Feel the Fall

Fall is (almost) upon us! So we spent this week learning about what we wear, see, play, and celebrate in this season.  

We started off the week wearing a classic fall color: orange! (The majority of the morning class actually wore orange - but I didn't get a picture in time. Womp, womp). 

At the end of the week, the students made a tree with all the beautiful fall colors using paint and qtips. 

Throughout the week, we wrote in our journals about the things we wear and the things we see in the fall.  We are working on adding detail, using more than one color in our pictures, and some are even beginning to write letters and words!

  

A few of our centers reflected what we were learning about the upcoming season as well.  The students worked a floor puzzle of the four seasons. 

And in the math games center, the students rolled two dice, added the dots, and picked that many apples from the apple trees, using tweezers. 

Once a student had a bushel of ten apples, they had enough to make an apple pie. So they traded in their apples and collected a pie card. This activity is very similar to an activity we play on the SmartBoard during calendar time everyday. 

Our other centers this week included stamping the alphabet and a few sight words...

and "cracking the codes" in the number work center.

In math, we touched on several learning targets. We have been working with making more and making less by using the plus and minus sign. We use this Curious George game on the SmartBoard in class to get the hang of it.  Another target we've been working on is recognizing teen numbers as being a group of tens with some "ones" left over. We watch this music video to reinforce the concept. 

In literacy, we learned how to sound out words.  Up to this week, we've worked hard on segmenting words (breaking a spoken word up into its individual sounds) and writing the letters we hear.  Now that we have learned a good amount of letter sounds, we are ready to sound out CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.  There is a great game on starfall.com that teaches this skill nicely.  Our classroom has a membership that allows us to play all five games (with the five vowels). At home, you have access to one of those games (words with short a only). 

There was other big news that I'm sure you've already heard about. This week was the kick-off to our Boosterthon Fun Run!

Students who have signed up online have earned their first prize: the coveted red sweat band.

Our class is close to our first goal of raising $5 pledge per lap.  Once we have, we will have hat day in our classroom.  If we make it to $7 pledge per lap, we will have a popsicle party! The students have until Thursday to get pledges. The money is due on Friday (but remember, your pledgers can also pay online). 

One more big story this week - we had two wonderful students receive the first character award of the year for respectfulness.  Way to go Jacob and Braellin!    

Now for a photo-and-caption-only recap of last week. (I was pretty under the weather last week, so the blog was put on hold).

It was purple week.

The theme was "Where We Live" and we explored it using Google Earth. We found Garth!

We talked about the places we go in our community.

They went to a restaurant in the word work center.  Completed the sight words and set the table. 

They went to the grocery store in the math games center: bought and bagged their own groceries.

They also played with bears in ten frames. 

And they laced/stacked things in the fine motor center.

Learned a new sight word review game (Quiz Quiz Trade) under the tutelage of some former kinder students.

Then we found our own place on the map by making a cool art project on Fun Friday.

Have a wonderful weekend and wear BROWN on Monday!