Home sweet home

In November, we studied homes/family and shapes to kick the month off.  Here are the shape posters we created for the 2D shapes.  Each day we looked at features of each shape and hunted for real life examples of each one to add to our chart.

We read The Shape of Things and selected a shape to create a new picture by adding a few extra details.  These turned out so good!  I did not take new photos after they were colored, but they were amazing!

 

Here are a few samples....

 

 ninjas

 a bunny and the ninja from above

 Santa!!

 

We looked at photos of different types of houses and discovered that people use the resources avaiable to them to build houses that meet their needs.  We read lots of different versions of the 3 pigs and compared them.  We discussed story elements such as character, setting, and events (beginning, middle, end).  We focused on setting one day and drew the 3 main settings from one of the stories.

 

 **photos coming soon**

 

We read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (one of my personal faves) and discussed point of view.  This story is told from the wolf's perspective.  We talked about who we felt was truly the guilty party after reading this story and created a WANTED poster for either the wolf or the pigs.  So much fun... It was pretty even for each side. 

 

We watched this short video

and got into small groups to build a wolf proof house.  I put out lots of different building materials for the groups to choose from.  I was so excited to watch the kids test out their houses as they worked by blowing on them.  Then...the big bad wolf came around and tried to blow the houses down.

 

 (idea from sewingschool.blogspot)

 

Some other great 3 pig stories

 

    

We read the last one The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot on my Nook using the document camera.  I introduced Harold's second reading super power...asking questions using this story.  We made "I wonder..." statements and recorded them before reading this story. 

Some examples were:

I wonder if the robot will knock down their houses. 

I wonder if he will eat the robots. 

I wonder if they will build houses on Earth. 

I wonder if he will become a good robot.

 

We made shape houses for snack on Friday and recorded a recipe (from Kim Adsit's family unit). 

 

 

Parents...I found this video when researching 3 pigs activities and thought it was pretty interesting to think about how their story would play out in the media today.  I knew it was a bit too much for the kids, but thought you might like to check it out.  Pretty interesting spin on what would happen in 2012 if this were a true story.  Let me know what you think.  :-) 

 



Halloween fun

Back already! Here are just a couple of shots of some of the fun we had Halloween week!

Math stations

 

 
  Frankie from Deanna Jump's Halloween unit.  We read a story together on the smart board about Frankie and created a bubble map to describe him. 

We read Where's My Mummy?  and wrote about our text to self or text to text connections.  The kids are getting so good at sharing their connections.  They are truly digging deep and not just making the "I know someone named Tim" connections.  We created our own mummies using tissues. 
 

We did a directed drawing of a monster and wrote adjectives and action words that could go with monsters.  Here are a few samples.

 

I love Halloween, but I am glad it is over!!!  Now on to Thanksgiving...

Pumpkins and stuff

One of the days I will get caught up...at least that is what I keep telling myself.  I think I need to designate a student photographer as one of my weekly jobs.  I am always so caught up in what we are doing, I forget to pick up the camera and take pics of what we are doing.  I want to give parents a window into what we are doing in the classroom, but have not found the right balance/combination of how to get the pictures taken.  We'll see...

Here are a few pictures that I was able to snap of some of the fun we had with pumpkins. 
We used our class pumpkin to complete a pumpkin investigation.  We described the inside and outside.  We practiced estimating and counting using the lines and the seeds.  We had heard that the number of lines on a pumpkin is related to the quantity of seeds inside.  We had 26 lines on our pumpkin and 458 seeds.  We checked with the other classrooms and we all had lines in the 20s and seeds in the 500s.  Interesting...

Counting seeds

Measuring circumference 


We made 3D pumpkins and labeled the parts.

 

We learned about the life cycle of a pumkin. 

 



We read Pumpkinheads and made our own silly pumpkin faces.  I saw these on a blog last year and thought they were just too cute not to do.  They look so awesome with our owls. 

 

We read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and created a brace map for the parts of a scarecrow.  We used this activity to help us retell the story. 

 

Here is a song we listened to about the story.  The kids loved it!!

 

 

We visited the computer lab and used Kid Pix to create a picture of a pumpkin patch.  We learned how to use several of the drawing tools and the text tool to label our illlustration.  This was our first experience with Kid Pix and the kids did a phenomenal job.

Here are a few examples of our storybook character pumpkins.  Everyone did such an amazing job with these.  I loved them all (but of course forgot to take pictures until the kids were getting ready to walk out the door with them)!! I wish I had more photos of  all of the projects because they truly were outstanding. 

 



 

 

Bats, Spiders, Owls...Oh My!!!

We have learned so much about owls, bats, and other nocturnal animals.  We discovered they come out at night because that is when they can safely find the most food.  We learned that bats aren't as scary as we may have thought.  They actually help us by eating pests like mosquitoes.  I still would not want one trapped in my house though.  I wish I could find the picture of the one I actually had in my bedroom when I lived in an old, historic building in Raleigh (old, historic is my way of nicely saying it probably should not have been lived in).  I woke up at 2 am to the sound of wings flapping over my head!  When I tell the story to the kids I have a tendency to make the bat the size of the flying fox rather than the very small brown bat that it was.  I had a picture of the animal control officer pointing to it on my wall that I would always share.  The kids would always laugh at just how small it really was.  In my defense, it sounded a lot bigger just over my head. I lost the photo though and it was before I had switched to digital photos (phones on cameras...what was that?).  Boy did I just date myself!!  Anyway it gave me a great topic for writing in front of the kids!!  We practiced making connections using the story Owl Babies. It tells of 3 baby owls who are afraid when their mom is out hunting for food. Most of us had a similar story (missing a parent when they had to leave). 

Here are a few photos from our week with nocturnal animals. 

This free picture collage created with Smilebox

Photo collage generated with Smilebox

We read The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.  We wrote about what we are busy doing in Kindergarten.    This is our tree map to sort information we learned about bats. Our Schema chart about spiders.  We try to do one of these at the start of each unit/topic.  This helps us to see what we already know (or think we know), what questions we have, and what our misconceptions are.  We did 2 really fun investigations about spiders (from D. Jump's Science unit).  We learned how spiders eat their prey and why they do not get stuck in their webs.  Ask your child to tell you what they discovered.   How stinkin' cute are these??  Don't you just love Kindergarten drawing!!  Even though I showed them step by step how to draw the Old Lady (after reading There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly) they all look different.  We used these and cut outs of the other characters to retell the story.