Fabulous Friends

Fire Safety Lesson

 The Fire Safety Trailer was at school yesterday! We were able to explore the trailer (replica of a typical home) for fire hazards, talk about each hazard we found, talk about what to do in the event of a fire (crawl low, check the door for heat, find an alternate exit if necessary), practice exiting from a window, and practice calling 911.

Morning Message

An important part of our morning routine is morning meeting. Part of this meeting is a morning message. The message is usually written by the teacher and used to set the stage for the day, practice early literacy skills, and provide a shared reading experience . Today, our kindergarten students and Mrs. Poquette, surprised me with this morning message!

Remember When?

Do you remember when we were this little? Now we look more like first graders!!!!

Free Choice Time!

This was a student-initiated project at the rice table during free choice time. The students spontaneous cooperation and problem solving were incredible. They asked me to take a picture of their completed work to put on the blog. I love that they know what the blog is :)

All-About Books

 The focus of our writing workshop mini-lesson today was an introduction to writing All-About books. To become familiar with All-About books (non-fiction) we looked at The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons. We noticed that this book had the following specific features:

• A big All-About title
• A How-To Page (how to carve a pumpkin)
• Chapters or sections

In this picture we are looking at  books to notice additional features of non-fiction writing that we may want to include in our own writing.

We noticed that non-fiction books often have:

• A table of contents
• An index or word list
• A glossary
• Headings

Here is an example of A Table of Contents

 This book also had a Table of Contents

 

After spending a lot of time exploring some great non-fiction, we were ready to brainstorm a list of our own possible topics. Next time we will work on structuring our own All-About books!

The Pond Game

We started another great Math Work Place today! This one is called The Pond Game. To play students place 5 frogs on the game board, which has lillypads, each with a number from 1 to 10. They then spin the Add & Subtract spinner, add or subtract that many frogs from his/her board, and report how many frogs are in the pond. As with previous Work Places there are many skills associated including:

• count objects using one-to-one correspondence
• read the symbols for addition and subtraction, and numerals to 10
• model addition by joining sets of objects and model subtraction by removing objects from sets for numbers less than 10
• verbally describe mathematical relationships involving addition and subtraction situations