Pumpkins Everywhere!

Pumpkins Everywhere

Isn't that the truth!

All the munchkins brought in a pumpkin of choice for many of the activities of this fun fall unit.  It's always such a fantastic way to explore classifying & sorting, math measurement concepts and science life cycles. What a perfect assortment we had this year...from HUGE to small, short to tall, bumpy to smooth, and all sorts of colors!  We even ended up with a rotten one before the unit was over!

Scientific Thinkers!

We spent several different days sorting our pumpkins in all the different ways, while creating all kinds of graphs to show our results, too.   

Sorting...long stem, short stem, no stem!

 Hey, that's Miss D, our fantastic student teacher!

Graphing...small, medium, big

 

Converting our floor graph to a chart graph.

And then transferring our data!

 Then Miss D had the munchkins learning all about circumference by creating "belts" for their pumpkins.  The munchkins estimated the circumference, predicted if their estimation was too big or too small, and then actually measured the true circumference of their pumpkin.  It was lots of work, but our little scientists did a great job and came away with some great measurement skills and some new vocabulary to boot!

The Cycle of Life

This was a great unit to revisit what we know about plant life cycles and the beauty of God's hand in all of nature.  We took several opportunities to explore this...from sequencing card games, to ordering the stages of growth, to reading about the life cycle, to writing our own complete "pumpkin story ".  The munchkins did it all!

Much More...

We had lots of other fun with pumpkins and found them everywhere around our room!  There were lots of reading opportunities...

Like the pumpkin patch of words we know...

 And the pumpkin stories we read and made to take home.

And, of Course, Baking...

We can never get through a unit without a recipe (or in this case...two!)

Like mini pumpkin pies!

Pouring ingredients...

Mixing the filling...

Making graham cracker crust...

Finished!

Not too bad!

But then there was the recipe that mixed food with a story and song!

Five Little Pumpkins!

Ours were sitting on a "cookie" gate and as we read the book and sang the song, our pumpkins rolled away (into our stomachs, of course!).

And who can resist just a few more pictures of our munchkins hard at work throughout the last few week, whether it be reading, writing, counting or just plain having fun!

I supposed the best part of our unit (besides the food!) was putting the faces on our pumpkin friends.  We liked them so much, we decided to name them and write stories about them.  Yes...each munchkin wrote a 3 sentence story about his or her new friend.  What fantastic kindergarten writers!

 We were sad to see it end, but just as October was fading away, we knew it was time to harvest all the pumpkins (and take them home before any more ended up rotten!)  And so our classroom went from "pumpkins everywhere" to "pumpkins nowhere"...but...I hear we should be on the lookout for turkeys!

Until next time,

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

Wonderful Readers

Wonderful Readers

The munchkins began small group reading this week and boy has it been a hit!  Normally we don't start this until closer to Christmas, but this group has kind of taken off and done it one their own...so who am I to argue!  We mix and match partners and have special, fun little reading spots throughout the room.  The munchkins love gathering with their small group and finding a fun way to read the selection they have.  Will they all read it at once?  Or maybe take turns with each page?  Could be that one person reads the whole book while the rest of the group listens.  Sometimes they even take turns reading each WORD on each page! Now that is a creative way to read...but reading none-the-less!  And this group is a great group of readers. 

"In went the duck."

"Go to bed!"

"I see frogs.  Do you?"

"I see a pig on the farm."

Our emergent stories are fantastic for praticing all those skills that the munchkins are getting so good at using:  left to right sweep, 1:1 word matching, sight word recognition, using picture clues to decode unknow words, and attending to punctuation for voice inflection.  Not to mention...it's just plain fun!

I can't wait to see what they are reading in March!

Until next time,

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

Wishy Washy Days

Wishy Washy Days!

Oh, lovely mud!

There was never a dull moment in the kindergarten room during this crazy unit as we met and got to know Mrs. Wishy Washy and her mud-crazed farm animals.  This is a great story from which to teach emergent reading, print concepts, punctuation & voice expression and sight words, not only because of the text, but because the kids absolutely love to read it!  This group ate it up!

The munchkins had a blast preparing for all the fun with the first activity of the unit: Wishy Washy Fun Bags.  The bag itself is Mrs. Wishy Washy's dress and all her body parts are added to the bag to create a fun character.  We filled the bag throughout the two weeks of our unit with all sorts of language & math games.  The munchkins couldn't wait to take them home when out unit was over.

The excitement continued as we began to explore the components of a story: characters, setting, beginning, middle and end. We started with characters.  What better way to learn about the characters of a story than to become one yourself?  The munchkins had a blast sequencing the story and exploring each character through drama.  Plus, everyone got to make the stick puppets for their fun bags, so Mom and Dad can take part in the little productions at home, too!

"Oh, lovely mud," said the cow and he jumped in it!

"Oh, lovely mud," said the pig and he rolled in it!

"Oh, lovely mud," said the duck and he paddled in it!

Along came Mrs. Wishy Washy.

"Just LOOK at you!" she screamed.

What fun!

This unit provided tons of reading and writing opportunities as well.  The munchkins worked hard creating sentence strips to retell their favorite part of the story, and they wrote their own class version of the story.  These munchkins had Mrs. Wishy Washy washing all sorts of crazy things!





When it came time for reading, these munchkins were ready to go!  They did a great job creating mini-books to explore word families, making sight word flip books and partner reading from the story during center and free time.  It was so fun to hear the voices throughout the day, practicing all those words and working hard to use expression while reading!

And we can't forget, that during any unit, there has to be a special snack for recipe day!  Well, this one was no exception!  The munchkins made their own mud!  We created a class graph to see who would eat mud.  What do you think the results of that graph told us?!  Of course, these munchkins couldn't be tricked.  They knew right away that our mud was chocolate pudding!  We had fun mixing and stirring and of course, letting our animals (animal crackers, that is!) jump and roll in it.  And if they needed a bath?  Well that's what the glass of milk was for!

Pouring...

Mixing...

Rolling...


"In the tub you go!"

But let's not forget that we learned some math during all this fun too!  The characters of the story were fabulous little manipulatives to help us count, pattern, sort, graph and add.  The munchkins created a baggie full of little "counter" so they could practice all these great math skills during free time and at home too.  We had fun as a class working on our addition with our addition flashcards, which were a part of our "fun bag" too.







But let's not go until we take alook at these classics, which went into a book entitled:
Mrs. D Does the Wash!
Wishy Washy, Wishy Washy!

In the tub you go!


Until next time,
Giggles,
Mrs. D