Pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere!

It was another busy and exciting week in kindergarten!  We had lots of fun this week incorporating HALLOWEEN into just about EVERYTHING we did!

We did some pumpkin science, making hypotheses about how long our pumpkin would last before it got mushy, and learning about how bacteria makes pumpkins rot!  We carved our class pumpkin on Wednesday, after voting for different shapes of it's face.  We began learning about the voting process, which we will be touching on more as the national election gets closer.

We estimated how many seeds were in the pumpkin.  We had guesses from 100 to a million billion.  Sawyer was the closest with his guess of 110.  The actual number was...... 528!  We all helped put the seeds into groups of 10, and then counted to 528 by 10's!  We ate some of our pumpkin seeds, and used some to glue onto our pumpkin seed counting squares.

Mrs. Abel from UAF extension came to visit us again, and talked about pumpkins and other orange vegetables and fruits as a part of our nutrition unit.  The kids got to try sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, and golden raisins!  Most of them liked everything, and the ones that didn't were very polite, as Mrs. Abel had instructed them to discreetly spit it out into their napkin and quietly walk over to the trash can.   When I asked Emma if she liked the sauteed squash she said.  "No.  But I am eating it anyway.  'Cuz it has my favorite thing EVER on it!  SUGAR!"  But guess what?  Mrs. Abel had not put any sugar on the squash, only a little bit of cinnamon, and as she cooked it on the skillet the sugars caramelized.  It was delicious!

We used pumpkins to practice shapes for math.  The kids created jack-o-lantern faces out of trapezoids, hexagons, circles, triangles, squares, semi-circles, rhombuses, and parallelograms!  They had to tell me the names of the shapes they used on their pumpkins.  We also practiced tracing hexagons when we made our wax-resist spiderweb art!

In writing we learned how to use "kid spelling", or sound spelling.  The kids drew pictures and wrote about their Halloween costumes using kid spelling.  They did great!  It was so exciting for them to be free to write on their own, and it will help them recognize the sound segments in a word, as well as give purpose to learning all of these letter sounds that we have been working on.

In music we sang and danced to lots of fun Halloween songs, including one that helps us learn how to spell H-A-Double L-O, W, Double E-N!  You can listen to it here!

We also had a visit from the Tok Volunteer Fire Department.  They taught the kids how to stop, drop, and roll, dial 911, memorize their address, and about all of the fire fighting equipment.  I loved how the kids integrated their fire safety information with the nutrition unit when they had center time at the cabin.  The cabin turned into a restaurant serving food from all of the different food groups, and then it caught on fire, and they had to put it out!

On Friday we had a visit from our 5th Grade Book Buddies!  The kids have been waiting and waiting for our first Book Buddies party, and were super excited when the day finally arrived!  We read Halloween stories all together, and then they had time for their buddy to read to them in the school library.  After our reading time, we came back to the classroom and played Halloween Bingo, Halloween 4 Corners, and decorated pumpkin cookies!  We will continue to get together with our Book Buddies once a month!

Field Trip to TCC Clinic

We had a short week this week, but still packed in lots of good learning!  Our trip to the TCC Clinic was fabulous, and the staff there did a wonderful job of answering some of the questions that the kinders had about bones and the heart.

We had fun walking over to the clinic in the some of the first snow of the year!

We got to hear our hearts beating.

The kids learned about how the heart pumps blood with a hands-on demonstration.

Taking each other's blood pressure was definitely a highlight!

John took an x-ray of a mystery object.  

The kids were excited to find out that it was a metal spider when they saw the x-ray!

Many thanks to Joni Young for setting the trip up for us, and to the staff who took so much time to help us learn about the amazing human body!

In math we made flashcards and continue practice on our doubles facts.  Here we are doing the Double Rap with our own flashcards.

Rita Abel from UAF Extension Service came in on Monday to teach the kids about the My Plate system of choosing healthy foods.  We continued learning about nutrition during the week, sorted our plastic food from the cabin into food groups, and chose our favorite balanced meals!

Culture Week

Culture Week
This was a wonderful week of celebrating Athabascan culture!  The kindergarteners got to make necklaces, hear native stories, learn a few words of Athabascan, learn about potlatches, and participate in native dancing!

Library Time!
The Kinders are excited to go visit Ms. Connie in the library each week.  After they finished checking out their books this week, they were all working together on a puzzle and singing "This Land is Your Land" together.  I must say they have become quite a classroom family.  They are always so excited to show me their new books, and many of them read them all the way back to the classroom!  We keep their books in class and have read aloud and free reading time with our Pillow Pets each day after lunch.

First Grade Math!  

This week we bumped up our math instruction to first grade Saxon Math, and the kids are doing GREAT! We also had fun with some math stations, playing UNO and working with Geoboards!  We have been telling math stories, learning to write sentences in "math language", and rocking out to The Doubles Rap! Who knew my kinders could bust out the break dancing moves and do the Worm?!

In science we continued our study of the body by learning about germs and how to stay healthy.  Here we are practicing "sneezing" into a tissue with a spray bottle.

Spooky Science...

We finished our study of bones by putting together our own paper skeletons with the help of Mr. Bones and watching a movie about how broken bones heal.  

Last but not least:  You should know, in case you come to visit, that our room has become infested with large hairy spiders!!!!!

Do we LIKE green eggs and ham?

We learned a new popcorn word together this week... LIKE!  We learned about that bossy "e" that jumps over the k, grabs the i and says, "Say your name!"  We read Green Eggs and Ham to practice finding popcorn words, and then we decided to see if we LIKE green eggs and ham!

Everyone was eager to help...even with washing the dishes!  We did some math while we made our eggs, cutting a rectangle of ham into lots of squares, counting dozens, and counting by 2.  Most of the kids liked green eggs and ham, but responses varied from, "I do NOT like green eggs and ham" to "I LOVE green eggs and ham!" to "I do not like green eggs, but I like green ham!"  

We also continued our study of the body this week by learning about our organs.  The kids were very surprised to learn that our hearts are not really heart shaped.  We learned about our digestive system and measured a string to find out how long our small intestine would be if we stretched it out straight.  (16-25 feet in case you were wondering!).   

We watched as our ant colony, without a queen, began slowly dying out.  The kids wrote down some of their observations, one of which was that the ants bury the dead ants in a special ant hill, which the kids began calling "The Ant Graveyard".   However, in honor of our ant colony, we found our new favorite song called Ants in Your Pants .  Take a listen, and get ready to dance!

3, 2, 1, Blast Off!

3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF!

A big thank you to Nick Young for including us in his model rocket launch this week!  Nick taught the kids about how rockets work, what the different parts do, and had them make hypotheses about which rocket they thought would go the highest!  (Turns out, when you put the engine from the BIG rocket into the LITTLE rocket, it goes almost out of sight!)  We had a great time watching the spectacular launches.  We'll be making our own rockets later in the year when we study space, so this was a great introduction for the kids!

We started a unit in science learning all about our bodies this week.  We started off by being curious and asking questions, and these question will guide our unit.  We had some GREAT questions, like, "What is your stomach for?  How does your heart work?  How do you grow?"  and,  "Why do people puke?"  I love curious kindergarteners!!!  

We began studying bones and muscles.  We talked about how muscles get stronger with exercise, and did a few exercises in class. 

Then we began learning about our brains, and how even though our brains aren't muscles, they grow when we exercise them.  We talked about how we can help our brains grow when we think hard, and when we make mistakes and keep trying!  In fact, our brains grow the very MOST sometimes when we make mistakes and learn from them.  

Last but not least, on Friday we had some more critters join our class!  We began the year by talking about ants and how they work together, just like we do as a class.  So we got an ant farm!  We've had fun watching them already, and we'll be doing some experiments and writing about how they are working together!