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!

PUMPKINS!

We had a day FULL of pumpkins! I have a l-o-n-g post ahead of all the pumpkin activities we've been working on but it's Friday and this teacher is about to take her kids to enjoy PAT outside in the beautiful weather! I won't leave you empty handed though, here's a pic of two of my favorite things...


Kinders and Pumpkins!

 Y'all have a *GREAT* weekend!

Good bye, good bye, good bye to you!

Today was Ms. Heyde's last day in our classroom.  She will be moving on another grade at CWE but she has promised us visits throughout the rest of the semester. We have had such a great time with Ms. Heyde in our class! She taught us many new things and we really enjoyed her enthusiasm and the spirit she added to our class! She will be a GREAT teacher one day! 

Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye to you.

I wish to say, I wish to say,

Good-bye to you!

You will certainly be missed Ms. Heyde!

Pumpkin Math!

We have been working on numbers 1-5 in math.  Last week Mrs. Heyde had a non fiction pumpkin book she read to kick off our pumpkin activities. After reading a book about pumpkins, describing pumpkins, and writing in our treasure books about what we observed from the pumpkin, we BOWLED with pumpkins! Boy, was that fun!!

We set up a tower of paper towels (pins), put our big pumpkin on the ground and rolled to see how many pins we could knock over.  A few of us got gutter balls but we still had fun!



Looks like a strike!!

 And of course we had to cheer on our teammates!

I loved the idea of pumpkin bowling so much that we tied it into math later in the week. We discussed different ways to make the numbers 1-5. I first showed them examples....

Then we broke into groups and tried on our own...



We recorded out numbers (or ways to make each number) on white boards...



One pin standing, one pin laying...1 and 1 makes 2.



We've been doing lots of other fun things and reading great books about pumpkins over the last couple weeks (more on that later!) ...I am even growing pumpkins at home and taking pictures to share as they go through each life cycle! I was so thankful for the rain this past weekend and am praying we get at least one pumpkin I can bring in to the class!



Grow baby, GROW!!



**Please send a pumpkin to school by Friday! I don't care about size as long as it can fit into their backpacks!  Thank you!



Good Fit Books

As I mentioned to many of you during out conferences this week, a common goal we have set in class is to begin choosing "good fit" books.

We practice doing this in class. My hope is that soon each student will be in control of their learning by choosing books that are just right for them AND books that interest them. Who wants to read a book that's too hard about something you don't give a hoot about??

Here's an idea about what makes a book a "good fit":

Too easy: read it too fast, words are too easy, you don;t pay attention to what you're reading

Too hard: read it too slowly, can't understand words

Just right (GOOD FIT!): you can sound out unknown words, you aren't getting stuck on words, you read at a good pace, you understand what you read

I hope this is helpful when helping your child choose a good book to read. Also, as I've mentioned before, it is always a good idea to include higher level reading into your at home reading routine as well. Of course, you would read these stories to your child (I especially love classic novels and timeless authors). The larger vocabulary and story structure is great to expose your children to!

Above all, reading with your child should be fun, not frustrating. ENJOY this time you share with your child. Some of my most precious childhood memories with my dad are of him reading to me and my brothers! That poor man has numerous books memorized AND can name all the ducklings in order from the story "Make Way For Ducklings". Pretty impressive, I know!

HAVE A FANTASTIC WEEKEND!

Dropped the ball 100%

When I sent home those family share sheets I didn't even realize there was no return date!! Oops! I've gotten quite a few in already and if you can have them in by either Friday or early next week sometime that would be great! We're having a lot of fun sharing them with the class!

Here's a good example!

This week in math...

Yesterday we began discussion on numbers 1-5. Sounds simple, but we really dig deep so that we have a solid "number sense".  Really understanding each number inside and out lays a great foundation for a life of math.

I am from the 'calculator on my cell phone' generation...thank goodness because my math skills are seriously lacking! And yes, I am one of those that believes all we really needed to learn in math was the basics (how often have you had to pull out that ole pythagorean theorem after you had a test on it Sophmore year of high school? Yep, never...not me anyway!)

HOWEVER...I firmly believe all you really need to learn you learn in Kindergarten...and numbers just happens to be one of those things! We will continue adding skills involving our numbers throughout the year.  I love getting into adding, subtracting, and an intro into algeraic thinking later in the year!

I thought this week I'd let the picture do the talking...

And today, on picture day we had a set of TWINS!

HAVE A GREAT AFTERNOON!!