving.
We also read Thanksgiving books on things that we like. Â Then students used their knowledge of sight words to write sentences using the word ‘we’.
For math we read the story “The Great Turkey Race” discussed the problem and solution of the story.  Then we created our own math story problems using addition and pictures of turkeys for the visual.
Finally we learned about the life of Pilgrims and Wampanoags on Scholastic.com’s First Thanksgiving website. Â Students made designs on Wampanoags using pattern block cutouts.
To finish off our families unit we created a class graph that illustrated who had siblings in their family and who did not. Â We found that the majority of the class had both brothers and sisters. Â Only one student had no brothers or sisters. Â Finally the class copied the graph and we discussed which group had the most and which group had the least.
Finally we read a book called “Families” as a class and then students partnered up, took turns reading the book to each other, and colored the pictures of the book.
Lots of things are happening in Mr. Bowen’s All-Star class during our families unit.  First we read the story “I Love it When You Smile” and made connections with the story.  Students talked about times when their family members such as their mom or dad helped try to make them feel better.  Then students illustrated their connections to the story.
 
Since the beginning of the school we have been collecting pictures of our family. Â This week students got to share their pictures with the class. Â We have also been learning how to ask questions in our class, so the class got to ask questions of the person sharing.
For a math center students rolled a dice with family members on it, and students colored in the corresponding person on their graph. Â Students used the graphs they created and compared them to their own families.
For art students made hand painting family trees, putting apples on the trees for each family member that lives in their house. Â Members of our class also made construction paper puppets of their moms or dads.
First we read the story “There Was And Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey”, talked about the different thanksgiving food she ate and what food group they belonged to.  Then we created models of ourselves, with pictures of the things the old lady swallowed glued to our “stomachs”, in the correct sequence order.
 
The Kindergarten All-Stars 