The Q & U Wedding Special

Let's start with the biggest news of all this week. It was the wedding of the century.  Ms.Q, the queen of quilts, and Mr. U, a collector of umbrellas, tied the knot this week in our very own classroom! We watched them wed and celebrated afterward with cookies, punch, and dancing of course. I told the students to come dressed for a wedding.

Sharp dressed man, right?!

The AM class had a different groom than the PM class.

 The wedding was actually how we ended the week.  We began the week learning about fire safety.  We made an anchor chart with several rules about how to prevent fires and how to stay safe in case of a fire. The students chose one fire safety rule and illustrated it in their journals. 

I will feel the door

 Some of our centers had a fire safety theme as well. In the number work center, the students pretended to be firefighters.  They started with 20 blue pompom balls(representing water) in two ten frames. They rolled the dice and used tweezers to put that many puffballs on the fire to "put it out."

This is a link is to a great ten frame game your child can play at home.

And in the puzzle center, they put the firetruck puzzle together. 

They put CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words together in the word work center,

extended AB patterns using bugs in the math games center, 

and built cool structures with foam blocks.

By the way, Amelie is in her socks here because that was the "puffball" award was that day.  Whenever the students are doing individual work at their desks (journals and math worksheets) they have a chance to help their table earn a puffball. When all the students at a table are working quietly and staying on task, I drop a fuzzy, sparkly little ball on their table. Those students will get some sort of reward at the end of work time (but they never know what it will be). Sometimes its an extra trip to the water fountain, or a sticker, or a stamp, or a Skittle. Well, on Wednesday, they got what has proven to be the best reward of all: Center Time in Their Socks.  You would have thought it was Christmas day!

I missed posting the Friday before fall break, so I'll do an all picture-and-caption-recap to fill you in. The theme was APPLES.

Apple Tree Bingo

A game inspired by Dr. Seuss' Ten Apples Up On Top

We practiced making the first sound when coming to a word we don't know. 

We tasted red, green, and pink/yellow apples.

They liked them...

Then we made a graph using tally marks to show which apple was our favorite.

The red-head is my sister who subbed for me that Friday.

Fun Friday art project: An apple for each letter in our name, 

And it was pink day!

Born to Run

I suppose the biggest news this week was the awesome time we had on Thursday running laps for the Boosterthon Fun Run. Our classes ran through the tunnel as our class name was announced, "Kacsko's Kiddos" then we ran/walked for about 45 minutes, listening to music, laughing, dancing, stopping every lap to get our shirts marked.  As you can imagine, the students had a great time. I'm sure I'll be hearing soon, "Mrs, Lukacsko, when are we going to do the fun run again?" 

The music's blaring, the crowd is cheering as we dash through the tunnel. But sweet little Amelia still keeps a finger over her lips because we were still "in a line!" 

But there was some fast-paced learning going on in the classroom, too. In the math games center, the students explored shapes.  I didn't know if any of them would be able to do the wooden square puzzle- it is a challenge even for adults.  But the point was just to get them to see how you can combine shapes to make other shapes (two triangles can make a diamond, a square, another triangle, etc). But my little guy, Caleb, figured it out! 

In the letter work center, they matched uppercase to lowercase.  

In the fine motor center, they strung letter beads onto a string to make sight words.  This was good practice for the art project they would do later in the week.

They played a candy counting/sorting game in the ipad center.

And they played "Cover it Up" in the number work center.  They rolled four dice out of a cup (one dice had numbers 1-6, the next had 7-12, another had 13-18, and the last had numbers 19 and 20 with some frowny faces on a few sides. They covered up the numbers they rolled with unifix cubes.  This is a great way for them to learn numerical order and number identification up to 20.  

We learned the letters Mm and Nn in whole group literacy. In our mailbox this week we found a mug and a nest. "How are they alike? They hold things. How are they different? A mug holds coffee and a nest holds birds." This is an example of the quick conversations we have everyday at the mailbox. Its how we learn to compare and contrast and think critically.  They talk with a "teaching partner" and sometimes come up with ideas that I didn't think of before.  When we compared a map with a newspaper this week, these were some of the responses I got: they're both made from paper, you read them both, you hold them both, they both give you information. I am so pleased with how their little minds are working!

This week we also learned about living and nonliving things. We discussed how living things 1) breathe, 2)eat/drink. 3) grow/change. We came up with a list of both living and nonliving things and on Friday, they wrote about living things in their journals.  

Later that day, we did our very first "Write the Room" activity. I brought in some of my kinders from last year to demonstrate how the activity is done, then they got a chance to do it themselves. (The first graders feel so BIG and grown-up and the kindergarteners have such an admiration for them - so I've learned this is the best method for teaching new activities like this). 

I realize no one is smiling here but I promise they very much enjoyed this activity!

We finished up with our Fun Friday craftivity. This week we made a necklace for the letter Nn.  But we have also been learning about patterns.  So this was a good reinforcement for both learning targets. Most of them didn't come home with their necklaces though. They ate them almost immediately!  (By the way, pattern has only two syllables. Whoever is teaching their child to say "pat-ter-en"- Quit it! It drives me crazy)! 

These girls were good sports to wear the unfeminine color of brown this Monday - so next week, they get the treat of wearing the color that most likely dominates their dressers and closets - PINK! I'm hoping I have some boys that will rock the color, too. Have a great weekend!