Two Posts in One Weekend!

There are so many pictures from last week.  I decided to do another post.  This is not the end of the photos from the week, but I'll put a little dent in them.  Here are the Frankenstein photos we did on Halloween during snack time.  I just love these!!!

Go Away, Big Green Monster!!!

We read Ed Emberly's Go Away, Big Green Monster!  I then did a guided drawing activity prior to writing.  The kids created their own monster faces modeled after Emberly's.

Here are some picts from last week when we tried drawing on our bellies.  I had never tried this with the kids, but an OT I know said kids often like to draw and write in this position.  Most of the kiddos really enjoyed it.

     After lunch, we had lots of helpers during writing time.  It was awesome!  Thanks to Miss T. from Thomas, Hannah from Colby, and Mrs. Pelletier from just down the hall. Along with Mrs. Mullen and myself, we pretty much had the dream ratio of adults to student writers that afternoon.

Patterns, Gum Ball Goals, Insects, and more!

Patterns:  Early Algebra

I divided the kids up into pattern groups earlier last week.  They made pattern block shape patterns and then drew a pattern of the same type....  ABAB, ABC or ABB.  The goal is for kids to be able to make three pattern types independently.  It's also a good time to reinforce checking your work to look for errors.

      Here is the beginning phase of our gum ball goals.  The current goals are counting to 100, knowing your phone number, knowing your address (zip code, too), knowing all capital letters, and knowing all lowercase letters.  Kids get to add a gum ball when they accomplish that particular goal independently. It would be great for you to help them with these at home.  The next goal will deal with high frequency words (handy words).  I'll send home information about that soon.

      You can see that we don't have anyone who can say their whole address, yet.  The other day, one little guy almost nailed it until I asked what state we live in and he said, "South Africa."  Cute!

The kids made some spider hats with Miss Booth last Thursday.  We had each kindergarten class visit each teacher to pave the way for some sharing during math time later on.  See a nice smiling photo and then a silly faces photo.

The science guy from Goodwill Hinckley was back again on Friday.  This time he focused on insects.  The kids had some exploration time at the end. Check out the bug's eye view of the world.

Nature Stamping

 Insect Rubbings

 Cool butterfly puppet

 Lots of little bug toys to explore.

Some cool specimens

We recently did some interactive writing.  The kids worked together to create text.  Two groups worked on rhyming words. Two groups worked on sentences containing sight words (handy words).

We sang the Bat Song several times this week.  It goes to the tune of Are You Sleeping?

A number of kiddos were excited to be able to "read" the whole thing.

We also used this pocket chart song to locate sight words like for, the, in and are.  Words like this are VERY important for success in both reading and writing.