This week the kindergarteners explored Thanksgiving, everything from the first Thanksgiving to the special food we eat. We learned about why the Pilgrims left England, their ship the Mayflower, and how some of them died that first year. Then we explored the different ways the Wampanoag people helped the Pilgrims and the feast they had together to celebrate. We also compared what life is like today to that of the Pilgrim people. Then we made a new class book. We each had to create our own Thanksgiving dinner menu. Next we read the story ‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving. The children in the story save the turkeys and try to convince people to eat something else. We decided to do the same thing. We each wrote a list of things you can eat instead of turkey. We also created a picture of us with a turkey stuffed underneath our shirt.
Monday:
In reading, we reviewed all of our letter sounds before we were introduced to our new letter and letter sound Ff, We watched our letter f video, created a list of words that stated with /f/, and completed our letter f sorting worksheet. Next we worked on writing a list. First we talked about how a list looks. Then together we created a list of things we like to do outside. Sometime we just wrote one word on the line. Other times we wrote a group of words down using our spaceman between the words. Finally we played a new game, I Have…Who Has. We each have a card or two. The first player read their card, I have fish. Who has octopus? Then the person with the fish card reads their card and so on until all of the cards are done.
After recess, we explored the first Thanksgiving, determined the reason we have Thanksgiving, and compared and contrasted our Thanksgiving with the first Thanksgiving. First to defined some important words like pilgrim, Wampanoag, Mayflower, harvest, & feast. We started by looking at the voyage the pilgrims took. While looking at the globe we traced their journey. We also traced their journey through a slide show that described some of the thing they went through. We found out that the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in the middle of winter. Then we watched a short video clip about the first Thanksgiving. We found out that it lasted more than 3 days and was a celebrate for the thanking the Wampanoag people for teaching them to hunt and plant.
Just like the Pilgrims were thankful for everything, they had and the help they received. We spent some time thinking about some things we are thankful for. Then we started a Thank You God! book. Each day we will write 1 thing we are thankful for. Then we have to draw a picture of it.
In religion, we talked about some of our special talents. We shared with our neighbor some of the things we are good at and then some things we are working on or still learning to do. Finally we completed our worksheet. It was a special prayer. Every time we said the word Lord, we had to color it in.
In math, we worked on graphing. We started by identifying all of the different things we have graphed. We created a graph of our favorite apple, popcorn topping, and birthday. Everyday we add to our temperature and weather graph. Ms. Torborg even brought up our weather graph so we could look at it. Then we broke up into groups of 2 or 3. Each group received a bowl of pattern blocks and a big piece of paper. The directions were to create a graph. Eventually we figured out we needed to sort the pieces into shapes. Then most of us figured out that we needed to line the up into columns. The problem was that not all of our shapes were the same size. It looked like we had more hexagons because they were the biggest. When really we had to most triangles, but they were the smallest. Since we were stumped, Ms. Torborg helped us figure out the steps we missed. We had to created the “boxes” to put the shapes in. Once we created a “table”, we were able to easily see which group had the most and least.
Tuesday:
In reading, we reviewed all of our sight words before we were introduced to our new sight word, you. We used you in a sentence. Then we completed our you sight word worksheet. We also worked on identifying it in our new emergent reader, Thanksgiving Dinner. Before we read it, we used a highlighter to marked the word you each time we found it. The next time we went through the book, we took note of how many words and sentences were on each page. Finally, we made a book about our Thanksgiving Dinner. Before we started writing, we listened to the story, No Turkey for Thanksgiving. We talked about how not everybody each turkey and we each shared our favorite food. Then we created a Thanksgiving menu. A menu is a list of things that will be served for the meal. We had to write down at least 6 things that we want to have on Thanksgiving. We could only have one dessert! Next to the menu was a place setting with dishes. We had to draw what our plate will look like on Thanksgiving if we made everything on our menu.
In Religion, we took some quiet time to think of all of the things our moms, dads, grandpas, grandpas, siblings, etc. do for us. Do we always say Thank You? We said a quiet prayer for them. We also completed another page in our Thank You God book.
In math, we played a new game, Spill the Beans. We started with a cup, 10 beans (one side was red and the other side was white), and a tens frame. First, we had to spill the beans out of the cup. Then we had to sort them according to their colors. Next, we had to put them on our tens frame. First, we put all of the red ones and then the white ones. We were able to identify which color we had more and how many of each color we had. After we played a couple of rounds, Ms. Torborg gave us a recording sheet. We had to record who many beans were red and how many were white for each “spill”.
Wednesday:
In reading, we reviewed our sight words, letters and letter sounds. We watched our letter F video and completed our letter f worksheet. We also read the story, Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving. A group of kids visited a turkey farm. When they found out that the turkeys were going to be eaten for dinner, they hid them under their shirt and took them home. Together as a class, we made a list of different things we could eat instead of turkey. Then we each has to create our own list with 6 things that we would like to eat for Thanksgiving dinner instead of turkey.
In religion, we talked about our feelings. First we identified different situations that make us happy. Then on the front of our worksheet, we colored the word happy. Next we talked about a time when we saw someone who was sad and we helped them. After sharing with a friend, we draw a picture of it on the backside of our worksheet. Next we listened to the story, The Way I Feel. We discussed each of the different feelings that were identified. We know that God gave us feelings and that he always knows how we feel.
This week we are talking about the first Thanksgiving. After reviewing the story of the first Thanksgiving, we took a closer look at the inside of the Pilgrim’s and Native American’s house at that time. As we looked at the picture, we had to find different items located inside the house and circle them on our paper. Finally, we each wrote about something we are thankful for in our book.
Thursday:
In reading, we worked with the -im word family. We started by watching a short video. Then we created a list of words. We had to pick a letter, identify the letter sound, and then put that sound in front of the word –im to create a word. We also had to decide if the word we created was a real word or a nonsense word. Finally we created our -im flip book. Next we worked on sounding out CVC words. Ms. Torborg wrote a CVC word on the board. Together we worked on sliding it down our arm as we identified each letter sound. Then we blended it together to read the word.
We also listened to the story, Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, again. This time we identified the main characters in the story along with the setting. We also created a background for our writing project from yesterday. We wanted it to look like we had a turkey stuffed under our shirt. Ms. Torborg gave us some pieces to trace and cut out and others just needed to be cut out. We really had to just our fine motor skills, so that it looked just right. We started with the shoes. After we cut out all of the pieces, we glued them together. Then we did the legs, feathers, shirt, and head. After cutting out each section, we glued the pieces together. The last thing we did was glue our writing on.
In religion, we learned about a mother saint, St. Cecilia. Cecilia’s parents had her marry a man that didn’t love God. She loved God very much and she taught her husband about God. She also loved music and used music to help spread God’s message. St. Cecilia’s is the patron saint of musicians and her feast day is November 22nd. We watched a short video about St. Cecilia as we colored her picture in our saint coloring book.
Friday:
In reading, we listened to the stories, Thanksgiving and The Very First Thanksgiving. We talked about what life was like for the pilgrims. We compared and contrasted the things we use now to the things the pilgrims used. We decided that we are happy we live with all of the great technology we have. We also did a worksheet in which we had to cut out several objects and then glue them in the right column (Now or Then).
In math, we reviewed the shapes (circle, square, triangle, and rectangle). Then we tried creating them with a rope/string. We figured out that for each shape, we had to determine how many corner it had and that is how many people we needed to create it. After creating the main shapes, we build different shapes using the Geoboards. We also worked on comparing items. Today we had to find items that were longer and shorter than us by laying down next to them. We also completed a worksheet. We had to find 3 items that were longer than our pencil and 3 items that were shorter than our pencil. We recorded our information on our worksheet making sure to draw a picture and label it.
We ended the day by reviewing the story of the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving and then watching This is America Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyage.