More Writing and Sharing

We continue to work on our drawing and writing in Writer's Workshop.  As writers, we think about what we will write about.  We sketch or draw our stories in our Drawing and Writing Journals.  We are now starting to add words to our pictures.  These words could be labels or we may be starting to write sentences to go with our pictures.  We use the alphabet chart to help us write down the sounds that we hear in words.  Such an exciting time!

   

   

Sharing at the end of Writer's workshop continues to be one of the highlights of Writer's Workshop!  Sometimes we share in a large group, in small groups or even with one partner.  We are becoming great writers!

   

   

On Wednesday, Mrs. Radermacher helped us create our fall tree.  We used paint and our handprints to make the colorful leaves.  It was fun and it looks great hanging in the hallway!

   

Computer Lab

In computers this week, Mrs. Fleck introduced us to a new program…keyboarding.  She is teaching us about using the home row on the keyboard and teaching us the basics about how to use the keyboard, the shift and delete keys and the mouse.  We have also learned how to plug in and use our headphones properly.  

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Mr. Ball even stopped by to see what we were learning!

Pumpkin Investigation

Friday was all about pumpkins in Kindergarten.  Mrs. Clounch, one of the kindergarten teachers at Northview, actually grew these pumpkins.  She had so many of them this year that she shared some with all of the kindergarten classes!  We read pumpkin stories, completed a pumpkin sequencing activity, sang pumpkin songs and even colored pumpkins.  We also did some investigating of pumpkins, like real scientists.  Look what we discovered!

Did you know that pumpkins actually float?  We were not sure, so we made some predictions and tried it out.  They DO float!  Cool!

We learned about estimating today.  An estimate is a guess.  Sometimes an estimate is correct and sometimes it isn't.  Scientists have to guess about things, and then they find out if it is true or not.  Today we estimated how many lines were on our pumpkin and how many seeds we thought might be inside.  Then we actually counted!

We also had to think of words to describe the inside and outside of the pumpkin.  Some of us were not too excited to feel the insides of the pumpkin, but we all did it.  We came up with some great words!

   

We used some of these great words in our pumpkin song.  The most fun part of the day was going to gym with Mr. Nelson and doing the Freaky Fun Maze!!!

   

   

   

It was another great day in Kindergarten!

Adding Words to our Drawings

In Writer's Workshop this week, we learned about adding words to our drawing.  These words that we add to our drawings will help us to tell our stories.  We discovered that labels give readers information about a picture, so we decided adding labels to our pictures would be good.  But we had never done this before so we needed to practice.  We practiced by putting labels on Mrs. Kurt!  We decided which parts of Mrs. Kurt to label and Ms. Kieltyka wrote the words on post it notes.  

   

Mrs. Kurt sure looked silly, but it really helped us to understand how useful labels are!

   

During our writing time, we worked on adding labels to our pictures.  Some of us are even starting to write sentences to go with our drawings.  

   

Soctober

Our service learning project for October was to collect socks for Mary's Place, a homeless shelter in Minneapolis.  Our school goal was to collect 200 pairs of new socks to be donated.  Thanks to the generosity of our Northview families, the All Stars collected over 400 pairs of socks.  We decided to count how many pairs of socks we collected in our class.  Using tally marks, we counted and kept track of the socks we collected.

Wow!  I am so proud of our kindergarten All Stars and their families for giving to others.  Thank you!  We also liked celebrating by wearing our crazy socks to school, too.

Diwali

On Tuesday, there was a special visitor that came to talk to all of the kindergarten classes.  It was Anitha Narayanasamy, Pritesh's mom.  She came to teach us about the celebration of Diwali.  Diwali, also known as Deepavali and the "festival of lights" is an ancient Hindu festival celebrated in the fall every year.

   

Anitha was very brave…speaking to three kindergarten classes at one time!  

   

She showed us some amazing photographs and some really cool artifacts that her family actually uses when they celebrate Diwali.

 We really learned lots from her visit.  Today we did some community writing to thank her!

If you happen to know anyone who celebrated Diwali (and we do!), be sure to wish them "Happy Diwali!"

Fall Celebration

Thanks to everyone who made our Fall Celebration possible  today.  We really had a great time and are so grateful for our amazing volunteers!  Enjoy the photos!