Fire Safety was the theme for the week in the Kindergarten classroom. We started the week by reviewing what to do if the fire alarm goes off at school. We practiced quietly lining up and walking out the door and down the sidewalk to our meeting place. Now that we have an escape plan at school, we talked about the importance of having an escape plan and special meeting spot at home. We also identified several different fire safety tips such as have 2 ways out, stay low and go, stop, drop, cover your face, and roll. We each had to write and illustrate one fire safety tip. Then we turned them into a new class book, Fire Safety Tips. On Tuesday, some firefighters from the Litchfield Fire Department visited school to teach us about fire safety. We also got to look through one of the fire trucks and practice shooting water with the fire hose. At the end of the week, we had some fun making a fire picture while learning about mixing paint colors. We put a blob of yellow paint and a blob of red paint on a piece of paper. When we mixed it together, it made orange. We made it look like flames. Once our paint was dry we added a house and a fire truck to our paper. A highlight of the week was making fire truck crackers. We took ordinary graham crackers and decorated them to look like fire trucks. Then we got to eat them! We ended the week with Chip and Dale, the Rescue Rangers, teaching us about fire safety.
Monday:
Happy October! There was a lot of excitement in the Kindergarten classroom this morning. Not only did we get new calendar pages in our binder, we got new toys. Ms Torborg changed out all of the toys. We now have tractors, a barn, animals, fire trucks and a fire station along with new blocks. Plus we started our day with an extra half hour of recess. The 4th and 5th graders picked an extra hours of free time as our Marathon prize for raising $45,000. Our hours was split into 2 blocks. We had an extra 1/2 hour of play time in the morning to start our day and an extra 1/2 hour at the end of our day.
In reading, we were introduced to a new letter sound and letter, Tt. After singing our t song, we created a list of words that began with the /t/. We also completed a capital or lowercase t sorting sheet. Next, we explored fire safety. We started by reading the story Miss Mingo and the Fire Drill. In our story, the class learned what to do if they caught on fire and they had a fire drill. We learned about primary routes and secondary routes. We practiced lining up and going outside by our primary route the front door and then meeting at our special spot. We also found a secondary route. We practiced going out the back door of the school and walking to our new meeting place. Next, we discussed several different ways to get out of your house. We even pretended to be sleeping in our bedroom and practiced what to do if the smoke alarm goes off. We also practiced what to do if our clothes catch fire: Stop, Drop, Cover Your Face, and Roll! And what to do if their is lots of smoke, Stay Low and Go! Finally, we learned a very special number 911. We talked when we should call 911 and about what happens when we do. We also colored a picture of Sparky the Fire Dog as a Thank You for the Fire Fighters for all they do.
In math, we played a new game Top-It. We used the same dot cards we used yesterday. We started by dividing the cards equally between the players. Then we each took a turn flipping over a card. When we flipped our card, we had to identify the number of dots. Then the person with the bigger card got to take both cards. If we had equal amounts of dots, we both got to take a card. When our pile of cards was gone, we had to count how many cards we “won”. The person with the most cards was the winner.
In Religion, we were introduced to a new saint, St. Francis of Assisi. His feast day is today, Oct. 4th. He loved animals, so he is the patron saint of animals. As we colored his picture in our Saint coloring books, we watched a short video about St. Francis of Assisi.
We ended the day with an extra 1/2 hour of play time. Instead of just free play time, we picked a partner and played a game with them. We could pick any game we wanted to play.
Tuesday:
This week is National Fire Prevention week. In honor of it, we had some special visitors from the Litchfield Fire Department visit us. We got to meet 3 different fire fighters. First, we talked about all the different ways to stay safe if there is a fire and the importance of having a special meeting spot at home. Then we got a chance to see some of the gear they wear. We found out firemen are just our friends all dressed up. We watched fireman Martin put on a mask and funny air tank. When he took a breath, it sounded like Darth Vader. We found out that even will all of the gear on, it was still our friend Martin. Finally, we got to take a look at a fire truck. We started by looking at all of the different supplies they keep on the truck. Then we got to walk through the truck. Finally, we got a chance to act like a firefighter by spraying water at a target. We ended by taking a class picture in front of the truck and by giving them the Sparky Thank You pictures we colored.
In reading, we reviewed all of our sight words. Then we were introduced to our newest sight word, see. Next, we talked about words, how words are made up of a group of letters, and the difference between letters and words. Using our new emergent reader, I See Firefighters, we identified the number of words on each page before we read them. Next, we listened to the story, Firefighter Ted. It was a funny story about a boy pretending to be a firefighter. At the end of the story, we were able to not only determine the main character of the story, we were able to identifying what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story.
After completing our calendar binders, we put our number cards 0-5 in order. We had to make sure that the number zero started on the left side just like when we read. Then Ms. Torborg gave us 5 more cards 6-10. We had to add them to our number line in order. Next, we completed a dot-to-dot drawing a line from number to number in order.
In religion, we talked about the rosary. October is the month of the rosary. The rosary is a form of prayer with prayers recite in a specific order. After looking at a rosary and talking about, we watched a video, The Rosary: A Special Way to Pray. We heard Brother Francis explain the rosary to us.
Wednesday:
In reading, we reviewed our letters and letter sounds, song our t song, and added words that ended with the /t/ to our list. We also completed our letter t worksheet where we practiced capital and lowercase p’s and identifying words that began with the /t/.
We have read many different books and watched a couple of videos about fire safety. Each one taught us different safety tips. Today, we took all of those tips and made them into a book. We each had a chance to write a safety tip and then draw a picture representing our tip. Ms. Torborg helped us to write our words. We had to write down all of the sounds we hear in the word. It was really important to listen for the first and last sound in each word. We also completed a fire safety worksheet. We had to cut out a group of pictures and sort them into two different groups, safe or not safe. Once they were sorted, we glued them down.
In math, we worked on identifying triangles. First, we determined the different characteristics of a triangle. We found out that all triangles have 3 sides and 3 vertices (or corners). Triangles can look many different ways. Then we went on a hunt. We looked through magazines to find examples of triangles. When we found out, we cut it out and glued it on a big triangle poster.
In Religion, we talked about the rosary. After discussing the prayers, we prayed a decade of the rosary together. We had a pictures of a rosary on the board. After each prayer, we colored in the bead. That way we could follow along as we were praying.
Thursday:
We started our morning with bus safety. When we went outside, we saw two Hicks buses. One bus was parked on a large tarp. There was a big red area around it. We found out that is the danger zone. The bus driver can’t see us if we are in that area. We need to make sure we wait for the bus out of that area and when we get off the bus we walk 5 big steps away. On the second bus, we learned what to do inside a bus, where the emergency exits are, and how to get off the bus safely.
When we got back inside, it was snack time. We had to create our own snack today before we could eat it. We made fire truck crackers. We started by reading a book about fire trucks, Fighting Fires. Then we identified all of the different parts of a fire truck or the equipment on the truck. Next, Ms. Torborg told us about the materials we were going to use to represent the different parts of the fire truck. Finally, we had to gather our supplies and create our own truck. We started with a graham cracker and frosting. We could choose to have a red or white fire truck. Once we spread the frosting all over it, (No licking your fingers!) we added the details. We made a ladder out of pretzel sticks, add a Cheeze-it square window, and mini-oreos wheels.. The last thing was to add mini-m & m lights and a gumdrop siren. Finally, we got to eat it and mmmm.... it was delicious!
In reading, we worked with the -ap word family. We picked different consonants to put in front of the letters ap. Then we worked together to sound out the word and determine if it was a real word or nonsense word. Then we worked on cutting out the pieces of our flip books. Once Ms. Torborg stapled the pieces on, we worked together to sound out the words.
In math, we worked on building a number board. We each started with a blank number board. For each number on the left, we had to color that many squares in the row. We had to use only one color for each square and a new color for each row. As we were building our number board, we noticed that it looked like steps. Each number had one more box colored in. When we were done, we could use our board to figure out one more or one less than a given number.
We ended our day by making a cool fire picture. To make the flames in the back of the picture, we squirted red and yellow paint in the middle of the paper. (We found out that mixing red and yellow paint created orange!) Then we took a piece of plastic wrap and laid it over the top. Next, we patted it all over to mix it together. We had to move the plastic wrap to different spot on the paper to move the paint around. When we were done, our picture looked like a big fire.
Friday:
In the morning, we attended Mass, enjoyed snack & recess, had Spanish & music class, and reviewed our letters, letter sounds, and sight words.
After lunch, we completed our calendar binders and a beginning sounds worksheet before going to library. Then, we finished our fire pictures. We started by coloring and cutting out a house and a fire truck. Then we glued the house of on top of the picture of fire we created yesterday with paint and we glued the fire truck next to it. We also had to add a few details to our picture including the special meeting spot. The special meeting spot could be a tree, neighbor’s house, or special object in the area.
We ended our day by watching a short fire safety video with Chip and Dale, the Rescue Rangers.