Poem 10/27/2011

Our poem this week was the Hokey Pokey! We had fun acting out the motions to this poem, as well as adding the additional verses!

Pumpkin Fun!

We read the story Spookely the Square Pumpkin. This story is about a pumpkin who grows into the shape of a square and all the other pumpkins are round. One day, a storm comes through and breaks part of the fence and sends several round pumpkins falling out to the bay. Spookley tips himself over to the cracked part of the fence to save his friends. We created our own pumpkins using orange paper that I let them rip up, yes rip they were shocked! Other than that being fun, it helps with building their fine motor skills. The class was encouraged to make any type of pumpkin they wanted. Some students made a triangle, square, circle, oval and a rectangle. The message to the kids was that it does not matter what size, shape or color you are that we all have special things about us and each of us are important in our own way.

Kick It To Drugs!

To finish off Red Ribbon Week, the teachers competed against the 5th grade class in our annual kickball game. The title of the game is "Kick it to Drugs". All students K-5 traveled to the high school soccer field to cheer on either the teachers or the 5th grade students. After a well fought game, the teachers prevailed and beat the 5th graders 18-14 in 5 tough innings. Way to go teachers!

Creepy! Crawly! Spiders!

Last week, we studied all about spiders. One of the first facts we learned was that spiders have eight legs. We created our own spiders using a number 8 and added eight legs and a pair of eyes. We also completed a sentence at the bottom of the page that said "I see a spider on a _______." The class first wrote their sentence describing a place they have seen or could possibly see a spider. Then the students drew a picture of the object they wrote and glued their spider on their drawing.

Shade Out Drugs!

Below is a picture of myself and a few of my students who wore sunglasses to school today to "Shade Out Drugs" for Red Ribbon Week!

Making a List

During writer's workshop today, we created a list of foods that are healthy to eat and not healthy to eat. I talked with the class about how being a writer does not always mean you have to write complete sentences. People are writers everyday and one way they show writing is by making lists. The kids came up with a few great ideas about lists they know from home. One student mentioned a grocery list and another a "To Do" list. Both were very good examples!

Number Order

I passed out numbers 1-10 in a random order today. The kids holding the numbers did not look to see what number they were holding. I also left one number out and called it our "missing number". The job for the kids who were not holding a number was to put the numbers in order by telling which student needed to be first in line and so on. Once all the numbers were in order from smallest to largest, they took guesses as to what the missing number was. They did not need more than one guess, they knew right away the missing number was the number 9!

Last week I introduced a new CAFE strategy called "Beginning, Middle, End of a Story". We read several books throughout the week and focused on this strategy. It is important to not name every detail in a story when focussing on the main details of what happened in the beginning, middle and the end. The strategy we worked on before was telling the "Main Idea" of a story. We will continue to work on both strategies throughout the year.

Awards Program

We had our first nine weeks awards ceremony last Friday. In kindergarten, we do not have AB Honor Roll as a possible award. We have the MME (Most Marvelous Effort) Award and the Principal's Award. I picked two students for each award. I had a difficult choice because I have so many deserving students. Congratulations to the four students, Maddie, Jamison, Jill and Jeneka,who earned the awards!