Learning Makes Me Hoppy
l St. Josephs Schoo
Week of October 17-21
Whats Hop-pening in Kindergarten
My Little Pumpkins...
We made pumpkins of all sizes. We made lunch bag pumpkins by mixing our own orange paint. We used our primary colors, red and yellow, that we learned about in Art class. We added green pipe cleaner vines. One of them was transformed into a jack-o-lantern by adding eyes, mouth, and noses. We also saved the plates that we mixed our colors on...these will turn into pumpkins next week. We learned to sign pumpkin and jack-olantern. We made stained glass pumpkins using contact paper and tissue paper. These are decorating our windows. We learned the 5 Little Pumpkins poem and read the story. Afterwards we made a craft to go with this. We made a paper fence and grass. We used shaving cream and glue puffy paint colored orange to make our pumpkins. Gooey!! We learned another poem that follows the same pattern we have used many other weeks...This is Jack-O Happy, This is Jack-O Sad. We wrote about a jack-o-lantern in writers workshop. We wrote a sentence telling the audience if it was happy, sad, or whatever. These were great.
Math
We talked about circumference and estimated the circumference of our classroom pumpkin by cutting a piece of yarn to the desired length. Then we actually measured these on the pumpkin and classified our pieces of yarn as either, too short, just right, or too long. We estimated how many seeds are in our pumpkin...we will find out next week. Our answers ranged from 1,000,002 to 10. Who will be closest? We also graphed using a picture graph how we wanted to carve our classroom pumpkin: happy face, mad face or sad face Mad face won!During centers we counted real pumpkin seeds. We used orange cups with jack-o-lantern faces on them for a counting activity. The kids had to place the correct number of popsicle sticks inside each one. We also practiced our one to one correspondence using teddy bear counters.
Handwriting
Still working on our numbers this week! I can tell from the homework that we are really trying to make our letter and numbers the St. Joes way!!
Reading
We learned the in family this week. We also had more fun with our word pond words. We said and spelled them in slow motion and we did it Batter Up style. We pretended to swing a bat as we spelled each letter of the words that were pointed to. We read Runaway Pumpkin. Our vocabulary words this week included jack-o-lantern, vine, stem, tractor and sty. We reviewed the concept of classifying and categorizing. We compared pumpkins and Jack-o-lanterns. We reviewed rhyming words as well. We focused on the / t/ sound and reviewed the /m/ sound as well. We passed a pumpkin around and each added a word to the predictable sentence: A pumpkin is _______. We kept closing our eyes while Mrs. K read the sentences to see if our adjectives or juicy words help paint a picture in our minds. They did! We also talked more about nouns this week. Nouns for places and things...the kids are really getting this concept. Very cool!
Science
We graphed whether a pumpkin would sink or float and then discussed why! Only 3 of us guessed correctly! We began to grow our classroom pumpkin patch...we have taken a small pumpkin and the kids watched as I smashed it in order to get a small chunk. The kids loved that part. We laid it in the dirt, simulating a pumpkin that might be left behind in the pumpkin patch. We are wondering if like in the stories we read, new pumpkins will actually grow from this old one. We learned a lot about the life cycle of the pumpkin. We did a fun little life cycle craft with flip up pumpkins illustrating each stage in the cycle. Our student of the week performed an experiment for us. He filled a cup with newspaper and submerged it in a tub of water. It staid dry. Amazing.
Religion
We spent our week talking about different animals. We compared farm animals to animals in the jungle, to animals who live on the cold
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mountain tops. Why did God make so many different kinds of animals? The answer is simple. Because God loves animals. So what a perfect week to visit the petting farm! We saw Gods gifts firsthand. We got to touch and smell them as well. We each took animal puppets this week and talked a little bit about the puppet we had. Fun! share the candy that we will bringing in this week. We will have a little parade up to the office. Siblings are welcome, as long as you are comfortable with them being in the room with things that may not be toddler friendly!
Compliment Chain
We continue to fill one anothers buckets by sharing supplies, helping each other zip up coats, etc. We are noticing when other friends are making good choices and praising them for it. The subs this week had many wonderful things to say about your children! Our compliment chain is nearing the floor The kids are excited!!
Computers
We carved pumpkins online and we listened to the 5 Little Pumpkins poem on YouTube! We also listened to an online story about a lonely pumpkin. And we watched a video about the life cycle of a pumpkin. All these links are available on our K5 website.
October Family Project
These were awesome! We had a leaf lion, a turkey, a turtle, a dog, a stegosaurus, a house, and many other creative animals and objects. These are hanging up in the classroom on our clothesline. Fun!!
Next Weeks Theme Spiders/Halloween Next Weeks Words: have, in, is, not in family words
Mystery Readers
Contact me if you are interested!!
Food Drive & Baby Shower Items
Feel free to send in non-perishable food items for the Girl Scout Food Drive and baby items for the parish mission. Thanks!
Important Dates
Monday, October 24: RED RIBBON WEEK
Dream of a Drug Free World: Wear PJs Bring short a (ex. apple) food for Sound Muncher!!
Library Books Due Mrs. K out :(
Book It Program
Dont forget to fill out your charts for all the books you are reading!! Free pizza is your reward!
Tuesday, October 25:
Upcoming Field Trip Dates
March 28th-Milwaukee Symphony (Wednesday)
Watch out for Drugs: Movie Day
Wednesday, October 26:
Hocus Pocus, Drugs are not our Focus: Wear Halloween color/theme dress down clothes
Celebrate Paitons Birthday! (10/28) Show & Tell **Bag of Favorite Candy** (ENOOUGH TO SHARE)
Halloween Party
K5 Halloween party is scheduled for 12:30 pm on Monday the 31st. Feel free to join us. We will begin to change into costumes at 12:30. Please join us for that, the more hands the better. We will watch a Halloween movie while we switch into costumes. Then we play games and have yummy snacks, and
Thursday, October 27:
NO SCHOOL!
Friday, October 28: NO SCHOOL!
Questions or comments? Please email [email protected] or call 262-662-2737
