September Highlights...part 2

We usually start September reading stories by Eric Carle, especially The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  This reviews the days of the week and counting.  It also gives me an opportunity to introduce my favorite kind of art projects.  These art projects are called TLC directed art lessons, here is a description from their website:

The TLC directed art lessons help children:

• Learn to Follow Oral and Visual Directions
• Acquire an Understanding of How Shapes Work
• Develop Fine-Motor Skills
• Strengthen Eye-Hand Coordination
• Learn Color and Shape Recognition
• Develop an Awareness of Spatial Relationships
• Learn to Work Individually and Independently

Basically we start with squares and rectangles, no patterns, and we turn those shapes into other shapes, following step by step directions.  We start out pretty easy with our caterpillars.  We start with 7 squares and learn how to turn them into circles...cut off the corners and trim the points.  Once we have all 7 cut, we start from the back and make a pattern with the light and dark green circles, and we learn to overlap.  Then we add the red circle for the head and add the detail with out black crayon.

Here we have all of our caterpillars on the board.  I always love how they are all different. 

We also made our the backgrounds to our Johnny Appleseed directed drawings!

I love how these came out.  They did such a great job with their first directed drawing!  they even got to use a Sharpie to go over their pencil lines.  Of course we had the "Sharpie Talk" first.

 

 

And speaking of apples, what kindergarten teacher doesn't teach about apples in the month of September?

 

We started by learning how to make a graph with all of the apples that we brought to school.  We all just placed them on the graph at first.

 Then we talked about how all of the apples should be in their own rows, sorted by color.  We then talked about filling in the graph without leaving empty boxes in between on the graph so it is easier to read.  Then we were able to identify which color had the most and the least and compare the different colors.

 

We then began our Apple Investigation page.

The best part was the weighing of the apples.  We used one of our Science tools, the balance scale.  Thanks to Mr. Phillips for loaning us a bunch of balances.

 

Of course we had to have a taste test, to see what kind of apple we like the best.  I always do a graph with what they think is their favorite.

Then we do the taste test!

 

Then we make another graph to see if their choice has changed.

 

And of course we had to take the rest of the apples and make applesauce!  Thanks to Emery's and Gia's moms for helping us with the peeling and chopping.

 

And of course we had to make a chart to see if we liked the applesauce!

 

 

But probably the biggest highlight of the month...we had our first performance!  We had to move it to the cafeteria instead of the courtyard, but the children did a fantastic job and Mr. G got to play the piano!

 

All in all, September was a pretty busy and fun month.  Now we move on to October...

 

 

 

 

September Highlights

It is already October???  Where did September go?  It certainly was a busy time.  So let's see what happened in kindergarten last month.

 

We finished our Gingerbread Man activities, we will revisit the Gingerbread Man again at Holiday time!

 

And we finished our Brown Bear, Brown Bear characters!  This took a whole lot of cutting and gluing with our gluesticks, but by the end we were assembling them with little or no help from me!

 

 

 

Here is our "wall story" of the book!

 

 

We enjoyed more stories about our favorite cat...Pete.

 

 

 Read books on the carpet.

 And started working in Literacy Centers!  What are Literacy Centers you ask?  Well those are the games and activities we do to help us become better readers and writers.  They are also the activities that we start doing independently or with a partner so Mrs. Windom can get the FAIR test done, or work with a small group of students.

 I start Literacy Centers with a whole bunch of reading games and puzzles that I have accumulated over the years.  We are building words, practicing the letters of the alphabet, and matching beginning sounds and  rhyming pictures.  This just gets them started "working" with others.  I really emphasize that this is not a play time, it is a working time, but working and learning can still be fun!

 

We are practicing staying put and completing an activity, so the no switching rule is put into place at the beginning, otherwise I tend to see a bunch of "roamers", who just look busy.

 

We practiced our "kindergarten coloring" as we learned about sequencing by putting the nursery rhyme in order.

 

 

We started our Math Series and learned how to use the wand on the ActivBoard.  The wand is really coming in handy this year as we have a bunch of teeny tiny kindergartners in our class.  It is also easier for them to move things around on the board with the wand, no matter what size they are.

 

 

We found out that every Friday is Puzzle Day!  Instead of an activity set out at our tables we get to spread out, socialize and do puzzles on Friday mornings!

 

 

 

 

 

We also celebrated 2 more Zero the Hero days in September!  Who is Zero the Hero???  Well he is our very own version of a super hero who just happens to like numbers that end in zero!

 

As part of our morning calendar, we are counting the days we have been in school and coloring in the days on the 100 chart, of course we are also making it a pattern!  But as we get to the number that ends with a zero, we find this bag on the rocking chair.  It has a note inside, but more importantly, it has a treat...shaped like a zero, of course!

 

 The first two Zero the Hero days featured those yummy little donuts, Zero, (aka Mr. Windom) got a buy one get one deal at Publix!

 

and for our third Zero the Hero day, who doesn't love a few life saver gummies to start the day!

 

We also survived our first full moon followed by three full days of rain!

 

to be continued...

Update is on the way!

I hate when I tell parents to check the blog for updates and then I don't get to doing the update.  I got a lot of things done this weekend, unfortnately this never made it to the top of the to do list! I am going to try to get it done tomorrow!  I have pictures just hanging out in my camera, that need to be posted!

What a wonderful sweet article!

I found this article on facebook, shared by a former parent.  It really speaks to how so many of our lives are in this fast paced world and what happens when we make just a little shift!

The Day I Stopped Saying Hurry Up, by Rachel Macy Stafford