Kacsko's Kiddos: Once Upon a Time...

This week has been all about fairy tales. We read Goldilocks, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Enormous Turnip. Mrs. Taylor brought in her Faerie Tale Theatre collection (that's really how it's spelled) from the 80's and the students watched "Jack and the Beanstalk" during inside recess this week. The fairy tales really engaged them and the students participated in discussions about the characters and the settings. We also worked on sequencing the stories from beginning, to the middle, to the end.

We learned the letters Ww and Xx this week. You may notice your child calling it a "wouble-u" and that's okay by me. After all, I'm the one that taught them to say it that way! I tell the students it's real name, of course, but I explain that we will nickname it wouble-u to help us remember it says wuh.

As you know, we are almost finished with the alphabet. So we are getting ready to CELEBRATE this milestone with a party! Start planning now with your child to come up with a letter-themed outfit (not a Halloween costume). If you need some ideas, take a look at the outfits from last year's Alphabet Par-tay!

Now that we're in November, our Smart Board calendar math has a new look - again! We always start group math time with a math song. This month, we are learning to count by tens. This week we have been singing "Climbing Up This Mountain" to teach us how to count by tens (and it lets us MOVE our bodies which is always a good thing when you're five).

Once we're done singing and moving, we settle in and work on the calendar. We usually have birthdays marked on each month, but we have no November birthdays in either class! The music note you see next to the month, is a link to the Months of the Year Song. We listen to this song 4-5 times each month. The red squares are interactive buttons that become transparent upon touch. The students figure out what will come next in the pattern and then I touch and reveal it. While we are on this page, we count down the days until our Alphabet party and Thanksgiving, we identify the days of the week, and complete and read the date.

Next, we play "Who's Coming to Dinner." I designed this game to help us decompose teen numbers into a group of tens with ones left over. This student, Tyler, spun a 13. He chose between the 3 plates on the table and set his Thanksgiving Day tables for 13 guests. We say that the top table is the "grown-up" table and the bottom table is the "kiddie" table. Then we say the addition equation it illustrates, "10 + 3 = 13." Just like our Trick or Treat game from last month, every student will gets a turn, and we record how many are in each child's "dinner party" and discuss which is the most, which is the least, and if there are any equal amounts.

A staple every month is our Days in School tracker. This month we are following Tom Turkey through the number grid. I have told the students that we will have a big 100th day party, so we are starting to count the remaining days until the 100th day of school. Once we add a ones unit to the days in school, we get to exercise. Today we did 61 exercises to represent our 61 days in kindergarten.

The final page is most likely their favorite. Both classes are building a turkey and each class can keep up with the other's progress (this is getting them familiar with the same game they will have in the Math Games center in two weeks). This activity is sharpening our addition skills and teaching them SMASH addition (we smash the higher number on our hands and then count up the lesser number on our fingers. I'll post a video next week to give you a better idea). So far, neither class has gotten the sum of 7 that they need to actually start putting their turkeys together, but they have plenty of feathers waiting for that body!

As far as centers go this week, we had a few new ones and a few repeats. The puzzle center was one of the new ones. The students enjoyed putting together this Ocean Life puzzle.

The Word Work center was also new. The students rolled a number on a dice which coordinated with one of six sight words. They wrote the word that matched up with the number they rolled.

We didn't get to have a truly Fun Friday since it was only a 4 day week, so there was no art project. But the morning class did get to make a banner for our Veterans' Day assembly which they are attending Monday morning.