Welcome Back, Ms. Roberts!

     Today we welcomed Ms. Roberts back into the Kindergarten world!  We are so happy to have her here with us.  I will be in the room with her through tomorrow to ease the transition.  I have truly enjoyed having these Kindergarten adventures with your students!  I will continue to work at Maple daily, and will visit often.  

Keep working hard and have a great rest of your school year, I leave you in wonderful hands.

Goodbye, Adios, and Zai Jian for now Kindergarten!

Mrs. Huminsky :)

And We're Blending!

The first step in teaching children to read phonetically is to teach them letter-sound correspondence.  They've been doing great with that! (Click here to re-visit my prior post on one of our phonics strategies.)  Next, the students must learn how to blend these sounds together to make words.  I am always looking for ways to have the students be hands-on with their learning.  Thanks to Pinterest, I found a use for some leftover plastic eggs and created these:

The short side of the egg creates rotating beginning sounds.  The longer side of the egg holds the ending sounds.

This student is copying the new words she is creating with each turn.

Here two students are working together with their blending eggs.  The dots under each letter represent them  reading each sound as they decode their words.

It took a little practice, but the students in my guided reading group were blending words with different beginning sounds in no time!  Awesome!

Native Americans- Legends, Art, & Writing

As part of our Thanksgiving theme, we have been learning about Native Americans.  We read the Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola.  

We then colored our own Native American pots using a chalk blending technique that mimicked the art in our story.

Finally, we wrote a description of our own Native American art.

What do 95 feathers of Kindergarten thankfulness look like?

This.

:)  

Math Teams! Measuring with Sticks

Today we continued our unit on measurement and did something really fun!  When the students came back to class from music, they found that they had been divided into "teams."  After a brief classroom discussion on measuring lines with sticks (being sure to measure end to end, keeping sticks lined up and close together, and taking an accurate count), they were sent off to work as a team complete the challenge of measuring the lines at their tables.  They worked very hard to make their measurements!

Then, I surprised them by letting them switch tables and check another team's work.  They were allowed to make stars or smiley faces on the answers they agreed with and correct those that they didn't.  Fortunately, almost all were correct and they were all very congratulatory on each other's excellent work!

 

Thanksgiving & the First Americans: Virtual Tour of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

     This coming week, we will be talking about Thanksgiving.  We will be learning about the holiday, its traditions, and history.  With its history comes some interesting facts about Native Americans, also known as American Indians.  My family and I were able to go to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History this weekend.  What a great afternoon it was!  We learned about many new things, including facts about the American Indians.  While I was there, I decided to take some pictures to share my learning adventure with you! Take a look and a virtual tour of  these artifacts with me:

Welcome to the museum!

The Native Americans used stone to make tools and arrowheads.

Clay pottery and dishes, decorated by the Indians.

(Take a close look at the pottery, we will be making our own "chalk pots" this week!)

Models of what the Native Americans looked like

Native Americans were all over the North America.  Here is Isaac pointing out a map of Indian tribes that were once right here in Ohio!  

They wore headpieces with beads and feathers.

Here are some more tools and a bear skin.

They even made toys for the children!

I am so excited to share these pictures and the Thanksgiving lessons I have planned for you next week!  

To learn more about the museum and all it has to offer, click on the link below!

Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Measuring Together

     In math, we continue to work on measuring, counting, and comparing.  This week, we measured something very familiar to us, our own feet!  Whenever we can all work together on a big project, it is a lot of fun!  First, we took turns tracing our feet then measured using the non-standard unit of linking cubes.  Once we had all of our feet measured, we compared the lengths and discussed who had the longest feet, shortest feet, and whose feet were equal length.  

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the nice weather!

-Mrs. H

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For...!

     Our letter of the week is "I." We used this opportunity to learn about one of my favorite things... ice cream!  Talk about a high interest subject! Shared writing today involved writing two good sentences using our newest sight words (see, go).  We illustrated our sentences with these colorful ice cream cones complete with glitter sprinkles.

     We even read a non-fiction book about how ice cream is made, acting out each step along the way.

    Then we wrote about it.  Remember those higher order thinking questions we have been working on?  Well, after reading the book, we went back to our seats and wrote about the sequence of events that lead to the ice cream.  We even used sequencing words (first, next, last).  

     So if your child comes home asking for ice cream, now you know why. Maybe they will even tell you a little bit about how it is made.  :) 

Wonderful work today!

 

Transportation: How do we get home?

     As already mentioned, we are studying transportation this week.  We have read several stories in our reading series and today we crossed that theme into our math time.  We decided to graph how we get home from school.  After discussing what form of transportation the students use to get home from school, I put the students to the task of organizing their data.  With a little of my help, here is what we came up with:

     A giant graph makes it very easy to see which form of transportation is used most often and least often in our class!  We counted, compared, labeled, and discussed our findings.  Great job, Kindergarten!

On the Go & 50 Days Smarter!

Big Book: Reading about transportation in other areas of the world

     This week in Language Arts, we are talking about transportation.  The students really have fun with this subject and it goes well with our sight words of the week: see and go.  Here are just some of the things we worked on today:

Brainstorming and listing forms of transportation we know

Sentence writing during guided reading centers

Reading with friends in small group time

...and independently writing about the way "we go."  :)

Another day of hard work in our Kindergarten room!  It's the 50th day of hard work, in fact! Can you believe it??

We are 50 days smarter, indeed! :)

Happy Halloween!!!

Waiting out the Storm...

     We love our recess time in Kindergarten, and for good reason!  Not only is it time for us to get fresh air, take a break, and socialize with friends, but research shows that students perform better academically when they get a chance to take a break.  Research also indicates that classroom behavior improves after some recess.  I feel this is definitely true in our class!  Sometimes though, the weather does not allow us to take a recess outdoors.  This leaves us to figure out how to take a 20 minute break and let our 5 & 6 year olds have a little playtime.  After all, we work VERY hard in our room, we've earned it.  :)  

     Today was one of those days.  This was the view from our room ALL day:

    By the time our recess rolled around this afternoon, we had to make due.  We played some games, worked with blocks, computers, books, art... but, shhh, don't tell them- these "playtime" activities also have many academic benefits as well.

Here are some of our recess activities today:

Exploring Magnets
(science)

Chutes and Ladders
(math practice)

The Ladybug Board Game
Students took turns pulling cards and moving their ladybug that many spaces.
(math/number practice)

Hullaballoo
This is one of my family favories.  The players have to listen for which shape, color, or picture is called next and move to it, usually in a silly way.  It's so much fun, and great practice in color, shapes, and careful listening.

     Just a reminder, we will try to go outside for recess whenever it's possible, so please remember to dress your child for the weather!  :)  Hope you all stay safe and warm during this storm!

-Mrs. H

...some other Halloween "Goodies"

We read a few non-fiction books about bats...

...and wrote sentences on facts we learned.

Shared writing about skeletons...

...and put together our own!

Spooky Math

      Because this week's theme is Halloween, we've had a great time incorporating some Halloween fun into our core subjects!  For math time today, we did this spooky activity:  After reading a funny book about a witch and ten timid ghosts, we responded by making our own haunted house and putting the ghosts in numerical order.  The students loved the story AND practicing their numbers!

How do Pumpkins Grow?

Last month, we learned how apples grow.  Last week, we learned how pumpkins grow.  We compared and contrasted these two fall fruits and sequenced the stages of a growing pumpkin.  Very fun and very fall! :)