What Are You Thankful For?

It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving has already come and gone! I hope you all had a wonderful and restful break with your kindergartners. Before we headed off for vacation, we spent time learning about Thanksgiving and why we celebrate it. We learned about the Pilgrims' hard voyage on the Mayflower and their settlement in the new land. We learned about the Native Americans who helped them survive and learn about their new home, and the feast they held that first Thanksgiving to celebrate all that they had. We had so much fun creating our colorful turkeys and writing about what we are thankful for. Enjoy these pictures of our project!

Charlie: I am thankful for my family. My mom, my dad.

Danica: I am thankful for playing with Lindsay's bunnies.

Sage: I am thankful when my brother is nice.

Alex: I am thankful for playing soccer with Blake.

Blake: I am thankful for my whole family.

Pat: I am thankful for my friends and family.

Ben: I am thankful for family.

Alaina: I am thankful that on my birthday I will have a new cousin.

Evie: I am thankful for my cat.

Mia: I am thankful for my new baby cousin.

Kaleb: I am thankful for swimming in the pool.

Anna: I am thankful for family and friends.

Jora: I am thankful for my giant panda.

Rosie: I am thankful for spaghetti.

Kate: I am thankful for my birthday.

Sophie: I am thankful for my family.

Vivian: I am thankful for Jora coming to my house.

Autumn: I am thankful for seeing Pa and Gram.

And I am thankful for each and every one of these wonderful kiddos, who fill my days with laughter, learning, and fun! Thank you for sharing them with me!

Pattern Block Designs

During math, one of our favorite work stations lately has been "Pattern Block Designs." Children have to choose a pattern block design card and build the design with pattern block shapes. They then must copy their building onto construction paper with paper pattern blocks (which I am sure many of you remember cutting out for me-thank you!!!) The core math idea at this station is how do we know if our representation is accurate? I am looking for children to make sure they are using the correct shapes and the correct number of shapes to accurately replicate their three-dimensional design. We also get lots of practice with naming the pattern block shapes. Ask your child which shape is the hexagon, the trapezoid, or the rhombus. I bet they can tell you! Please enjoy this slide show of the children's beautiful pattern block designs.

Our Butterfly Quilt

In our ongoing attempt to learn and explore with patterns and shapes, we created another beautiful quilt! Each child made two quilt squares, a butterfly square and a patchwork square, and placed his or her squares on our quilt. This is the finished product, which is proudly hanging in the hallway outside our classroom. Stop by and take a look if you can!

Here are some of our observations about this quilt:

Danica: "It goes patchwork, butterfly."

Pat: "I noticed it’s still like a pattern. There’s still yellow and blue on the butterflies."

 

Rosie: "I noticed those colors [yellow and yellow] look the same."

 

Sophie: "It’s a pattern. Butterflies and patchwork."

 

Alex: "It’s going patchwork, butterfly, patchwork, butterfly."

 

Anna: "It’s going diagonal and it keeps on going smaller and smaller."

Blake: "It’s diagonal and then I see a straight line."

Kate: "The patchwork is going all the way down the diagonal down the middle both ways."

Charlie: "I noticed 7 going down on both sides."

 

Alaina: "I noticed 7 in each row."

 

Sage: "The patchwork squares go in a diagonal."

 

Mia: "I notice the pattern stops at 7."

 

Ben: "The pattern goes down and up."

 

Vivian: "It’s a pattern. Patchwork, butterfly."

Jora: "Some have eyes and some don’t."

 

Kaleb: "It’s a pattern because it keeps going and going."

 

Autumn: "There’s yellow and the butterflies are yellow."

 

Evie: "I noticed they’re going in a diagonal [patchwork pieces]."