As we continued the fall unit we read the story Autumn’s First Leaf by Steve Metzger and wrote about if we were Pointy what fall color would we want to be.
On Thursday we went outside to go on a fall scavenger hunt. Students founds things such as; different colored leaves, acorns, twigs, bark, and nuts.
To finish off our apple unit we learned how to make apple cider using a juicer. We started off reading the book Max and Mo Go Apple Picking where the class in the story made applesauce instead of apple cider. Then students took turns putting apples into a juicer.
Then we put the cider from the juicer into the crock-pot, added some ingredients, and let it cook. When the cider was done, students had the cider and wrote their opinion on if they liked apple cider or not. You can find the writing prompt in our apples mini-unit.
Also during literacy workshop time students worked on word work where they made sentences about apples.
For the past two weeks one of the reading skills the students have been learning is how to compare and contrast their lives to books. This week we reread and discussed the story Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes and talked about white was probably the color he liked the best since those were the shoes he had. Students decided which color is their favorite color and made their own Pete the Cats (wearing their favorite colored shoes) with construction paper. They also completed the sentence “I love my ________________ shoes.”
This last week our theme was Color Week. Our goal was to be able to read all the color words and celebrate a color a day. Each day we celebrated a color by bringing in something for show and tell that represented each color. Monday was red, Tuesday was orange, Wednesday was yellow, Thursday was green. We also played games that matched each color per day on www.starfall.com. Finally we completed poems by writing the color sight word in the blank lines. The poems can be found here.
Today we continued our unit on the Polar Express. We read the story Christmas Kitten and compared the gift that the boy got (the bell) as the first gift of Christmas in the Polar Express and the gift Sophie got (a kitten) in Christmas Kitten. Based on the story Christmas Kitten we guessed on what we thought Sophie would have picked as the first gift of Christmas. Then we wrote about what we would pick.
During read to self, students read the emergent reader Santa Has.. and filled in the blank line with the word ‘has’ and drew the picture of what the sentence said Santa had.
For math & art students completed a cut and paste puzzle that matched numbers with their number word. Students then colored the picture showing The Polar Express and the conductor.
With the second week of school the Kindergarten All-Stars, we have been busy with learning procedures, the schedule, and basic skills such as letter / number recognition. Yesterday we read a story adapted from a song called Wheels on the Bus and we discussed the problem and solution of the story. At the end of the day we made school buses and made a new part of the song using students beginning letter of their name.
We have also been learning about the sight word “I” so we read a story called The Way I feel by Janan Cain. Then students made self portraits of themselves, paired up and shared how they felt. We talked as a whole class how feelings are important no matter what they are.
We read the story Christmas Kitten and made a connection with the story by talking about what we want for Christmas. We made hand print cut outs and wrote what we want for Christmas on the hand print. We then took the hand print and made them into a Christmas tree. Finally we made a Santa Has sight word book.
Last week we finished up a fun unit full of Thanksgiving activities. 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. 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. Students made designs on Wampanoags using pattern block cutouts.
We read the poem the Halloween Surprise and looked for sight words using dry erase markers, and finding sight words on our own poems. Then we made Halloween cards inviting our parents to our Halloween party that we will be having next week.
The Kindergarten All-Stars are having fun with our fall theme. To support the skills we’ve been learning in class, we’ve been enjoying fall related literacy centers. We’ve been working on rhyming words, initial sounds, color words / sight words, and differentiating between letters and words.
We also read the story “The Falling Leaves” and enjoyed making leaf rubbings with completting a sentence starter with sight words we’ve neen working on so far in the past few weeks.
