Elfing Ourselves and Gingerbread Man Fun

We had a fun and busy first week back on track!  To celebrate Red Ribbon week, we had some fun dress-up days.  Here we are making crazy faces on crazy hair day!

We made some bugs at center time to decorate our classroom door for Red Ribbon week as well.

Here was the finished product!  The kids all thought the door was pretty funny.

At centers this week, we practiced counting syllables again with some Christmas words.

We had fun building the letters, our names, and some words with the letter puzzles.

And we did quite a few gingerbread man activities during center time as well!

In math, we learned all about teen numbers.  We practiced putting teen numbers into a group of tens, plus the ones left over.  We found out it was a fast and easy way to count the teen numbers!  Here is a song we watched in class this week to help us remember teen numbers:

We are still continuing to practice addition and subtraction.  We played a game called Santa's Sleigh this week.  We put 10 presents in Santa's sleigh and rolled a number cube to see how many presents we had to deliver at that stop.  Then we figured out how many presents were left in the sleigh.

We had a little room decorating to do for Christmas.  The kids had a great time "elfing" themselves!  They got to use a picture of themselves to create an elf.  We listened to some Christmas music while working and it was a fun project to get us in the holiday spirit at school.

Now we have the cutest little elves ever hanging up in our room!

We learned all about the -an word family this week.  We figured out that words like man, can, ran, etc. all have the same word chunk in them.  We read the gingerbread story up on our projector and used a really cool chunk finder pointer to search for the -an chunks in the story. 

Then Chunky Monkey, who is one of our reading strategy animals came to help us search for the -an chunk in our own gingerbread man book.

We even got to use magnifying glasses to be -an chunk detectives.  The kids would get so excited when they found a word with the -an chunk and then highlighted them with a yellow crayon. 

We are still learning how to use descriptive words called adjectives.  We did some gingerbread man taste testing and wrote down words that described how he tasted.  They used words like delicious, tasty, crunchy, yummy, and cinnamon. 

Wednesday night was free skating night at Classic Skating and we had 7 kids from our class there!  It was so fun to see everyone that was able to come.  We all had a good time skating or riding scooters around the rink!

On Friday, at computers, we practiced our shapes and colors by making our own gingerbread men on Starfall.  You can do this activity at home HERE.

At PE, we danced, moved, and exercised to the Polar Express soundtrack.  Here they are twirling like snowflakes.

And rolling like ornaments.

The kids had a great time showing off their new suits for Santa on Friday!  Come check them out in the hallway next time you are at school!

Conner was our star student this week and shared his some of his special memories with us.

And we celebrated Brecken's 6th birthday at school, since he had his birthday during the off-track break.  Happy birthday!

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie

 

We had to squeeze in a bit of Thanksgiving fun before going off track for the rest of November!  We worked with the book, "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie."

Here is an online version of the book if your child would like to hear it again:

On Monday we talked about how stories have an order, or sequence, and worked together to remember the order in which the old lady swallowed things.

After doing it as a class, we practiced doing it on our own!

On Tuesday we met the Syllable Monster.  He helped us learn how to clap and count syllables in words.

We counted the syllables in the items from the Old Lady book and sorted them in our pocket chart.  We also practiced it on our own at our desks and it was great to see everyone really getting the hang of clapping out syllables!  It is a very useful reading and writing skill.

At center time, the kids enjoyed counting syllables in the names of people in our class.  We had friends with 1, 2, 3, and even 4 syllables!

In math this week we worked on showing pictures of addition problems.  We made pumpkins with some orange play-dough, (thanks moms!), and the kids had a great time putting their pumpkins in the pumpkin patch!

We practiced our counting and number writing skills with a fun "count around the room" game.  There were Thanksgiving pictures hiding around the room for the kids to find, count, and record.

The kids enjoyed listening to a Thanksgiving story during center time.

And they worked on a painting project that will be coming home at the end of the year in their portfolios.

Every week, we play the flashlight game with our word wall.  I say a word on the word wall and they find it as fast as they can with the flashlight.  It would be a fun game to do at home to practice your words!

We also had a great time with another "Pete the Cat" book!  The kids were singing along and rolling with laughter.  This one is definitely worth checking out at the library.

Here is an online reading of the book if your child would like to hear it again:

After reading the story, we all got a shirt and some buttons and practiced showing the actions of the story on our shirts.

The kids were having a wonderful time and were practicing their subtraction skills all at the same time.

Then we went back to our seats and worked on drawing a picture of the math and recording number sentences.  Of course we had to sing the little song with each problem.  :)

Friday we had a very special assembly in honor of Veteran's Day.  Burke's dad is in the military and so Burke got to go up to the front with his dad and brothers! 

Madisen was our star student and brought her soccer ball to show the class!

And we celebrated Gracie and John's birthdays since they will both be turning 6 while we are off track. 

Enjoy your off-track time and Thanksgiving holiday everyone!  I will post again when we come back on track!

Happy Halloween!

We had a very eventful week with Halloween!  Get ready for a lot of pictures...

We made another class big book based on the book, "Pumpkin Eye."  The kids really enjoy working together to create something special to display in our room! 

Here is the finished product, so you can have your child show you which page they helped with!  We keep these big pages up for a couple of weeks and then I turn them into a book for the kids to read during center time.  They love reading the books they create more than any other book!

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On Tuesday, we had a great time writing about our Halloween costumes and then making them using some fun craft supplies.  Tate wrote about being Jessie the cowgirl.

Maddison wrote about being Rapunzel!

Tuesday night was the Trunk-or-Treat in the school parking lot!  It was so fun to see so many friends there and I know everyone enjoyed getting candy and having hot chocolate and popcorn.

The big day came and Halloween finally arrived on Wednesday!  We had been counting down the days during calendar time.  Here are all the cute kiddos dressed up!

We got a little bit of learning in before the parade started and read our Halloween poem in some fun voices.  I let the kids use my witch's broom for a pointer and they thought that was great.

Then we got all ready for the parade!

It was great to see all of the moms, dads, and other family members cheering us on as we walked in the parade!

Here is an up close picture of all of the costumes!

Ivory had the yucky stomach flu on Halloween and we missed her so much!  Here is a picture of her in her costume with her family!  How cute are they?!  Ivory is the ice cream cone.  You can go vote in a costume contest for their family's costumes HERE if you would like to!

After the parade, we went back to our room and partied!  I can't say thank you enough to everyone who helped with our Halloween party!  I appreciated all that was sent in and the parents who came in and helped at the party.  The kids had a great time!

We had a game to throw an object into a pumpkin bucket, played pass the pumpkin, made cookie witch hats and yarn monsters.

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I made witch's brew with apple juice, green food coloring, and dry ice.  The kids really enjoyed drinking it!  I was teasing that it was green because I put bug juice inside of it...a few of them took me a little too seriously and had a look of horror on their face as they set their cup down.  I had to quickly tell them I was joking.  :)

After the party was done, we played a "Trick or Treat" game as a whole class.  We had to do fun tricks and a few people got lucky and got a treat the first time around.  When we were done, everyone got a treat!

We also did some fun Halloween writing and wrote about something we would like to see knocking at our door on Halloween.

Most of them picked their own costume.  :)

We worked on more counting using a "ten frame" by putting pumpkin seeds into these fun pumpkin trays during center time.

We talked about hexagons this week too.  The kids enjoyed making a hexagon into a different object and writing about it.

We finished up our fun Halloween week with the story, "Go Away Big Green Monster."  We made some fun monster faces and then wrote adjectives to describe our monsters.  The kids came up with some great words!

We had some special friends this week!

Our star student was Evelyn.  She showed us her special purple blanket that keeps her warm and told us her baby sister makes her laugh.

We have a new friend in our class!  Tate just moved here from Washington State and we are so lucky to have her in our class.  She has already made a lot of friends and has fit right in.  Welcome Tate!

And Mr. Conner had a Halloween Eve birthday and brought some colorful cupcakes in to share with the class!  Happy 6th birthday Conner!