Friday, October 30, 2009

Halloween Party

We had a great party!  The kids loved getting a pumpkin, playing games, and eating the wonderful snacks!  Thanks to all the parents that helped with the party!  Take a look at the cute costumes!  Happy Halloween!!

Bats, Bats, Bats!

Bats, Bats, Bats 027

We spent this week learning about strange and wonderful Bats! We did a KWL of what we know, what we want to know, and what we learned about bats.  We did a compare and contrast on bats and birds a long with the story Stellaluna by Janell Cannon.  We also wrote informational stories about bats and what we learned.  They did a great job! Our centers were writing bat fact sentences using all the mechanics that sentences need, batty word building of short vowel words, nocturnal animals in ABC order, and batty number combinations bingo.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Harriet’s Halloween Candy

Thanks to everyone that helped us with our fun learning activity by sending the bags of candy.  We read the story Harriet’s Halloween Candy by Nancy Carlson.  We did a story map of the characters, setting, problem, and resolution of the story and then sequenced the story events.  Then we got to the fun part and got to work with the candy!  We estimated how many pieces were in the bags, counted, and sorted the candy.  We learned about how to sort by attributes. I hope they showed you how to sort their treats all the different ways we worked on: by colors, sizes, shapes, chocolate/not chocolate, kinds, wrappers, hard/soft, favorites/not favorites, etc…I hope they shared their treats after they showed you what they learned about attributes!  Thanks again for helping us make learning FUN!

Candy Corn Centers and Art Fun!

Take a look at the fun the kids have at our centers.  They did number order least to greatest, ABC order, sentence scramble, building short vowel words, math facts, and an art job making a “Sweet Treat”!

Short Vowel Center Week

We have spent this week working on mastering all of our short vowel sounds. We rotated to two different centers each day playing different games.  They also worked at the computers on starfall.com to reinforce their short vowel sounds listening to stories and playing games to build short vowel words.  We will continue to work on short vowels using our spelling words and decoding new words using blends.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!

This week we learned about about the life cycle of a pumpkin. As Matthew said…”It’s the circle of life!”

Our centers this week were making silly pumpkin stories using pumpkin faces, pumpkin card adding, pumpkin word families, sequencing the life cycle of a pumpkin, adaptation of Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown Bear, Brown Bear with a story called Pumpkin Farmer, Pumpkin Farmer, Pumpkin ABC order where we ordered word cards even to the second letter, and graphing pumpkins and adding the sets.

Christopher Columbus Day!

“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!”

We celebrated Christopher Columbus Day by learning about the ocean he crossed, the names of his ships, and what he discovered.  They enjoyed making the ships!  I think it was hard to believe that this happened over 500 years ago and how things have changed!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Fire Safety Week!

Today we had an assembly with the firemen and Clown Crew teaching the kids about fire safety in a very fun way!  They laughed a lot and learned a lot too.  We spent this week discussing how to be fire detectives.  Today we shared our fire safety escape plans, made fire dogs, and wrote about what we learned to be safe from fires.  Some stories we enjoyed this week were Stop, Drop, and Roll, Arthur’s Fire Drill,and Dot the Firedog.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Welcome to Octo-Bear!!

What a fun way to start Octo-bear!  We introduced the new month with a bear theme.  We read the story Corduroy by Don Freeman and learned about needs and wants and the importance of friends.  We watched a lesson on Brain Pop Jr. on needs and wants and did a picture sort on needs and wants.  We shared our teddy bears that we brought to school and wrote stories about our bears.  Enjoy the pictures of our bears and the kids will bring their stories home soon that they can share with you. 

Starbucks Shopping!

The kids earn Starbucks for neat work and good behavior.  They then get to “shop” and buy things with their Starbucks.  They had  a lot of fun showing off their prizes!

Fabulous Fall Fun!

We made some really cute Leaf Men and made some fall trees out of puzzle pieces.  The kids really liked these jobs.  They love to do art!  Our centers were all fall related with leaves in number order from least to greatest, Leaf Blower vocabulary game, graphing leaves and adding sets, and matching leaves with rhyming words.