Halloween in the Kindergarten

 We had a busy Halloween Day today! We started the morning with a Halloween color code coloring. We colored the triangles black, circles orange, rectangles brown, and squares yellow. It was amazing to discover all of the shapes! During math we created Halloween patterns, and named this activity "Trick-or-Treat, We repeat!" After snack we read Curious George Goes to a Costume Party and then made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. In the afternoon we read The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything and then used a variety of pre-cut shapes to create Halloween cats. I put many of them below, in the blog. Stay safe and have fun tonight!

Guidance Class

A message from Ms. Fisher . . .

Kindergarten guidance classes are held once per week on Tuesdays.  During the past few weeks, we have learned about whole body listening.  Following a social thinking model, we have learned about expected behaviors which give other people "green" positive thoughts about us and help others feel comfortable around us.  (Unexpected behaviors cause yellow thoughts which can get people uncomfortable.)  We practiced using the courtesy words please, thank you, you're welcome, excuse me, and I'm sorry helps to give people green thoughts.  We have learned five ways to make a friend (listening, sharing, helping, being kind, and having fun). 

This week we focused on caring touch as an important part of positive relationships.  We read the book "Loving Touches" and drew a picture of a person who cares about us.  

Storytime

It was "Storytime" in Fundations today! Storytime is an activity that happens during our Fundations program that involves listening to oral stories that are acted out by our Echo and Baby Echo puppets. (Ask your child to tell you who they are :) ) Storytime is designed to develop our awareness of print, understanding of story structure, verbal memory, and auditory comprehension. Today, we practiced retelling a story we had previously listened to and then illustrated. Here are the Common Core Standards addressed with this activity:

• With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
• With  prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details.
• With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

Bucket of Frogs

Our new math Work Place is called "Bucket of Frogs!" The directions are as follows:

• Get some frogs out of the bucket. What do they look like? Which are your favorite?
• Do you see any frogs that match? How many can you find of each kind?
• Work with your friends to sort, count, and enjoy the frogs.

The last few work places have been very structured but this one allows for a little more play as children explore the frogs. However, while playing with the frogs we have also been patterning, counting by 1's, counting by 10's, sorting with a vareity of attributes, estimating by using a benchmark of 10, cooperating, sharing and problem solving.

FUNdations!

 FUNdations is an early reading program that teaches letter formation, phonological awareness, sound mastery, phonics, vocabulary, sight words, fluency, comprehension, and written composition. Here, students are participating in an activity called "Echo/Find Letters." In this activity students listen to a sound and then find the letter that matches that sound thereby reinforcing their skill of matching a letter with a given sound. We use sound cards, echo the owl, individual letter boards, alphabet overlays and magnetic letter tiles. "Echo/Find Letters" is one of many hands-on activities that you will hear about this year!

Music Class

A message from Mrs. Zamore . . . .

Kindergarten students have been learning about the steady beat.  They have been tapping, clapping, marching and singing.  So far, Tingalayo is their favorite song.

Mystery Sounds

 In Mystery Sounds, an interactive, hands-on science activity, we explored sound to develop our awareness of our sense of hearing. This was an opportunity to listen carefully to identify the objects inside a variety of boxes using only our sense of hearing. Students were divided into groups of four with 4 different boxes. They worked together to guess what was in the box and then record their guesses on a science notebook page. The choices were a paper clip, cotton ball, penny,  and marble. All of the items were on the table for comparison. At the end, when we checked, there were many surprises! Goals of this activity include:

• Children will understand that some objects can be identified and compared by the sounds they make
• Children will understand that the sense of hearing provides information about the properties and characteristics of objects and event
• Children will develop their abilities to explore and observe as well as identify patterns

Quiet Reading

Each day students participate in quiet reading with the books from our classroom library. This allows students the opportunity to immerse themselves in literature by themselves or with a friend. Typically, during this time you will see students retelling the story, enjoying the pictures, and practicing appropriate pre-reading skills.

Smile!

Popsicle Stick Tallying

We played a game called Popsicle Stick Tallyng in math today! It is a whole group game using Popsicle sticks and work mats. After we counted out 10 Popsicle sticks we created stick pictures for a few minutes. Then we learned how to set up our sticks in tally form, exploring various groupings and adding one at a time until we reached 10. After that, we removed the sticks one at a time, exploring ways to determine the total number of remaining sticks as we worked. This activity provided us with the opportunity to practice adding 1’s, subtracting 1’s, counting forwards and backwards by 1’s, instant recognition of quantities to 5 and counting on from 5.

Learning About Fire Safety

Thank you to Kim Julow and Hannah Corbin of the SHVFD for planning and implementing our fire safety prevention program on Wednesday. We learned about what to do in a fire emergency, what the fire department does for our community, what a firefighter looks like in their fire gear, and even had the opportunity to check out the fire truck!

 

Guess Our Pattern

Today we created patterns with our class! After we were arranged in a pattern we translated the pattern with unifix cubes. Can you guess this pattern?  Tomorrow we will open a new math work station called "Unifix Cube Patterns." In this station we will choose a pattern card, copy the pattern with unifix cubes, predict what will come next, and record the pattern to share at home.

Land, Farms & Me

 Today during science we explored our sense of smell using a variety of herbs from a local herb garden (thanks Melissa!). We are learning about plant parts we eat and recently have focused our discussions around leaves. We talked about lettuce, basil and spinach and with today's activity have broadened our list to many yummy smelling herbs! After we smelled and described each herb we put them in some canisters, mixed them up, and then tried to find matches using only our sense of smell. After that we hung the herbs up to dry for use in future cooking projects.

Goodbye Shapes!

We were moving so fast in this picture it is blurry!

 We played a game called "Goodbye Shapes!" To play we spread our collection of shape cards in the center of circle. After we had a chance to look them over, we used our shape sorting cards to eliminate shapes, saying "goodbye" to each new group as it left the circle. For example, when we used the "3 corners" sorting card we said goodbye to the triangles. When we used the "curved sides" card we said goodbye to the circles. The object of the game is to work together to get rid of all the shape cards in the center of the circle. Playing this cooperative game provided us with the opportunity to identify and sort shapes by their attributes. It was interactive and fun!

Goodbye rectangles!

Open House



Getting Ready to cook!



Thanks for joining us on our classroom walk of stars last week at open house. We had a great time acting as tour guides and making some yummy food to share with our families. While cooking together we were able to integrate many science, math, reading and social skills. We read the recipe, worked together, discussed the origin of the ingredients (apples from a tree, eggs from a chicken), measured, cooperated, shared, and had a lot of fun!



Dicing the apples!



Mixing, measuring & dicing

Almost done!

Pesto With Penny

We made Pesto as part of Lands, Farms and Me. The Land, The Farms and Me is an interdisciplinary unit of study with a goal for students to gain an understanding and appreciation of the many local agricultural and natural resources of the South Hero region. The LFM began in 2002 as a volunteer lead program of field trips and at school “hands-on” activities. The LFM’s activities and trips are planned to enhance the K-4 social studies and science curricula while incorporating literacy, writing and mathematics, while also helping to meet Vermont Grade Level Expectations. The kindergarten has already been involved with a number of activities including using our 5 senses to explore apples, investigate leaves, and participate in trips to Hackett’s Orchard and Camp Ingalls. Activities have included cooking with apples, becoming “apple scientists”, and now making pesto with basil leaves!

Listening while Penny goes over the recipe.

Using our sense of smell.

Off to get the basil in our coummunity garden.

Our ingredients are ready!