The Kindergarten classroom was filled with lots of laughter and excitement on Monday as we celebrated Halloween. We spent some time with our 5th grade buddies decorating cookies, with our room parents we created Halloween picture frames, and enjoyed a special snack. On Tuesday, we went to Mass to celebrate All Saints Day. Throughout the week, we took time to pray the litany of saints for all of those who have passed away. Our theme for the week was the creepy, crawly spider. We started off with a question, Are you afraid of spiders? and some data collection. Then we gathered information about spiders from books and video clips. We recorded many different facts on a can/have/are sheet. Next, we completed a spider writing project. We had to write about whether a spider would be a good or bad pet and why. We ended the week by creating spider webs out of glue and glitter.
Monday:
Happy Halloween! This afternoon our class was filled with princesses, animals, mermaids and more.
In reading, we were introduced to a new letter and letter sound, Ee. After watching our E video, we practiced writing capital or lowercase e’s. Then we worked on identifying words that begins with the long and short e sounds.
In honor of Halloween, we made another class book. This time everyone had to write about what they want to be for Halloween. Our writing consisted of more than just filling in a few blanks. We were given a “story starter” (For Halloween) and we had to finish it with a sentence. The trick was to make sure it sounded right to our ears when we were done. If not, we had to change it. We also had to illustrate our page by drawing a picture of us in our costume.
After we completed our calendar binders today we changed out our pages. Today is the last day of October. Now we are ready for November.
In religion, we were introduced to a Litany of Saints. It is a special song in which we ask the saints in heaven to pray for us. Our Litany of Saints today was a video. We were able to see pictures of the different saints as we asked them to pray for us.
After lunch, it was time to change into our costumes. Once our costumes were on and pictures were taken. Then our 5th grade buddies joined us for a special treat. They helped us frosted and decorated Halloween cookie. Once we were done, we enjoyed eating it. We spent the rest of the afternoon partying with our room parents. We made picture frames, halloween decorations, and a special snack potion. We did take a little break in the middle of our party to spread some good cheer at Ecumen. During their party, we showed off our costumes with a little parade. When we were back in our classroom, we had a special snack before we took off our costumes and packed up for the day. Then we watched the movie Spookly the Square Pumpkin.
Tuesday:
Happy All Saints Day! Today we talked about All Saints Day. We took time to learn about some of the Saints in Heaven and to remember our friends and family members who have passed away. We spent some time in quiet prayer as we sang the Litany of Saints asking them to pray for us. After lunch, we went to Mass.
In reading, we were introduced to a new letter and letter sound, Vv. After watching our V video, we practiced writing capital or lowercase v’s. Then we worked on identifying words that begins with /v/. We also worked on identifying fiction and non-fiction books along with identifying the roles of the author and illustrator as read through several different books about spiders. Did you know a spider uses its eight legs to smell? Or that a spider can lay up to 2000 eggs at a time? During theme explored the wonderful world of spiders. We learned some very interesting facts like only part of a spider web is sticky to catch the insects or it is believed that spider silk is stronger than steel. We gathered our information from 2 different books about spiders and watched a couple of short videos. Then we made a spider book. Each page had a different fact about spiders and only part of the picture completed. Our job was to complete the picture.
We started our math lesson by reviewing tally marks. We make a tally mark everyday in our calendar binder. We know that the fifth mark “closes the door”. Together we surveyed the class to find out how many people had a pet. We recorded our data using tally marks. Then we took a survey on our own. Ms Torborg proposed a question, Are you afraid of spiders? Our job was to gather the data. We had to ask each of our classmates the question and then record the answer. After that we analyzed our data. We found out that most of our classmates are not afraid of spiders.
Throughout the day we also we worked one on one with Ms. Torborg. She was checking our progress on some of the reading and math skills we have been working on such as rhyming, identifying beginning sounds, patterning, counting, and sequencing numbers.
Wednesday:
Happy All Souls Day! Today we talked about how to get to heaven and why we want to go to heaven. Then we spent some time praying for those who have past away with a Litany of Saints.
In reading, we were introduced to a new letter and letter sound, Ww. After watching our w video, we practiced writing capital or lowercase w’s. Then we worked on identifying words that begins with /w/. We were also introduced to a new sight words, can. After reviewing all of our sight words, we read through our new emergent reader, Trick or Treat. Before reading each page, we identified the number of words and the number of sentences.
Plus we worked a spider writing project. We started by listening to the story Aaaarrgghh Spiders! It is about a spider who really wants to be a family pet. Then we had to determine if a spider would be a good or bad pet. Once we wrote down our opinion, we had to write one reason why. We worked with Ms. Torborg as we wrote, so she could help up stretch out our words.
In math, we worked through our new calendar pages including an introduction to the digital date. We also met one on one with Ms. Torborg so she could check our progress counting, identifying numbers, and answering questions about a graph.
In religion, we completed our Promise booklet. We talked about how it feels to be left out and how it feels to be invited to going. Then we listened to the story of Jesus asking Zacchaeus to come down from the tree because he wanted to go to his house.
Thursday:
In reading, we were introduced to a new letter and letter sound, Kk. After watching our K video, we practiced writing capital or lowercase k’s. Then we worked on identifying words that begins with /k/. We also finished our writing project from yesterday. Those that completed it yesterday worked on reading stations.
In the afternoon, we completed our calendar binders and met one on one with Ms. Torborg. Today she checked our progress reciting our prayers. We also created a spider. We started by tracing a big circle, a little circle, and 8 checkmark like shapes on one big black sheet of paper. We had to plan ahead to make sure all of the pieces would fit on the one big paper we got. Then we cut everything out. Next, we glued the different parts together. We also added 8 googly eyes and spinnerets to our spider. We glued it on a big piece of paper with our writings from yesterday.
Friday:
In reading, we were introduced to two new letter and letter sounds, Xx & Zz. We worked on each one separately. First we watched the video and then we practiced writing the capital and lowercase letter. Now we have been introduced to all 26 letters!
We also continued our exploration of spiders. We listened to the story, Spiders by Lola Schaefer, which identified several facts about spiders. Then, we reviewed some of the facts we know about spiders like it has 8 legs and 8 eyes, or that its skeleton is on the outside of its body. We recorded the facts in a can/have/are chart. (Spiders can... Spiders have... Spiders are…)
In math, we were introduced to the place value blocks. They are just like the blocks we use for calendar every day. There were pieces or ones blocks and longs or tens blocks. Today we just used the pieces. For our first activity, Ms. Torborg would call out a number and we had to show that many ones pieces. Once we were good with that, Ms. Torborg introduced us to number cards. We started by putting the number cards in order. We had to make sure to start our numbers on the left side. Our next activity was to identify the number of pieces in a given group with a number card. Ms. Torborg put a group of pieces out and we had to show her the matching number card. Then we identified the number on the quick look card by finding the corresponding number card.
In religion, we talked about promises and the special promise God made to us to always love us. We also identified some of the promises we can make to God. We completed the first 2 pages in our Promise religion book.
This week we are focusing on Spiders. Today we took a look at spider webs. First, we watched a video clip of a spider building a web and pictures of different spider webs. Then we created spider webs using glue and glitter. First, we used our glue to draw our webs. We could create any kind of web we wanted: orb, cobweb, tangle, etc… Then we covered it with glitter and shook off the extra. The last step was to glue a black spider on it when it was dry. Since we were working in small groups to make our spider webs, we also watched the movie Magic School Bus Gets Caught in a Web.
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