Spider Facts

As a culminating activity for our spiders unit, we each wrote and illustrated a spider fact. They are compiled here in this photo story. Enjoy!

Spiders

This year, the kindergarten team decided to use Halloween week as an opportunity to delve into a science unit all about spiders. Students were able to engage with this unit as readers, writers, mathematicians, artists, scientists, and deep thinkers.

We kicked off our unit by answering the question "are you afraid of spiders?" Surprisingly, most students said no! We analyzed our data and tied it into our math learning of using tally marks and comparing quantities.

We also read a short passage about spiders each day and did several "close reading" activities. We examined important vocabulary terms from the passage, labeled the parts of a spider, engaged in a small group activity where we designed the perfect spider web, and, finally, wrote and illustrated a spider fact.

We did several spider art projects, including designing our own glittery spider webs and making spooky spider hats!

We read the book Aaaarrgghh! Spider by Lydia Monks during our spider week. This cute story is all about a little spider who wants to be somebody's pet. We decided whether we thought a spider would make a good pet and then did some opinion writing about this topic.

 

Spider poems we read throughout the week.

Eli and his family were able to catch two cool looking spiders to bring in for observation at our science table. This was so exciting for the students!
 

At the end of our spider week, one student declared, "I used to think spiders were scary, but now I think they are really interesting!" I couldn't agree more!

Pumpkins

Our weeklong investigation of pumpkins was so much fun and resulted in many hands-on learning opportunities. We started our unit with a trip to the Parker Family Pumpkin Patch, where we learned about the pumpkin growing process, visited the fields where the pumpkins grow, and tried some yummy pumpkin foods.

Acting out the pumpkin life cycle.

Exploring various types of pumpkins.

Tasting pumpkin applesauce. Yum!

Enjoying pumpkin dip!

A class full of pumpkins!

Throughout the week, we were able to engage in a variety of activities to further our learning about pumpkins. In addition to reading many pumpkin stories and informational texts, students used the pumpkins that they brought back from the pumpkin patch to be scientists and answer various questions about them. We also observed our class pumpkin and drew representations of the pumpkin for our science notebooks. We then estimated how many seeds were in this pumpkin and then worked very hard to count them all!

Eliza measures how many links around her pumpkin is.

Eli investigates whether his pumpkin floats or sinks.

Rian and Violet investigate their pumpkins.

We read this book before estimating how many seeds were in our class pumpkin.

Our estimates.

Counting pumpkin seeds on tens frames!

Exploring the inside of our class pumpkin at the science table.

We listened to this book at the listening center and then drew and wrote about our favorite part.

Violet practices pointing to the words in her Pumpkin Lifecycle book.

Allyson hunts for letters at this pumpkin-themed station.

Eli plays the Pumpkin Syllables game during literacy centers.

We concluded our unit by sequencing the life cycle of a pumpkin and summarizing all that we learned during the unit. I wonder if anyone will be eating some pumpkin pie in a few short weeks?!

Color Weeks

We just finished up our fun unit on colors! We had a great time wearing our "Color of the Day," reading books, and doing a variety of activities to learn all about colors. Enjoy these pictures of our activities:

Red Day!

Orange Day!

Yellow Day!

 Oops! I forgot to take a picture on Green Day!

Blue Day!

Purple Day!

Color Mixing Experiment with Allyson's mom, Kathy.

Color Mixing with cream, food coloring, and Dawn dish soap.

Allyson mixes colors like the mice in Mouse Paint!

Our Brown Bear retelling puppet.

Happy Rainbow Day!

Liam's Rainbow Hair.

Rian's Rainbow Hair.

Our Rainbow Jell-O treat!

Next up: All About Pumpkins! Followed by a spooky, Halloween-inspired unit on everyone's favorite eight-legged creatures: spiders!

Fire Safety!

We were so lucky to have members of the Hinesburg Fire Department visit us last Friday, October 10th, to help us learn about fire safety.

Allyson practices Stop, Drop, and Roll.

Theo practices Stop, Drop, and Roll.

Firefighter Rob demonstrates how he puts on his gear to fight a fire.

Firefighter Eric explains what happens if firefighters need to come to your house to help.

Kindergarten Firefighters!

Bridges Unit 2

Today, we started our new Bridges math unit. Please read the parent letter explaining the concepts and skills covered here:

Bridges Unit 2 Overview

If you are interested in having your child play any of the online games that support the concepts presented in this unit, please visit this link. We played the Five Frame game on our classroom Smart Board today!

Unit 2 Games 

What's Happening in Room 8?

We have only been in school for twenty two days, but your children are already kindergarten pros! They have settled into our classroom routine and clearly know the rules and what is expected of them. I am impressed with what a cohesive group of students this is: they seem to truly enjoy each other and our time spent together is full of learning and fun! This group gets compliments all over the school for their respectful and responsible behavior. They really are "stars!" 

In literacy, we are hard at work learning early reading skills. We are practicing the habits of good readers, including using picture clues to tell stories to ourselves, building reading stamina, reading to self and reading with partners. Our Fundations work (phonics or word study) is focused on building the letter-sound relationship. We are learning two or three new letters/sounds each week. So far, we have learned t, b, f, n, m, i and u. We are learning to read some of the kindergarten sight words and have added the words I, a, the, and see to our word wall. Sight words (sometimes called high frequency words or trick words) are words that do not follow the typical sound patterns and cannot always be sounded out, but they are words that appear over and over in the emergent texts that we will be reading. We talk about learning to read these words "in a snap" to help us with our texts. Students have also been introduced to the first reading strategy we talk about in kindergarten: checking the pictures. We use the pictures to help figure out puzzling words and read what is in front of us. Check out these two videos of Eliza and Ruby using this strategy: 

Can you believe they've only been in kindergarten for four weeks?!

In math, we recently completed our first unit about shapes. We are now focusing on patterns (recognizing, copying, and extending patterns, as well as creating patterns). We also are practicing numeral writing, number combinations to five, and using tens frames. Students are enjoying their time at math work places, a time when they get to practice the skills and concepts that they have been learning, in a small group format. In the coming weeks, I plan to do a more detailed blog post about math work places and what they looks like in kindergarten, so stay tuned! Below is the link to an online game that children could play at home to supplement the learning taking place in the classroom.

Online Patterning Game 

Writer's Workshop is perhaps the most beloved part of the day. I have taught the children that writers think of a story, draw the story, and then write the story. Writing in kindergarten can range from scribbles to represent the writing, to a string of letters, to beginning sounds, to full sentences. At this point, children are encouraged to write what they can. I am most interested in the story telling element of the writing process, and hope that students find a love for telling the stories that they come across in their lives. A common exclamation these days in our classroom is, "hey, you could write about that during Writer's Workshop!" I am thrilled to see these blossoming writers embrace this process! Here are a few examples of some of the great writing taking place during Writer's Workshop:

"I was on a mountain."

"I went on the Ferris Wheel."

"I got my pajamas on and watched 'Jake and the Neverland Pirates.'"

Hopefully you saw the earlier post about our theme for the week: apples! If not, check it out here! We had so much fun with this unit, and the fun will continue next week, when we focus more on fall. In the coming weeks, we will also complete a unit on colors, as well as activities about pumpkins and Halloween.

I hope this information brings you up to date about the happenings in our classroom! I apologize for the LONG post! I will try to keep it short and sweet next time!