A Peek into Our Week

We had a great week as we went on our field trip on Monday and ended the week with learning why a pumpkin floats.  Kindergarten is so much fun!

Writer's Workshop

One night I went trick or treating.

We are quickly approaching the end of our writer's workshop unit: Launching the Writing Workshop. We have moved from writing teaching books to writing stories.  The children have been practicing telling true stories with their writing partners and telling their stories across pages.  They have also continued to stretch out their words by hearing and recording sounds in sequence on paper.   This week, the children learned that famous authors have space between their words.  Therefore, the spaceman was introduced to the children to help support them with putting spaces between their words, a hard concept for them to understand.

One night, I was trick or treating.

The children learned how to use dialogue through the use of talking bubbles (speech bubbles) in their writing.  They loved adding these to their writing pieces and have started noticing talking bubbles in books!

Below is an anchor chart that was created (on the whiteboard, but will be transferred to chart paper) to help the children with writing true stories, which will be used later in the year for another writing unit that we'll complete.

This coming week, we'll wrap up our launching unit before jumping into our new unit: Looking Closely (Observing, Labeling, and Listing like Scientists).

Math

The children were introduced to the number rack (rekenrek), which is another math tool that allows the children to build their understanding of numbers.  With the number racks, the children were introduced to a new math station: Numbers & Number Racks.  The video below gives you a glimpse of what this math station is all about.

The children were also introduced to tallying (another concept that is hard to understand).  The children learned how to set up their craft sticks in tally form, exploring various groupings by adding 1 at a time until they reached 10.  On the second day of the lesson, the children built the quantity shown on the tally display cards and their craft sticks as a review from the previous lesson.  Then, the tally display cards were "flashed" and the children were asked to build what they saw.


Pumpkins

The children have started learning about pumpkins.  Miss Provost, my intern, started off this unit by reading the children a book about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  The children then had to recreate the life cycle in their science notebooks.  They also learned what pumpkins need to grow.  Thanks to the field trip, the children were able to learn more facts about pumpkins.

On Friday, we completed a science activity that had the children predicting if a pumpkin would float or sink in water.  A majority of the class predicted that the pumpkin would sink as it was heavy.  The children drew their prediction in their science notebook.  The two videos below show what two children's predictions were for this experiment.

After, we carried out the experiment and learned that a pumpkin floats!  Many of the children were saying they didn't understand why it was floating as it seemed so heavy.  The children recorded their observations in their notebook using pictures and words.  Lastly, we watched a quick video on Brain Pop Jr. about the concept of sinking and floating.  The children learned that in order for an object to float, it needs to weigh less than water and often there is air inside it.  Watching this video helped clear up any confusion they were having.

The pumpkin floated. 

The children were very curious to know what else would float and sink.  They even tried out some nature things in a puddle to see if they would float or sink during our morning walk.  I encouraged them to go home, fill up a sink or container with water, and find different objects around their house to see what would sink and what would float.  This coming week, we'll be performing another floating and sinking activity.

Celebrations

This week we were handing out green warm buzzes as a way to focus on respectful behavior, which our class earned several.  On Tuesday, we had a school wide celebration in the gym thanks to all the hard work of filling up the school bee hive.  Max's mom, Cayce, came in and got us moving first thing in the morning.  It was fun to dance and move our bodies.  What a great way to get us ready for the school day!