Getting into the Swing of Things...

Here are some words of wisdom from your kindergarteners.  We read a fable about a raven trying to look like a peacock, and when I asked them what they thought the lesson of the story was, here is what they came up with, all by themselves!

We started reading groups this week.  The kids are doing fantastic at rotating and staying on task, which is a really huge accomplishment for the second week of school!  This week the kinders began bringing home a book to read, with a blue slip to sign and send back to school each day.  It is very important that they read just a few minutes every night!  Thank you for your support of their nightly reading!

The kids had fun learning about shapes while making a present for their families with first day of school pictures!

We celebrated fall with an apple tasting party, and then graphed the results.  Turns out that Red Delicious apples are by far the favorite in our room!  

We took advantage of a beautiful Friday afternoon to go cranberry picking.  We learned about the native traditions of hunting and gathering, and discussed what it would be like not to have a grocery store here!  

When we got back to the classroom we did a language lesson on words that describe.  Here are the words that the kinders used to describe cranberries:

Then finally, we extended our apple graphing to cranberry graphing, only this time, we used ourselves to make the graph!  We made a human graph to show which students thought that cranberries were mostly sweet, or mostly sour.  As you can see, SOUR won!  This was part of the Math in a Cultural Context (MCC) curriculum that our school uses to supplement their regular math, and we'll be doing lots more of it throughout the year.  

Finally, Friday was exciting because it was the first Prize Card Store.  Each week the students earn pennies for bringing back folders (AND THOSE BLUE READING SLIPS! ☺)  Then they can use those pennies to go to the bank, exchange the pennies for nickels, and buy classroom privileges.  Don't be surprised if your kinder says they get to bring a show and tell, chew gum in class, or wear P.J.'s to school... they probably bought that prize card!