The theme of the week was scarecrows in the Kindergarten room. We started the week by talking about living and nonliving things. We discovered that all living things need air (to breathe), food (to eat), and it has to change & grow. Throughout the week, we were able to identify many things that were both living and nonliving things. From there we determined a scarecrow is not a living thing. We found out that scarecrows are made of out of old clothes, hay, and a pole. Their job is to scare away the crows. We started the week by writing about an imaginary (make-believe) scarecrow. We had to write about 2 thing our scarecrow could do and one thing it couldn’t. When everyone was done, we turned our pages into another class book. Along with our writing project, we created a scarecrow glyph, (A glyph is a pictorial form of data collection.), identified our color words by doing a scarecrow color by number worksheet, and we made a scarecrow with moving arms and legs. We ended our week by celebrating our grandparents with Mass, a special concert, refreshments, and a tour of the school.
Monday:
Today was bubble gum and no homework day. We earned both of these prizes by meeting our marathon goals. Since we don’t have nightly homework, we got 15 minutes of extra play time.
We finished our bible story about Joseph today. Before we heard the ending, we reviewed what has happened to Joseph. Today we found out that Joseph’s dreams came true. And even though his brothers were mean to him, he was kind to them and forgave them.
In reading, we were introduced to a new letter sound and letter, Aa. We watched to two different videos. During our A song, we noticed that A actually has two letter sound, a short sound and a long sound. Ms. Torborg told us when we are practicing/reviewing our sounds, we will use the short sound. We also noticed in our song that the words didn’t start with the /short a/ instead the /short a/ was in the middle of the word. We did work together to create a list of words that began with the /short a/. We listened to two different books about scarecrows. After each story, we identified the main character and the problem and solution of the story. We also identified several rhyming words in our first story, The Shy Scarecrow. Finally, we practiced writing capital and lowercase a’s in the sand and all of the uppercase letters on the iPad.
Living and Non-living was the topic of the day during theme time. A living thing needs three things air (to breathe), food (to eat), and it has to move & grow. After reading a book and watching a couple of short videos on living things, we did a little experiment. We had to determine if a given object was a living thing or a non-living thing. First, we picked out an object. Then we asked our self some important questions:
Does it need air?
Does it need food and water?
Does it move and grow?
From that information we could answer our last question: Is it living? We also did a worksheet in which we had to categorize objects in to living and nonliving things.
In religion, we talked about the image of God. We know that God created us just like he created Adam and Eve. He made each of us very special. We are made in His image. That means we reflect God. When other people see us, they see God. We heard the story today about the little children visiting Jesus.
In math, we reviewed the number 0-5. We started by counting a group of objects and identifying the corresponding number. Then we practiced putting the numbers 0 to 5 in order. Finally, we played a new game, Steal the Number. We started by sitting next to our partner and putting the numbers cards in order. The object of the game is to guess the missing number. Player A covers their eyes while player B takes a number card and hides it in their hands. Player A then tries to guess the missing number. After they figure it out, they which jobs. We were able to play several different rounds before we completed the next page in our number book. Today we practiced writing the number 6. First, we wrote it in the air. Then we practiced writing it in our book.
Tuesday:
Our bible story today was about a baby in a basket named Moses.
In reading, we were introduced to a new sight word, to. We each created a sentence using our word. Then we reviewed all of our word. Each time we saw our new word, we had to stand up before we read it. Next, we read through our new decodable story, Scarecrow goes… We started by reading the story together. We used the picture clues to help us figure out some of the tricky words. We also made several predictions about where the scarecrow was going to go next in the story. The second time we read the story with a partner. First Ms. Torborg taught us how to partner read. It starts by sitting next to each other. Our elbows and knees should be next to our partner and we should each hold one side of the book. The with our first partner, we each read the whole book before the other person took their turn. With our second partner, we read every other page. We need to make sure we always start with the title when we read a story. After doing a little lettercise that reviewed our letters and letter sounds, we listened to the story, The Lazy Scarecrow. As we listened to the story, we identified the main character of the story. At the end of the story, we reviewed what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story. We ended singing the letter a song, identifying words that began with the /short a/ and by completing a letter sort worksheet. We had to sort the letter A’s into capital and lowercase letters.
Our theme this week is scarecrows. The job of a scarecrow is to scare away the crows just like its name. We know that scarecrows are not living things because they don’t eat, breathe and grow. Today we imagined a scarecrow that could do anything we wanted. Some of our scarecrows could jump, run, job, hop, skip, etc... While not quite anything, there was one thing it couldn’t do (but we got to choose.) Once we had decided what our scarecrows could and couldn’t do, we wrote down our words for a story. Ms. Torborg helped us listen for our beginning sounds of each word. Once our words were done, we drew a picture of our scarecrows. Then we combined them into a new class book.
In religion, we were talked about rules. We know that we have rules to keep us safe in school. God also gave us some rules if we want to be with him in heaven, the 10 commandments. Today we listened to the story of how Moses got the 10 commandments.
In math, we worked on subitizing numbers. Subitizing means a number or group of objects by sight without counting. We started with our quick look cards. We looked at the card for just a short time before we identified the number of dots on it. We tried to figure out the number of dots without counting them. Then we played a subitizing game, Find It! Today we played the game by ourself. The goal was to cover every square of the game board. First, we rolled a dice and identified the number on it. Then we had to find a square on our board with the same number of dots and cover it. We ended by singing our number song and completing our number 7 page in our number book.
Wednesday:
We continued listening to the story of Moses. Today we heard about when Moses fled to the desert, so he wouldn’t be arrested.
In reading, we reviewed our letters, letter sounds, and sight words. We identified words that began with the /short a/. And we did a little lettercise identifying all of the letters and letter sounds. Next, we reviewed the characteristics of a living thing. We listened to the story, Living and Nonliving, and we watched a short video clip with Cookie Monster. Then we completed a worksheet. For each item in the chart, we had to answer 4 questions. Does it need air? Does it move or grow? Does it need food or water? Is it living? We worked together to answer the questions for the first few items. Then we completed the rest on our own. Next we listened to the story, The Silly Scarecrow. We identified the main characters, Clifford and Emily Elizabeth. Then we worked on creating our own scarecrow. Our theme project today was a glyph. Glyphs are a pictorial form of data collection. Our goal today was to make a scarecrow glyph. We had to listen carefully to Ms. Torborg’s directions. We had to decided which choice was right for us. (If you a re 5 years old, color your hat orange. if you are 6 years old, color your hat yellow.) After all of the parts were colored, we had to cut them out and glue them together into a scarecrow. We each made a unique scarecrow just like us.
In religion, we continued working with the 10 commandments. Yesterday we heard the story of how Moses got the stone tablets. Today we talked about each of the commandments and then put them in order.
In math, we worked on putting numbers 1-10 in order. Then we played steal the number. Next, we worked with five frames. We each started with a five frame board and 5 counters. As Ms. Torborg showed us a number card, we had to put the corresponding items on the five frame. If the number card was 3, we had to put 3 counters on our board. Then we talked about where the counters where and how many open spaces we had. Next, we reviewed some of our quick looks cards. We only had a few seconds to try to identify the number of dots. Then we played our game from yesterday, Find It!
Thursday:
We continued our bible story of Moses. Today we heard the story of Moses and the Burning Bush.
In reading, we reviewed our letter sounds and letter. Then we worked on combining two letter sounds /a/ & /m/. We found out that they recreated the word am. Next, we worked with the -am word family. We tried putting letter sounds in front of the word am to see if they would make a word. We wrote down all of the word we made. We noticed that some of the words started with capital letters and some started with lowercase letters. Once we read all the words again, we noticed that the words with capital letters were names. Next, we worked on reading stations. We also met in small groups with Ms. Torborg. She taught us how to play a new game, Roll and Read. Today we worked on reading letters both capital and lowercase.
This week we have been singing and dancing to a new song, Dingle Dangle Scarecrow. It sure has been a fan favorite! Today we created a dingle dangle scarecrow. Ms. Torborg gave us two papers with all of the different parts on it. We started by coloring and cutting it out. Then Ms. Torborg helped us punch holes in each of the parts. Finally, she put a little fastener on it to keep it together. The arms, legs, and head move in many different ways.
In religion, we were introduced to Saint Vincent de Paul. He was a priest known for his kindness. He worked on earned money just to give it away. St. Vincent de Paul is the patron saint of charities. His feast day is September 27th.
Ms. Torborg had to leave for an appointment when we went outside for recess, so Mrs. Kramer and Ms. Zuehl were our teachers for the rest of the day. After Spanish, we were off to the church to practice for our grandparents’ day program. We practiced getting on and off the stage, singing our songs, and being a good audience member.
Friday:
We sure had an exciting day! It was Grandparents Day! Our grandparents met us at church. After sitting with them at Mass, we performed our spring concert for them. Then we enjoyed refreshments in the Social Hall. We ended our morning by meeting our grandparents at school for a tour of our classroom. We loved sharing our daily activities with them. They also had an opportunity to join us for our last Marathon Rally.
We started our rally by praying for all of our marathon intentions. The we were sent on a scavenger hunt. As a team, we had to read the clue and figure out the answer. Then we had to find the object and our next clue somewhere around the school. Each clue envelope also had a puzzle piece in it. Once we had all of our puzzle pieces, we had to put the puzzle together. Our puzzle turned out to be a picture of the lighthouse. We ended by finding out we raised over $30,000 and our My Lighthouse dance.
In the afternoon, we completed our calendar, reviewed characteristic of living things, and completed a couple of coloring worksheets. For our first sheet, we could only color the items in the picture that are living. On our second sheet, we colored a scarecrow picture. We couldn’t just color it any color though. We had to color it according to the color number. We had to read the words or match the letters to the color words on our wall.