Continuing our travels...

Gingerbread boys and girls of Room 18

We continued our trip around the world learning about holiday traditions in Greece and Mexico. The students learned that stockings at Christmastime originated in Greece! Everyone made their own stocking and we hung them in the classroom!

Lia and Cynthia's patterns on stockings!

We also visited Mexico and worked on a "stamping" craft to make poinsettias! 

Lowell's poinsettia

The students also practiced writing some of their sight words in letters to Santa or Mom and Dad.  First they brainstormed to think of things they wanted and then wrote them in a letter!  They will take these back home to you for you to read and then you can send them off!

Making a list...

After learning about the letter Ii and its short and long sounds, the students sorted pictures as one of their Daily 4 centers.  After practicing identifying these sounds, they spelled them.  These pictures all had a magic "e" at the end to make the /i/ long.

One of our Daily 4 centers is always reading! Each group practices reading books that are at their level several times a week.

Reading groups!

For math we've been working on combinations to 5 using beans, beads, stockings, etc.

The students practiced making 5 in different ways with their bracelets!

Shake the Beans! The students shook the beans to
find combinations to 5 and write additions sentences!

Holidays Around the World

We began our month long journey to learn about holiday traditions around the world!  This week we visited Germany and learned that Christmas trees and gingerbread originated there.

Each student will color a map and flag of each country we visit.
They will keep their projects inside of these "suitcases"!

We integrated math with art in this Christmas tree project. The students made the tree beginning with the longest strip. They used words like "longer, shorter, longest, shortest."

Nicky's Christmas tree

We also read The Gingerbread Man! They had fun comparing and contrasting the different versions.  In their Friday Folders, you will see they practiced sequencing and retelling the story in order, measuring a gingerbread man with cubes, and recreating the book.  We also wrote in our journals using our new sight word "and".

We had fun retelling the story with our friends!

In math, we are continuing to learn about "teen" numbers. We are practicing writing, recognizing, and building them.  

Building "tens" and "ones"-Place value!

Time for Thanks!

This week we learned more about the first Thanksgiving.  The students wrote down items they would have brought on the Mayflower if they were Pilgrims long ago. They also made pilgrims and wrote something they have that Pilgrims did not.  They had fun comparing and contrasting their lives with the Pilgrims!

Charlie has a white board, but a pilgrim did not.

Zoe has a phone and a pilgrim did not.

They also learned about symbols and how the Native Americans used them.  They drew symbols to represent Weather, Food, Clothing, and Shelter.

Julian's shield

We practiced ABC patterns using three colors on our corn.  Check out our awesome corn stalks!

Growing patterns!

With the feathers the students designed for homework, we put together a Fancy Fancy Feathered turkey. Thank you for helping with this fun project!

Room 18's Fancy Feathered Turkey

Falling into Fall...

We had a lot of fun learning more about Fall this week.  We read and learned why the season is called, Fall! The students had many questions about leaves so we continued our investigation by looking for leaves outside.  Each student also had their hand traced and were asked what they are thankful for.  We created this beautiful tree of "thankful hands".

The students drew leaves and traced it with magic black glue!

Then they used watercolors to paint it Fall colors!  They sprinkled salt over the watercolors and were fascinated by the results!  They also worked hard on making patterns for the border of the paper.

We made these Q-tip Fall trees a math activity! The students counted to thirty for each color as they painted each "leaf".

Fall tree art

To practice our new sight words "is" and "are", we identified them in a book titled, Scarecrow Colors.  The students read familiar color words as well as their new sight words. They also made this fun poem, "Scarecrow, Scarecrow" and identified an old sight word, "you".

Jospehine's Scarecrow, Scarecrow poem

The students also practiced their new words as they wrote about their scarecrow art.

Drew wrote: Scarecrows are not scary. My scarecrow is funny.

  

Happy Halloween!

We continued learning about the letter Aa and the short and long sounds it can make! The students learned that in some words, there is a magical letter "e" that can change the short vowel sound to a long vowel sound!

The students sorted the pictures by their vowel sounds.  Short /a/ and long /a/!
We then practiced spelling the long /a/ words with the magical letter "e"!

To continue our practice with sight words, the students recreated a familiar favorite, Brown Bear, Brown, Bear What Do You See? into their own Halloween versions! 

They identified their old sight words as well as their new sight word, "you".

Our Halloween Day was so special thanks to all of your help! Special "thanks" to our Room Moms and Becky Leehey for organizing the pumpkin donation! The kiddos loved them! 

Josephine working on her spider hat!

Spooky spider snacks!

The Kinders had so much fun "trick-or-treating" around our classroom!  Starting with number "1" they had to find the next bucket with treats!  It was so fun they didn't realize it was a math activity too!

Recognize the number and find the following treat bucket!

Spiders and bats, oh my!

We did a lot of research this week on spiders and bats! We read informational books and recorded many facts.

Drew wrote: Spiders can climb!

We also learned the word "arachnophobia"! We graphed how many students are afraid of spiders and how many aren't afraid!  They completed their own bar graph and tallied the information!

Most of our class isn't afraid of spiders!

To practice our Word of the Week, we sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider song and counted how many times the word "the" was in it!  The class was so excited to hear how many times it appears in the song.  We practiced the word by writing it to fill in the blanks and created our own "waterspouts" for the spider to climb!

Zayne's "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" craft

Using our Letter of the Week, Aa, we practiced phonetic spelling as well as learning how to make word families with the letter.  When spelling word families, we spell correctly! (i.e. mat, sat, rat, man, tan, can)

We made these Word Family spiders with the "-at" and "-an" families.  To practice reading the words fluently, we played a fun game!  I read a word aloud and the students had to quickly find the word, put the magic rock on it, and raise their hands!  The first table to find the word received a point! (All of the tables won in a 4 way tie!)

Julian's word family spider

Little Pumpkins Hard at Work

We continued having fun with pumpkins this week! We read the story, The Five Little Pumpkins and learned about ordinal numbers!  We had fun acting out the story using our bodies, felt pieces (thank you, Anne Hicks-Bleecker!) and our magic board.  Ask your child to read it to you at home!

Michael's Five Little Pumpkins book

We played a game, Roll-a-Pumpkin, to practice counting and reading numbers.

Roll-a-Pumpkin!

Another pumpkin math activity was Pumpkin Measuring! The students used different items such as cubes, bear counters, and tiles to measure different sized pumpkins.

Measuring pumpkins! Charlie made it into an AB pattern!

In math, we've been learning about "tens" and "ones".  This is a great introduction to place value!

Zoe sorts "tens" and "ones" base ten blocks

Every week, we make a page for our Star of the Week's special book! We practice using uppercase and lowercase letters appropriately, spacing between words, sight words, phonetic spelling, and punctuation!  

Alison made a beautiful page for Zayne, our Star of the Week!

Pumpkin Time!

We began our Fall unit with pumpkins of course!  The students learned all about the pumpkin life cycle and made their own to retell the stages of the life cycle.


We mixed yellow and red to paint our own pumpkins...then we turned them into jack-o-lanterns.  We discussed how facial expressions can show how someone (or a pumpkin) is feeling.  They added eyebrows, eyes, mouths, and teeth to create their one-of-a-kind jack-o-lanterns.  We used adjectives to describe our pumpkins too! Check out the use of sight words and phonetic spelling!

I can see my fat sad pumpkin.-Zayne

I can see my scary pumpkin.-Jack

The students used shapes to make another jack-o-lantern and practiced counting and adding!

Seth's jack-o-lantern!

A few days a week, we have a center time we call, Daily 4.  The students practice many literacy skills such as: writing, working with words, listening, reading to others and reading to themselves.  Here are some of the activities we had fun with this week.

Sorting beginning sounds

Handwriting practice

To practice our new sight word "like" we looked through magazines and catalogs to find things we like! 

Looking for books and characters we "like"

 

Tracking-pointing to each word as it is read

After looking at many pictures of beautiful sunsets, the students created their own picture perfect pumpkin patch sunsets!

Vancennzo's "Pumpkins at Sunset"

Our Five Senses

We played many games to learn about each sense!  For sight, they used their sight words to write what they could see!  They also brought labels and signs from home for our poster.

I can read a lot of things!

For hearing, we read the story Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? and made all the animal sounds in the story.  We made our own Halloween versions too!

Peyton hears a ghost "booing" in her ear!

We had fun with our smell jars and taste test too!  Many of us liked the smell of cinnamon and of course the "sweet" tastes like chocolate chips and Skittles!

Categorizing foods: sour, sweet, salty, bitter

Sorting our 5 senses

The students also played a "touch game" where they had to feel items in a bag and guess what they were without looking as well as pull items from the bag that they thought felt "soft, fuzzy, hard, smooth, and rough".  We had fun writing our sight words in mushy shaving cream too!

"I can"

As a little sneak peek of what our Math Center time looks like, here are a few pictures of the students hard at work counting, adding, making patterns, and practicing number writing.

Roll the die, add the number of bears to the cup! Whoever fills their cup first wins!

Ten frames and number writing practice

Number sense game-introduction to "tens" and "ones"

Making patterns on ipads