We had a wonderful day. Mr. McPeak helped out in our class today since it was my turn for professional development to work on curriculum mapping. Each teacher is assigned a day once a month to do curriculum mapping. The students learned more about Joseph and how God used him to save his family and others. It is an encouraging lesson that helps us remember how God works out everything for our good. Later the students worked on another rotation of literacy centers and then thematic centers on insects. In the afternoon the students enjoyed playing a spinner game to practice comparison of sets. They drew cards and counted the sets carefully. Then they built each number with a set of cubes. They compared cube sets to see which had more and how much more. Then they used a spinner with the words more and fewer on it to determine who got the point and was able to keep the cards. It was also Johnny Appleseed's birthday today. The students enjoyed making puppets to celebrate and had fun using them to sing the "Appleseed Prayer" song.
Today we learned about how God used Joseph. He was hurt by his brothers and sold, but yet God worked things out for good in order to save his family. We can be sure that God has everything in life under His control. We often cannot see or understand the reasons for everything, but we can rest assured that God is in charge and that His saving grace prevails.
We began a new set of literacy centers today. Students are learning to write stories and to choose original characters to fit a setting. Often students want to put themselves in the story as the characters. However, it is good for them to learn to write about a fictional character. They are also sorting cards by character or setting. Another center helps them to play a sight word spinner game to see which sight word gets to the top first. At the Phonemic Awareness center students are using magnifying glasses to find pictures that begin with the same matching sound. At the alphabet table students are using dabbers to create a path of letters that match letters they roll on a letter cube. We continue with some insect thematic centers. I will describe those more in depth in the next couple of days. We had a lot of fun learning about insect parts through some videos and some movement songs. It was a very exciting and busy day in kindergarten! The students had fun making applesauce from the apples that they picked at the orchard on Monday. They had fun estimating how many seeds were in the apple that they picked to put in the applesauce. After they used a special machine that peels, slices, and cores, they had fun seeing who had the longest apple peel that did not break. Elijah won the contest! Each student then finished chopping their slices and added them to the bowl. It was fun for them to add water, sugar, and cinnamon. While they waited they worked on little apple books. When each child got their apple core, they counted the seeds and compared the actual number to their estimate. Most guessed more seeds than the apple actually had. It was fun to glue the seeds into their books. After the apples were cooked and soft, the kids had fun turning the handle on the food mill to finish the process of making applesauce. It was a great treat to eat the homemade applesauce. The students also had fun making "Jacob's ladder" pictures to go with our Bible story. We are so thankful that God keeps His promises and turns out everything for our good. We can trust in His steadfast love like Jacob. The kindergarten students also had fun playing frog jump/lily pad relays as well as crab walk relays in the gym. We worked more on comparison in Math as they identified which sets had fewer. The students also compared their apple seed estimates to the actual number counted and identified which number was less. Finally, the kids were excited to have an apple taste testing party. The students were able to taste Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp, and Fuji apples. It was fun for them to graph the results and by only one vote, Fuji won the contest.
We celebrated Ezra's birthday today! It was a super celebration because it was also a "Zero Hero" day. Not only was it Sept. 20, but it was also our 30th day of kindergarten. The students love dancing and counting to 100 with the "Zero Hero" song. We continued another rotation of this week's literacy centers and many students enjoyed extra time after their assigned center to make a choice to work at the predictable sentence pocket chart or at the bee sight word pocket chart. It was fun to use little fly swatters to have a race to identify specified sight words on the bees. In Math students are learning to compare sets and use Math talk such as "6 is more than 3. 3 is less than 6. " Later in the afternoon the students had fun learning what scientists do. We had a special "Science Spin" newspaper that taught us about panda scientists. Then through a video we learned that scientists ask questions, observe, measure, predict, etc. On the playground we had quite a variety of scientists that were asking some very good questions and many made a number of excellent observations. They also found the tree from which certain brown leaves had fallen. Then they discovered some acorns and a variety of other items. It is a lot of fun to discover what God has created!
We started new literacy centers this week. Kids are having fun using bingo dabbers as they spin for a letter and dab a corresponding picture that begins with that sound. At another center they are finding words to write in a mini picture dictionary. At the Reading center students are learning to sequence steps to make an owl book. Then they are learning to put on their owl eyes as they use picture clues and initial sound clues to determine the last word in predictable sentences. They are also learning to match beginning sounds as they label pictures and think which word would match each picture. At the phonemic awareness center students are sorting pictures to determine which words have one or two syllables as they clap the word parts. In gym class the students had fun learning various animal walks. I set up "fitness stations" and students made their way around the gym with various movements such as "the elephant walk", "bunny jump", "frog jump", "crab walk", "gorilla walk", "seal walk", etc. In Math students learned to make sets of 6-10 pumpkins. As they arranged them on the page, they noticed that to go from one number to the next you add one more. It looks like a staircase. This visual is very important for students to learn about the concept of "one more". Students also had to use problem solving skills as they had to figure what to do for numbers 9 and 10 as the pumpkin strips only had 8 each. Some drew the extra pumpkins. Others finally determined that they could use the extra pumpkins left over from numbers 6 and 7.
The kindergarten students enjoyed the apple orchard today in spite of the rain. Thanks to everyone that drove and helped to watch the students. I really appreciated it! During the afternoon the students learned more about the growth of apples through some books and special learning videos. We even had fun singing some special apple songs. In addition, we learned about ways to show kindness to our families and friends. We also made a leaf pictograph to help us visualize how each number in sequence is one more than the previous number. Later we reviewed our Science unit on day and night. Then we took a test over the concepts we learned.
You may also find some more apple orchard photos at the link below: https://photos.shutterfly.com/story/90168112603/full/93451029224 |
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