Saturday, October 25, 2014

More pumpkins!

After our very fun pumpkin patch field trip, our science unit last week was all about pumpkins. Here are some pictures from our pumpkin investigation:

First we brainstormed describing words for what the pumpkin looked like on the outside.



Then we did some measurements and found out if our pumpkin would sink or float! (it sunk)


Then we read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? and made predictions about how many seeds our pumpkin had.



In order to find out the answer, we had to get the seeds out and count them! Here are kids working with their table partners to separate the seeds from the pulp and count them up. In the end, our pumpkin at 455 seeds. Grace was the kindergartener with the closest guess :)



















And last but not least, after reading and watching a video on the pumpkin life cycle, we planted our pumpkin seeds! Who knows if they'll germinate in time this fall, but it was fun to do :)


Sunday, October 12, 2014

Learning about our community

our community wall, where we add what we are learning about community
This year's "big idea" in kindergarten is all about community. While our social studies units focus on community, we will also be tying back lots of what we learn in science, reading and writing to what it means to be part of our community. Right now we are focusing on the question What is a community? We have learned that a community is a place where we live, work, play and learn. We read several books and watched a video on what makes a community, as well as had discussions about who lives in our community. Here is a picture of us doing a "walk and talk" to discuss who lives in our community:



We made little books on community helpers who live in our community, and the last page asked us to draw a picture of what we want to be when we grow up.


Leo wants to be a policeman!
We have also been lucky enough to have people from our community visit - in the form of parents! Below are a few pictures of family members who have come to visit, including two farmers and one firefighter. Unfortunately I missed pictures of two other parents who came to visit, my apologies! If you are reading this with your kindergartener, you can ask them what they remember learning from the community helpers that they met.











Saturday, October 11, 2014

Pumpkin patch field trip!

This Friday we went on our first field trip - to the pumpkin patch! I didn't get as many pictures as I would have hoped, so if any chaperones have pictures they want to send my way, I can post them here as well! We got to go on a scavenger hunt in the woods to search for hidden gourds, go in a mini "haunted" house, and then take a hayride out to the pumpkin fields. Each kindergartener went home with a pumpkin to keep, and we got one for the classroom which we will investigate next week.

We also have a new pumpkin patch set up in our dramatic play area in the classroom!

We ended our day doing a Shared Writing piece on our field trip. During Shared Writing, I write on the big paper and each student has his/her own marker board. As we write, I invite them to try writing words on their own on their white board, while one student comes up to write on the big paper. This week one of our sight words was "the," so we all practiced writing the word on our white boards together.