Fall Harvest Celebration

What an exciting day in Kindergarten!  We had a very special visitor this morning…Maryn's big sister, Arynda Bloom came to see us!  She is home on leave from the U.S. Coast Guard.  It was so exciting to meet her and learn about all of the things she does.  Thank you for your service to our country Arynda! We hope you can come visit us again soon.

Then it was time for our Fall Harvest Celebration.  We had five activities to participate in and we all had a great time!  These activities included a bean bag toss, pass the pumpkin, bingo, relay races and play doh.  Check out the photos below to see our fun time…

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

There is no way we could have had such a fun time without the help of these wonderful volunteers.  Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to make sure we had fun…we are grateful!!  A special shout out to Colleen Frank and Traci Schmitt for coordinating this event.

Math Work Places

About one day a week, we spend time during Math doing our Math Work Places.  Math Work Places are activities designed for individuals or small groups that focus on some of the skills we work on in Math.  Doing work places during Math is teaching us to be responsible for the materials in each work place, how to work together in a small group of by ourselves, and how to treat the materials in a respectful, safe manner.

We use this pocket chart to help us know what to do.  On the left are cards that tell us which work places we will be using that day.  To the right of each card are our name cards.  These tell us specifically which work place to go to.  Today, we used the following work places:  Beat You to Ten; Geoboard Shapes; Unifix Cube Patterns; Which Bug Will Win?; Polydrons and Pattern Blocks.  After we look at the pocket chart, we find our assigned work place and get to work!

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

Participating in Math work places is helping us to become more independent with our learning.  It is also lots of fun and we love doing it!

A Great Day!

In Writer's Workshop, we content to practice our storytelling skills.  Each session begins with a friend telling us a story about something real in their life.  When the student is done, our classmates get to ask questions or make comments on the story.  We are learning to be great speakers and great listeners!

   

Next, we have our mini lesson.  Today, Ms. Kieltyka modeled a lesson for us about visualizing.  We learned that visualizing means to make a picture in your mind or a mental image.  If writers visualize their story, it helps them to draw or write their story.  So cool!

Then we have writing time.  We work in our own Drawing and Writing journals and draw or write our own stories.  Look at what some of us did today...

   

Here, one of our friends drew a story about his brother being sick and not able to go trick or treating.  Look at the great details!

   

In this one, a friend drew her story.  Then she went back and added some words or labels to her picture to help the reader understand it better.

And in this story, this friend made a mistake when she was drawing her picture.  The cool thing is she did not get frustrated or upset…she just fixed it quick and moved on!  At the end of our Writer's Workshop sessions, we share our great writing each day.

I have to say that this was one of our best days in Kindergarten so far.  Everyone worked so hard and had such great attitudes!  I was so proud that everyone earned a Shining Star for the day.  Congratulations, Kindergartners!  Keep up the good work!