Sensing Fall!

We went outside for writing last week, to explore our senses and draw and write about them!  We had fun tasting cranberries, touching everything we could get our hands on, and smelling lots of old leaves, listening for birds and airplanes, and seeing beautiful fall leaves!  The kids said they always want to have writing class outside!!!

We explored our sense of sight by watching a video of how animals see differently than we do.  We also learned about people who don't have their sense of sight, and how they read with braille!  

We combined our study of the sense of hearing with learning about the letter M for music!  We made some great music in our classroom with instruments.  

We practiced using describing words with a sense of touch game.  The kids had to feel something in the box, and describe it to their friends to try to guess what it was.  It was tough!

We played "Guess that smell" and found out how hard it is to identify smells unless you use your other senses as clues, too!

Everyone's favorite sense this week was probably exploring the sense of taste!  Ms. Charlotte, one of our awesome aides, shared her award winning apple pie recipe with us.  We learned how to read a recipe and practiced reading the numbers before we began cooking.  We had a great time making the pies and then sharing them with our families and our first grade friends at a pie party!!!

Here is the recipe if you want to try it at home!

In math we are exploring the concept of equal.  We used balances to demonstrate equality and inequality.  We also learned about how Native Alaskans used boats for fishing and how to load the boats carefully so they are balanced.  We learned a bit about fractions and following directions when we made our own paper boats and loaded them carefully with playdoh to see if we could balance them in the water!  The kids couldn't believe me when I told them we were going to do math with playdoh.  It was so much fun!!!  

In math also we finished our 10 Apples Up On Top project... We found out that it is a lot easier to balance apples with glue on paper than it is to balance them on our heads!  

Next week is Spirit Week.  The kids are encouraged to participate in dress up days to show school spirit!  

Don't forget to bring warm clothes, puddle boots if you have them, and extra clothes for our field trip to Moon Lake on Monday!

Two Apples Up On Top

It's fall time, and we've been learning all about apples.    We had an apple tasting party and made a graph of our favorite kind of apples!  We read about apples, counted apples, colored apples, tasted apples, and we'll be cooking with apples next week!  We'll be making apple pie and you're all welcome to share it with us next Wednesday at 2pm!

We read Dr. Seuss's book, Ten Apples Up On Top, and then had a hilarious time trying to balance apples.  We only got up to two.  

We are moving right along in reading and math.  This week we started our math and reading groups.  We do a lot of small group work so that the kids get more one-on-one time with the teacher.  The kids are enjoying working together and helping each other with their math... Buddy Math!

One piece of our reading curriculum is a new computer program the District invested in this year called Lexia Core 5 Reading.  It is an adaptive program that places the kids at their own level, and teaches the kids game style, while providing data and feedback to me on which skills the kids need more work on with the teacher.  We are really excited about Lexia!  Of course, we still spend lots of time with real books, doing read-alouds and guided reading and phonics skills in our classroom!

We got to participate in the District cross country race held at Tok on Thursday...  ALL of the kinders ran a 1/2 mile!  I was so proud of them!  They had so much fun they wanted to run some more!  

Bring on the new year!

We have already begun to feel like a classroom family.  We have 10 students, and I keep asking them, "Are you sure you haven't been in Kindergarten before?"   It is going to be a fantastic year, I can tell already. 

The kids colored a poster that says, "You are the BEST kindergarten class in the world!" And I remind them of that frequently!

We started off Monday morning by making Kissing Hands with our parents, to say good-bye. 

We spent a LOT of time this week going over routines.  We have routines for everything!  Morning work, Morning Meeting, lining up, going to the bathroom, doing classroom jobs, eating lunch, going to recess, etc. etc.  First thing in the morning we check our "toolboxes" and make sure we have all the tools we'll need for the day.

We went on a scavenger hunt all around the school to practice walking in the halls and get familiar with the school.  We even found a print of Big Foot!  

In math we are just doing some placement testing and working on basic number writing, counting and patterns.  We'll start our My Math curriculum this week. 

Like all of the elementary classes, we have a STARS class in the afternoons.  This quarter, all of the Kinders stay with me, and we are working on KinderTech 101.  The following three quarters the kids (with your guidance) will be allowed to choose their STARS interest-based class, based on space availability!  

In Kindergarten we LOVE to make mistakes.  That means our brains are growing!  Here the kids are doing exercises to build their muscles.  But then we talked about how to make our brains grow as well... by making mistakes and learning from them.  So if your child comes home and says, "I made a mistake today!" that would be a positive thing!  

Here is a word web that we made of our favorite things to do at school, to brainstorm our journal writing ideas.  The kids write in their journals almost every day.  We start off with tracing and illustrating their ideas.  By the end of the year you will be amazed what they can write!

We did take some time to rest this week... we call this Pillow Pet time, because each of the kids have a pillow pet that comes out only at read aloud time.  We all need to chill out sometimes!

We also did a lot of playing this week!  

We practiced center rotation by exploring some of the fun things to do in our classroom... cabin, sand, legos, and reading jungle are some of the favorites!

We had a special guest, Ms. Mari Hoe-Raitto, an administrator of the A-CHILL grant, come in and teach us an introductory lesson about dog mushing.  We will be working with her throughout the year to have more experiences with dogs and mushing!  She brought a very sweet helper with her, Bud.  

We learned some important lessons last week about teamwork, 

and how every piece of the puzzle is important, 

just like every single member of our classroom family is important!