We finished up our pumpkin fun Friday by reading Spookley the Square Pumpkin. My kids loved the book and did a good job thinking of words to describe Spookley. After, we made our own Spookley pumpkins and wrote about them. We also watched the movie, which I picked up at Target, and it was really cute.

We also used our 9 Pumpkins song with our beads and fuzzy sticks to practice decomposing the number 9. This works so well for my kids since it is such a hands on way for them to visualize the different number combinations.

This week, we'll be squeezing in a little bit of bat fun as well as using my sequencing pack when we read The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat. You can get the pack on sale here until midnight.

Graphics are KPM Doodles and fonts are from Hello Literacy

We'll also be doing lots of fun Halloween activities and partying on Wednesday. We are going to graph 3 different kinds of candy corn {regular, caramel, and green apple}. You can click on the picture below for your free copy of the graph.

Have a great week friends!

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Vickie

This is going to be a quick post, but I wanted to share our math activity that we did today to help us practice decomposing the number 8. I gave each kiddo a cup with 8 double sided spiders (I copied spiders on blue and purple paper then glued the whole sheet together before cutting out). They shook the cup, then emptied the spiders. Then, on their recording sheet, they colored the amount of blue spiders they shook and the amount of purple spiders they shook. Finally, they filled in their equation. I was very nervous about this, but the majority of the kids did so well!! I do have a few who needed help with knowing what number to write (they could count the number of spiders, but are not connecting it to the numeral yet).

You can get the spider manipulatives (just pick 2 colors to copy on) and the recording sheet here (graphics are KPM Doodles). I would love to hear if you are able to use it in your class!
Have a great weekend!!

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Vickie

We had lots of fun this week learning about firefighters and fire safety! Most of the activities we did came from Deeanna's fire safety pack that you can grab here for only $3!!



We decomposed the number 7 by using firemen on a fire truck and Deeanna's 7 Brave Firemen song

This was our recording sheet

We made a tree map about firefighters together

The students made their own {the kids do their's as we are doing the group one}

We made these cute firemen to hold our tree maps

We did a fuzzy stick with beads to represent firemen to decompose 7 even more. These sticks are such a good tool for decomposing and most of the kids are really catching on!

We used the song 7 Brave Firemen again.

 

Next week, we're on to spiders, so hopefully I'll have some things to share this weekend.

One last picture just to show how sweet my school is. This is my kindergarten group (minus a few) yesterday at a baby shower they gave me to welcome Ellie Grace. It was so much fun and everything was so nice. I work with a great team :)

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Vickie

This week, we have been learning all about Chistopher Columbus, which isn't the easiest person for kindergarten kiddos to learn about, but the kids have done a great job!

We watched a video on United Streaming then read a short biography and completed a circle map together

Student version of the circle map...you can get it here.

We attached our circle maps to these super cute Columbus crafts...thanks Kim Adsit!

The kids loved these!!

We made Columbus' three ships with our handprints and labeled them. This idea came from pinterest, but I cannot find where the original idea came from. Anyone know?

We practiced our sight word the and stretched the word had {ignore the sail at the bottom...it fell off of another}

We've also been celebrating fire safety week and using firemen to help us learn about the number 7.

We practiced adding one more until we had 7 firemen on our ten frame

We sang Deeanna's Brave Firemen song to work on decomposing. You can see the song in her fire safety pack here.

Making equations

This also came from Deeanna's pack (she used paint instead of paper). It helped us practice our counting. 

 

 

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Vickie

We had so much fun last week learning about fall and scarecrows. Here's a little random picture collection of what we did at the end of the last week:

Singing our 6 Black Crows Song and using our sticks to decompose

Decomposing 6 with our crows (black beads). You can get this page here on my friend Deeann's blog.

We read The Scarecrow's Hat and talked about what each animal's problem was and what they got to solve their problem.

The kids did their own page of what the animals each got...these activities are also on Deeann's blog here.

We worked on taking 1 away from a number using black beans painted like crows

We made a brace map with the parts of scarecrow...the kids helped with parts of the words. Then, at the writing table, they wrote about their own scarecrow.

 

We had a busy, fun week and I'm sure this week will be just as fun. We'll be working on Columbus and fire safety. Don't forget to enter the giveaway that Mrs. Mayas and I are hosting...it ends at midnight!

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Vickie

I'm a little late with this post...things got busy at the end of the week! We had so much fun finishing up our apple unit and celebrating Friday with our apple treats!

We used beads and a fuzzy sticks to help us decompose 5 again using our 5 Red Apples song...the kids loved it!

Our recording page (we do lots of hands on and modeling and we always do these activities whole group, so the kids are decomposing numbers as soon as possible instead of waiting until later in the year...it has really made a difference in their number sense!)

We went a different route Friday and worked on a little beginning subtraction with the song (crossing an apple out each time it fell from the tree)

You can get both of the math sheets and the small trees for the sticks here (for free!!). :)

We read The Apple Pie Tree and learned about what apple trees look like in different seasons...definitely a hard concept when it's fall and 90 degrees outside!

The beginnings of our applesauce on Friday

Mashing and mixing our applesauce

Yummy apple treats {applesauce, apple juice, apple pie}

I don't know if this video will work, but it's my kiddos singing Happy Birthday to Johnny Appleseed...they insisted we do it before we ate our apple treats. I seriously have the funniest, cutest class ever!

Also, in case you haven't seen it, Herding Kats in Kindergarten is having an awesome giveaway...hurry over to enter!

Happy Saturday everyone!

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Vickie

We had more fun today celebrating Johnny Appleseed's birthday and learning all about him. We read a non-fiction story and discussed how it was different from a fiction story, then listed three facts we learned about Johnny Appleseed. I had mine big on the Promethean board to help the students since we're not *quite* ready to do a writing activity like this on our own. You can find the graphic organizer in my apple pack on TpT.

We made these cute Johnny Appleseed faces to hold our organizers (thanks to A Cupcake for the Teacher!).
 

We also did more with our 5 Red Apples song during math. We used apples (beans spray painted red) and a tree to decompose 5 and write equations. The kids are getting so good at this and they loved getting out the white boards! I really like to use the white boards so that all the kids are engaged and not just sitting while others do something

In case you need the song, here it is (I have no idea where it came from originally - I have been using it since I started teaching 9 years ago!):
5 red apples hanging on a tree
The juiciest apples that you ever did see.
The wind came by and gave an angry frown
And 1 little apple came tumbling down!

My kids love singing the song, so tomorrow we're going to do another activity with it in math. Hope all of you are having a great apple week!

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Vickie