Spiders and bats and ghosts! OH MY!

So, I don't know if you realized it or not, but it was Halloween yesterday! (I was very adamantly reminded by 17 bright scholars, so I thought I would share the message.) We had a blast with our pumpkin Olympics, but before I share any of that I want to rewind to the beginning of this week. I felt bad for not having introduced many informational texts. I know they have to have some exposure in kindergarten, but I had been dreading it since I unpacked my library back in September. This week I finally pulled out some of my science readers to read to the kids. These are scholastic leveled science readers and they kept the kids entertained while still teaching them all about their respective animals! 

 

With it being Halloween I planned on a bunch of different crafts for the kiddos. I figured bats, spiders and ghosts were pretty Halloween-y and, with my science readers I found a way to tie it in with an actual learning concept (double score!) Our song of the week is "Itsy Bitsy Spider" so I figured we'd do our spider craft first. I found some cheap black plates (Hello Halloween sale!) and decided on a craft. Armed with my trusty scissors, white yarn and my newly purchased black plates I got to work prepping and creating my example. 

The next day after we all sang Itsy Bitsy Spider I sat down on the rug with them and asked them, in a very serious voice, "Boys and girls...that poor spider has been crawling up the water spout all week, and he just keeps getting washed away. What can we do to help him?" Now I got many interesting answers, but one quiet little guy raised his hand and said "Ms. P...spiders live in webs. Maybe we could make him a web to live in." I could have cried because it was the most perfect answer. After we all praised him for such a thoughtful and awesome answer, we all got up and went to our desks. I passed out our plates, and the white yarn. I showed them my example and then I showed them how to lace the string through the cuts in the plates. The kiddos had a blast, and now our spider has a comfy dry place to live!

This week we were also working with our letter Gg so naturally...we made ghosts!! Another fine motor activity that the kiddos loved to do. I gave each of them a Styrofoam plate (this would work A LOT better with paper plates but I had Styrofoam on hand) and had them flip the plates upside down so the part you would eat off was face down and I put glue along the rim of the plate. Each kiddo got a square of white tissue paper that they had to rip into strips and then glue on the rim of the plate. I drew eyes, a mouth and the letter Gg on the front. Next year I will do this with paper plates and the students will draw/write everything on their own. Here is the finished product for this year:

The last craft we did was for our bat. I read our little science mini reader and we did our big can-have-are page as a class. Then we started out bat-lacing project. I prepped this project by cutting out a bat shape out of a manilla folder and tracing each bat individually before cutting them out. Then I hole punched each hole onto the bat. There may be easier ways to do this, but I couldn't think of any. (Please share if you have any ideas on how to speed up this process and not kill my arm/wrist with hole punching!) I cut orange yarn and laced it through the holes. 

I did not expect this craft to be so difficult for the kiddos but A LOT of them struggled with the up-down in-out of the lacing. As a perfectionist, I have had to learn to embrace and love the imperfections. They are adorable and my students are so proud of how they turned out. I can't NOT love them. Just to see their faces and how excited they are to show me makes me so in love with the product. 

We did do pumpkin Olympics on Friday. Each student got their own mini pumpkins, courtesy of one of my parents. We did a science experiment where we guessed, or predicted, whether our pumpkin would sink or float, and then we tossed (ok, placed gently) our pumpkins into a big tub full of water. The kids were SO surprised to see my big pumpkin floating right along side their little ones! I think every single one told their mom or dad about it when they were getting picked up. We also did Jack-o-lantern bean bag toss, decorated our pumpkins with stickers and markers, and did five frames with pumpkin seeds. 

Overall, a great week. I had a blast and I know my kiddos had a blast. I can't wait for weeks to come. That's all I have for now. I'm off to go finish some products for the classroom. 

Always remember: every moment can be a learning moment. 

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

The pumpkins are coming! The pumpkins are coming!

Ok, so I think I may be the only person on the planet that gets THIS excited about pumpkins. I know, I'm silly, but for me...it's the little things in life you just gotta enjoy and for me it's PUMPKINS! (Really I love all my units of study from now until the end of the year, but this is the start of it and I'm just SO EXCITED I COULD BURST!)

My kiddos covered the life cycle of a pumpkin for this past week and boy did they do GREAT at it! I have to put a disclaimer out there...I HAVE THE BEST BUNCH OF KIDDOS EVER and they make my job super easy and fun. We started off with the plant unit last week to kind of lead into this unit (I totally planned it that way! No really, I did!) and that helped when we got to the different stages of the pumpkin life cycle.

We started the week with a big chart paper and some pictures from a pumpkin mini unit I downloaded from Mrs. Ricca's TPT store here! For my advanced students (who are working on blending and reading) they helped me spell out different words as we worked through our chart.

After we put the life cycle in order and filled in our chart, I taught the kiddos our life cycle song with the motions. (I wish I had video but alas...I did not think ahead!) It's to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell.

The seed becomes a sprout.
The seed becomes a sprout.
Hi ho did you know...
The seed becomes a sprout!

(repeat tune with each life stage)

The sprout becomes the vine.
The vine becomes a flower.
The flower becomes a pumpkin.

Hand motions:
Seed = fist with all fingers curled into palm
sprout = pointer finger extended like counting the number 1
vine = make a flat "shelf" with arm and hand all straight and parallel to the ground
flower = extend fingers like counting 5 or giving a high five
pumpkin = both hands in front of you pretending to hold a pumpkin (or a ball)

My motions were all created on the spot last year, but they worked for me so I reused them. If you have better ideas I would LOVE to hear them. I'm all for cute motions to help the kiddos learn.

Tuesday we did our pumpkin craft. OH MAN! Be prepared for the cuteness that my kiddos created!! (I think I'm biased, but meh I'm allowed.) I cut 6 pumpkin shapes for each kid in my class out ff orange construction paper. I then passed out a sheet with all the stages on it so the kids could cut them out. Before we did anything, we sang the song again so the kids could remember what we had focused on the day before. I hung the completed big poster up on my white board and then we began the craft. Now, I was VERY specific with my kids. Even down to asking them to find specific colored crayons and hold them up, so I could keep everyone on the same step and the same page. Once we colored everything I had them cut them out and glue each step on to the middle of one of their pumpkins.

From here, I planned to have the kiddos glue the pumpkins together...but we were using liquid glue which takes FOREVER to dry so instead I had the kiddos fold their pumpkins in half and I went around and stapled them to make our 3-D pumpkin!

 Adorable right!? Well I hole punched them and hung them from the ceiling above each kiddo.

 Tuesday we "read" through the pumpkin life cycle book that came with this mini unit and the kids got to color the pictures and take the book home. Thursday I planned on giving the kids a sentence strip and the stages again and then we would put the whole project together step by step, to really help them understand the stages...but on a hunch...I handed them all the materials and said "Ok guys...I wanna see what you know. Can you color these the correct colors and then put them in the right order??" I did leave the big poster up on the white board, but all I did was walk around and monitor to see if they really understood everything. I am proud to say...ALL BUT 2 OF MY KIDDOS DID THE PROJECT 100% ON THEIR OWN AND 100% CORRECTLY!!

I nearly squealed when I looked at them to see if there were enough of them correct to put up on the board. Out of 17 kiddos 15 did it perfect (granted some put them in order from right to left instead of left to right, or the pictures are upside down...but hey THEY'RE 4! That's really good for that age, with little to no direction!)

Here are the finished products!

What a great way to end! Like I said, I had planned on doing this activity together and then having them do it on their own on Friday, but rather than go back and rehash I let them come up with their own way to tell me about the pumpkin life cycles. A lot of them just sang the song I taught them, but one little boy (a little guy that is working on reading and blending already) actually came up with full body motions for the song. He curled up fetal position on the floor for seed, stuck his arm up into the air for sprout, Stuck both arms in front of him for vine, stood in star position for flower and tried to make himself a big ball by touching his toes for pumpkin. Oh my goodness, it was adorable. (Again, I wish I had video, but alas...not thinking ahead again!)

I can't wait to start our "Halloween" unit with our Pumpkin Olympics on Friday! We have some pumpkin math planned and some pumpkin science! Oh man. I'm so excited!!!

I hope everyone is having a blast in their class as well. 

And always remember: Every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Flash Freebie!!

Alright, so last night I got creative and now YOU get to benefit! I created a cute math center that (I feel) can be used all the way up to 1st grade (as a review or a foundations check.) It's called Candy Corn Number Match and it's going to be free for the next 2 hours.

What I have included in the pack is a set of colored candy corns that can be printed out on card stock, cut apart and then laminated. For those with very limited color ink (when I have to print in color I watch my $$ fly out the window) I have also included black and white pieces that can be run off on construction paper, card stock, any color your little heart can imagine! The colors typed on the pages are ONLY SUGGESTIONS. You can leave them as plain paper or laminate them for extra life and use them again year after year. 

Students must match the white part of the candy corn (that has a number and number word on it) to the ten frame in the correct orange section, to the correct set of tallies in the yellow part. Once they have matched all three parts they have correctly identified that specific number in 4 different ways!

I printed out five sets of the colored candies, cut them apart, laminated them and VOILA a new math center that my kids love to play at. 

I hope you love this (or just like is cool too) as much as I loved making it, and I hope it helps make identifying numbers that much more fun and simple!

So, until next time, always remember: every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole