Today, we read a book called How Many Seeds In A Pumpkin? The story is fun and fairly informational, teaching how smaller pumpkins with more lines have more seeds than larger ones. Yesterday, the kiddos got to watch us cut open pumpkins and look inside. Most of them voted that the larger pumpkin had more seeds. Today, they got to count the seeds themselves! Three groups took on the small pumpkin's seeds, and three groups counted the big pumpkin's seeds. They charted the seeds in groups of ten on a laminated sheet. Because we had fun plans with our 3rd grade big buddies, we did not get to compare the final number of seeds quite yet. That will come tomorrow! Our big buddies came to our classroom to meet up for a Halloween project. Our kiddos are making a Halloween scene with their buddies using torn construction paper on a black background. Half of the pairs went up to Mrs. O'Connor's classroom while the rest stayed in our classroom. Tomorrow, we will meet up to write the story to go with it! The art the kiddos created today was wonderfully creative and colorful; we are excited for the final products!
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Upon coming in from morning recess today, the munchkins busted into fits of laughter. Mrs. Winter had brought out an old belonging of hers: a basket for her head. That's right; she had a basket on her head as a hat for ping pong balls to be tossed into, along with some light-up glasses. We revamped it a little bit and put letters on each ping pong ball. Each kiddo got a turn to pick a ball, say the letter and sound, and attempt a toss into the hat! Talk about hilarious. They loved it, and it even became a popular journal topic during writing time. We started a new theme today... Pumpkins. We began our theme by performing a sink or float experiment with different size pumpkins. Your kiddos learned how to make a prediction, test the prediction, and make observations. Ask your kiddo about it. You may be surprised at the results! During learning centers we observed our pumpkins, drew a detailed picture of our pumpkins, counted the lines on our pumpkins, predicted whether our pumpkins would sink or float, and conducted an experiment to test our predictions. We also learned as scientists we can change our predictions based on new findings. They had a great introduction to what it's like being scientists. Boy have our Bensons pumpkins come in handy. Many kiddos have been asking us to take them home. We will be sending them home on Friday! The kiddos had an eventful day today! Right away we got to read a book called Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven. The book is about how a celebration with baking bread awakens the sun. Then we got to make our own Sun Bread as a class. The kids learned about a new kitchen contraption: the bread maker! The outcome was delicious yet different! Benson's Farm was also great, even though it was a bit chilly! The kiddos got to learn about cabbage, many different kinds of squash, kohlrabi, and indian corn! The most exciting part was when we each got to pick our own pumpkin, which we will do many class activities with! A great field trip brings out the love in us all. ;) Today our kiddos enjoyed a fire safety presentation performed by the Missoula City Fire Department. This puppet show captures the kiddos' attention and teaches them about fire safety. Our kiddos thoroughly enjoyed the show. They learned the importance of practicing fire drills at school as well as at home, to stop, drop, and roll while covering your face with your hands if on fire, to crawl out of a burning house instead of walk to keep from breathing toxic smoke, to make sure smoke detectors are working in the home, to not play with matches, and if you find matches or a lighter give them to an adult. Most important of all... call 911 if there is a fire or another emergency. Our friend Chase was chosen to model what to do if on fire... stop, drop, and roll while covering the face. He did a GREAT JOB! As a grand finale, we were fortunate enough to meet Sparky the fire dog. We all got to give him a hug or a high five on our way out to recess! What a great day to learn about fire safety. Please review the fire safety rules with your kiddos, check those smoke detectors, and practice a fire drill at your home! Let's keep these kiddos safe!!! The Stone Soup was a hit! We are very impressed with our kiddos giving it a try! We chopped all the vegetables on Thursday and prepared the rest of the ingredients this morning and let it cook in the crockpot. Most of our kiddos gave the soup two thumbs up! Thanks for all the donations of the yummy, healthy food for our soup. As a preventative measure, all kindergarten kiddos' vision is screened. The vision screening is put on by the district and is performed by volunteers supervised by an MCPS school nurse. Today was our day! All of our kiddos' vision was screened, and if there is a discrepancy you will receive a notice in the mail.
Today we took a break from our normal handwriting routine and practiced making our letter of the day, O, in shaving cream. Boy did we have a blast! The greatest thing about shaving cream... even though it is messy, it cleans the tables and makes the room smell fresh. Just a note about handwriting: When we form our letters we ALWAYS have the kiddos start at the top of the letter, never at the bottom. And when making O's, we always start at the top of the letter and cirlce to the left. The rest of our Learning Centers today were just as fun as the shaving cream. They played beginning sound Bingo with Ms. Evenson, made shape pictures with Mrs. Hatfield, Jack's Mom, and completed an entry in their vocabulary journals for the word vegetable. What a great afternoon we had. Here are some more pictures that show our awesome kindergarteners hard at work: Last week we started learning about healthy foods and making healthy choices for our bodies. Here is an article from kidshealth.org about how the food pyramid has been changed to the food plate called MyPlate. Plate = New Symbol for Healthy Eating Goodbye, pyramid. Hello, plate. The Food Guide Pyramid was the model for healthy eating in the United States. Maybe you had to memorize its rainbow stripes in school. But the USDA, the agency in charge of nutrition, has switched to a new symbol: a colorful plate —called MyPlate — with some of the same messages:
The big message is that fruits and vegetables take up half the plate, with the vegetable portion being a little bigger than the fruit section. And just like the pyramid where stripes were different widths, the plate has been divided so that the grain section is bigger than the protein section. Why? Because nutrition experts recommend you eat more vegetables than fruit and more grains than protein foods. The divided plate also aims to discourage super-big portions, which can cause weight gain. What's a Grain Again? You know what fruits and vegetables are, but here's a reminder about what's included in the three other food groups: protein, grains, and dairy:
For more information and fun activities check out the website below: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ The kiddos were introduced to some "old school" technology today... the overhead projector. We were able to explore Grandpa Smarty since my teacher computer crashed which runs Smarty Pants, our Interwrite Board. They thoroughly enjoyed this old piece of technology and found it super funny that we call it Grandpa Smarty! It was such a hit that we have plans to use it more in the future.
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by Mrs. WinterKindergarten is truly the BEST and that is why I want to share our world with you! Archives
September 2017
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