Vocabulary Parade

Yep...I only took about 3 pictures...fail. But I assure you, my kinder babies were oh so cute! Here's some proof...



Most teachers would pass on all the seemingly uneducational junk from Michael's and Hob Lob that fills my closets oh, but not this teacher...for once spending lots of money
for nothing has paid off! We were able to find a plethora of "costumes" perfect for our vocabulary parade...




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Skeletons!

Usually I email myself the pictures I take in class and then put them in publisher to flip them the right way, then well, I won't bore you but it's a timely process so I'm going to attempt a post from my phone...

We read this super cute book...


The kids loved it but by the time we were done I was feeling quite light headed. The skeleton hiccups no less than a billion times in this story...have you tried hiccuping just for fun? It take all the breath out of you! Ha

Anyway....Next I pulled out Mr. Bones. We discussed how our body moves and bends and how our bones are our skeleton. We took turns moving Mr. Bones and copying his movement...








I let them create a movement for me to do which just happened to be some crazy herky (a type of jump that I haven't done since my cheerleader days) let me tell you it wasn't pretty....mid jump Ms. Tarantino walked in and caught me falling straight on my rear! There's a reason I'm a teacher and not a Texan's cheerleader! We all got a good laugh and moved on to this fun little project...

I can't take credit for his cuteness...I stole this idea from google image. My mom is an art teacher (and a really really amazing one at that) she had tried doing this project with her 2nd graders and said it was a mess! So going into it I wasn't sure how it would go but wouldn't you know....they did amazingly!!







They made skeletons using q-tips...So cute right?! I know! Thank goodness for google!

I was beyond impressed with some of their creativity...
Jumping....


Oops...upside down but this one is running...


Splits...








If you going out to night for a little trick or treating...enjoy!! I'll be catching up on my shows blogging!

Happy pumpkin! As my grandma used to say!

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This week in math stations...

Here's what we did in math stations this week...

One group made numbers with pattern blocks.



One group measured bats with unifix cubes and paper clips. they then wrote a recorded the numbers.

 

This group dropped a ghost to see if landed on the black side or the orange side. Then tallied and graphed it. When they finished they played a memory type game with jack-o-latern cards.



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Here are those pumpkins again!! I forgot to snap a picture but they ordered them from biggest to smallest and then sorted them in different ways.  When they finished they played various pumpkin matching games.

This afternoon is our pumpkin carving party!! We are super excited! I also have some other October activities to share...maybe I'll get to those this weekend? Put don't hold your breath!

Have a good one!

Take a guess!

The Itsy Bitsy spider...


Went up the waterspout...


Down came the rain and washed the spider out...


Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, an the Itsy Bitsy spider went up the spout again!

Can you tell what we've been working on???

We read this book:


Worked with this poem:


Added the poem to our poetry journal:


Retold the story using pictures:


Then got to the fun part, acting it out!!


This was quick and easy so everyone got lots of turns being different parts! We have some great actors and some excellent audience members in here!


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COMING UP IN K-6

After that last post I realized last week was super uneventful (to me anyway)...eek.  Yet another reason why I love this blog...keeps me accountable for making things super fun.  Anyway, seems like I really need to amp up our learning!

Here's some of the things we will be working on in the coming weeks...

• numbers through 10
• the concept of greater and fewer
• writing personal narratives
• reading (always!)
• community helpers (visits from community helpers! yay!)
• plants (Shouldn't this be in the spring?? I think so but FB apperently does not. So fall it is.) Super excited for Landin Lawn and Landscapes to come help us plant flowers and show us all their equipment - lawnmen are community helpers too right?!  (I'm going to go ahead and shamelessly plug by brother Jonathan's lawn business now: Need a lawn service or landscaping before the holidays coming up? Call him! He's great!)     

And here are some things I throw in the mix (because they're fun and I like to have fun just as much as a 5 year old does!)

• Scarecrows
• Thanksgiving (love this!)
• Thankfulness
• Pilgrims and Native Americans
• Turkeys

I LOVE this time of the year for many reasons, the weather, the family and friends, the activities involved, and it dosen't hurt that it's just one month closer to winter break and Christmas.  Can I say Christmas on here?? (That just happens to be the holiday I celebrate but I realize that many different holidays are celebrated in the homes of my K-6 kiddos and I am very mindful to include all of them) Which reminds me....what holidays do you celebrate at home?

My mind is going crazy with all the possibilities! I promise you some "share worthy" posts ahead certian not to bore. Stay tuned!

B-A-T-S and birds

I wanted to get this post out last week but big shocker....I'm behind. I'm so sorry.

So here it is...last week we learned a little about bats and birds.

We started out making a chart of things we know and things we wanted to learn about bats.

We learned a catchy little song that you'll have to ask them to sing for you.  It goes like this:

B-b-b-bats, the only mammals that can take to flight.

B-b-b-bats, nocturnal creatures that come out at night.

It's time to end all your fears and get to know your new friend the bat! 

We read "Stellaluna" (one of my favorite books) and used pictures to retell the sweet story.

We read "Owl Babies" and retold it using words.

Then we made our own owl babies (SO cute!) and then wrote the beginning middle and end of the story on our own.

We also compared bats and birds...



Seems like my creativity was lacking some last week...guess bats and birds don't inspire me quite like pumpkins do!

This week we'll be learning a little about spiders and doing some silly Halloween-esque activties.  We are also excited about our "Pumpkin Party" on Friday!

We welcome this weather!

You can guess where I tried to spend most of our day yesterday....OUTSIDE in the beautiful weather.

We went outside for snack (which we rarely have time to do...but I couldn't miss out on this opportunity!)

And then stayed outside for a little math...I would call out a number and tell them something to do with it...("write a number 5" "show me one way to make 4" "make 3 tallys" "draw one picture" etc.)



Let's hope this weather sticks! At least until it's time for the next season change!

I hope (and encourage!!) you and your kiddos to put away the iPads and video games and ENJOY the B-E-A-utiful weather given to us right now! 

PS - I also added all our things to the wall...finally! I gotta be honest, this doesn't always happen...

Any volunteers to help take it all down in the next couple weeks?!??

Speaking of volunteers....shoot me an email if you'd like to read to our class. In the past I've always had readers on Fridays at the same time each week.  This year our schedule is a little different so send me an email with a time and date you'd like to come in and read and I'm sure we can make it happen! 

Also, next Friday around 1:00 we will be cutting open pumpkins, exploring the inside (counting seeds, discussing all the parts, etc.) and the carving them.  If you'd like to volunteer email me! You'll need to bring a bowl for the insides, a knife, and a jack-o-lantern pumpkin. Let me know!!

Thanks y'all!

Pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins!

We did a lot of activities with my very favorite fall staple....the PUMPKIN!  I have a ton of pictures to share so I though it'd be easiest for me to make one mubo-jumbo post of pictures...in a very random order. (I know and I'm sorry, things out of order drive me nuts too!  I love this blogging thing but a single post can easily eat up an hour of my day if I let it....so today I give you randomness, a sampling of some of the things we did in an all out of whack order!) Enjoy!



We described pumpkins with Mrs. Heyde.



We read a LOT of books about pumpkins...fiction and non fiction.



We measuredd around our pumpkin with a string and counted how many uni-fix cubes long the string was.

We rebuilt one of the songs we've been singing and added it to our Poetry Journal.

We observed our pumpkins and filled out all kinds of data.

We used our pumpkins to create numbers like you see on dominos or dice.  We've learned it much easier to count numbers if they're in a uniform order.

We retold the story of "Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins" (a math book about doubles).

We read a book about the life cycle of a pumpkin and then created the life cycle together.

We all brought in pumpkins.  One of the pumpkins had the flower petals still shriveled up on its underside....it was really neat to see that!

We wrote a book about pumpkins.

We graphed what type of pumpkins were brought to school. Most people brought in a pie pumpkin!

We read another book about the pumpkin life cycle and wrote about it.

We did this cool art project using crayons to blend colors to make the pumpkin look real. Then we painted water color over the whole thing.  the crayon wax repelled the water color. Neat!

Is there more?? I'm sure! But I was getting confused about what picture I had and hadn't posted. I think you get the idea though....we were busy!