Bats!

This week we had some pre-Halloween fun and did activities with bats.  The kids enjoyed reading this informational book about bats.  We talked about how to listen for facts while reading. 

We met "Lips the Fish" this week.  He is one of our reading strategy animals who helps us to remember to look at the beginning sound.  I had some of the words in the bat book covered, except for the first letter, and we practiced getting our lips ready and saying the beginning sound. 

After reading our book, we did some informational writing about things we learned about bats. 

I also introduced the concept of a word family since we have been working on rhyming words.  We started with the -at family and learned words that ended with the -at sound.

We sorted pictures into groups if they had the -at sound or not.  And we also found -at sounds in a little book we got to take home.

We finished learning all of the vowel sounds, (for the first time), this week.  The kids had a great time making these vowel flip charts!  We learned that vowels are special and are like glue because they stick the other letters together to make words.  And we learned they are unique because they all get to make 2 sounds.

In math we worked on writing number sentences to go with story problems.

The kids used story mats and cubes to show what was happening in the math problem.  Then they recorded a number sentence to go along with their work.

 We also played a game to work on the +1 pattern.

And used spider rings to make some +1 number sentences.

Ivory's mom is our Great Artist volunteer this year!  We are so lucky to have her helping our class learn about artists and art techniques.  We will get to do a special project like this about once a month. 

This time around we learned about Joan Miro's painting, "The Singing Fish."  You should have seen a reproduction of this painting come home last week!

The kids did a great job and had fun using "mixed media" to create their own works of art.

We had a great time wearing our jammies to school on Friday!

We also did some fun Halloween-themed exercise to Halloween music for PE.  We flew like bats, floated like ghosts, crawled like spiders, and here we are rolling like pumpkins. 

We had a special activity on Friday afternoon and go to go to "SPOOKFEST," put on by our principal and assistant principal.

The kids got to listen to some fun Halloween stories and got a little pencil topper too!

We had lots of special friends this week.  John enjoyed telling us about his memories and the kids all laughed when he showed them his whoopee cushion.

Evelyn turned 6 and shared some yummy cookies with our class.

John and Olivia were selected as students of the month for showing respect in our classroom!  They each got a certificate with some fun coupons attached.

Mr. Hansen, our principal, presented their awards to them.

And then they had to take some silly pictures.  :)  Great work guys!  Thanks for being so good in class!

Down By the Bay and Nursery Rhyme Day

Our three day week was short, but we managed to fit a lot in those three days!  On Monday we made some fun rhyme mini-books.  The kids each thought of a pair of rhyming words and drew them on the front sides of the book.

Then I told them they got to break the rule of putting spaces between their words and squish their two words together on the inside to make a silly, nonsense word.  Madisen chose "fox" and "box" and then made a "foxbox" on the inside page of her book.

Austin chose "dog" and "log."

And made a "logdog" on the inside.  They had a great time with this little activity and it was fun to see their imaginations at work.

We worked with the song "Down By the Bay."  I think this one has been around forever because I remember learning it when I was in kindergarten!  It was fun to find rhyming words in the song with our highlighter tape.

We also worked as a class to make up our own silly sentences that rhymed.  I had helpers come up and circle the two rhyming words. 

On Tuesday, we read the book "Rhyming Dust Bunnies."  It is a really funny book and had the kids learning about rhymes while laughing hysterically.  We made our own rhyming dust bunnies and thought of one word and wrote others that rhymed with it around our paper.

I think the highlight of this activity for the kids was using their white crayons.  They have been asking me for months when we were ever going to use white.  So they were excited when I told them they could use a white crayon to write on their black paper for this project.  It doesn't take much to keep these kiddos happy!

Wednesday was our big nursery rhyme day!  Thank you to all the parents and grandparents who came to support their children and our class during this fun presentation!  Even though it was a little nerve-racking to get up in front of all those people, the kindergartners did such an awesome job reciting their nursery rhymes.  I was so proud of everyone!  Here are a few of the kids saying their rhymes:

 Evelyn saying, "It's Raining, It's Pouring."

Gracie with "Rain, Rain, Go Away."

Ivory did a fun nursery rhyme called "Gregory Griggs" about someone that wore 27 wigs.  She was giggling along with our class as she changed her wigs a few times during her rhyme.

Parker cracked a real egg during "Humpty Dumpty."

Avery was Little Miss Muffet sitting on a tuffet.

Olivia was the cat with a fiddle in "Hey Diddle, Diddle."

Brynley performed the rhyme, "Tiny Tim" and had her dad help blow bubbles.

And Alex was Little Boy Blue with this cool horn!

After our performance, we read a book called "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert.  The pictures are all made from leaves.  The kids got to use the leaves they collected for homework and made their own leaf pictures.  They had such a fun time working and I was so impressed by their creativity!  We have so many great little artists in our class!

I got them hung up on our bulletin board in the hallway, so check them out next time you are at the school!  Here are a few up close pictures:

John Ti. made a turtle and spider.

Conner made this bird with a tree branch and sun.

And Hannah made this cute little butterfly!

*****

I hope everyone is enjoying their fall break!  We have been busy hunting witches at Gardner Village, riding to the top of a mountain on the Snowbird Tram, and going through giant corn mazes.

 See you all Monday!  :)

Humpty Dumpty and More Rhyme Time

We had a really fun week this week!  We learned some fun nursery rhymes and introduced the concept of rhyming.  We worked with Humpty Dumpty this week.  The kids enjoyed changing the words where "wall" and "fall" usually go with 2 new rhyming words.  We did this as a whole class and a center and the kids would laugh at the silly things they came up with. 

We worked on some opinion writing this week and talked about what we would use if we had to put Humpty Dumpty together again.  Some of the answers included bubblegum, tape, staples, tools, nails, glue, and glue sticks.  They enjoyed crumpling up their Humpty Dumpty egg and putting him back on his wall.

We also went on a hunt around the room for rhyming words.  The kids always enjoy getting up and searching for things around the room.  They had to write down the rhyming word pairs on their recording sheets.

We introduced a fun new game called Racing Bears.  The kids each worked with a friend to help the bears earn treats at the top of a ten frame.

They rolled a dice and had to decide how to break the number up to get the most bears a treat.  For example, if they rolled a 5, they could do 2 moves on one bear and 3 moves for another.  It is helping us learn how to see numbers broken apart so they will be easier to work with when we add and subtract.

Plus it is always fun to work together!

 

Austin was our star student this week.  He enjoyed telling us about his favorite movie The Avengers and how it makes him laugh when Hulk punches Thor.

John turned 6 years old and was very excited about us celebrating his birthday!  He brought everyone a cookie with dark blue frosting and we all had blue mouths afterwards.  :)  Thanks for the treats!