Halloween

We had a great day celebrating Halloween(Check out our costumes!) and Jose G's birthday today!!!  We practiced letter sounds with a Haunted House this morning and unwrapped a whole bunch of caramels to make caramel apples for our party.  We had a parade around the whole school to show off our awesome costumes!  Happy Halloween!!!

Pumpkin Fun!!!

We have spent a great deal of time on pumpkins over the last couple of weeks.  On our field trip last week we got a big pumpkin for the classroom.  Yesterday we read the story, How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?  by Margaret McNamara.  We learned what it means to estimate and that you can estimate how many seeds are in a pumpkin based on the pumpkin's color and the number of lines on the outside.  We found out that it does not matter how small the pumpkin is because as Charlie states in the story, "Small things have a lot going on inside of them!"  We estimated anywhere from 10 seeds to 100,000 seeds.  We opened our pumpkin up and played with all the guts on the inside and separated our seeds.  Today we counted the seeds and discovered that our pumpkin had 686 seeds!!!  We created some pumpkin faces and then voted on our favorite one.  We made a pumpkin with star eyes, a diamond nose and a silly mouth.  We can't wait to eat our seeds at our Halloween party on Thursday!!!

Our Trip to the Farm!

Our Trip to the Farm!

Emilio's Birthday

Happy Birthday Emilio!  Yesterday we celebrated Emilio's 6th Birthday.

Emilio's mom and dad surprised him and brought treats!

Enjoying the birthday cake!

The birthday boy :)

Kindergarten Car Parade

     Each year at Lincoln we have a kindergarten car parade.  This is my second year participating as a kindergarten teacher and it is an awesome activity for our kids, and also the teachers :).  I had numerous parents tell me they still have cars from their children that are now in middle and high school.  In fact, Woodman's donated the banana boxes and when I went to pick up the boxes the young man who loaded them into my car asked what they were for.  I began to explain that I was a teacher and we make cars out of them.  He then asked if I taught at Lincoln and when I said yes he replied, "That was so much fun, I remember doing that when I was in kindergarten there!"
     Each child gets a banana box and throughout the week we decorate the boxes.  This year we discovered that moving the car parade to the beginning of the year was a good plan because we were able to paint the boxes outside and make less of a mess!  We paint the box one color and then paint 'shapes' on them next.  The kids cut out and glue on headlights, taillights, and license plates.  We then add steering wheels and are ready to practice driving.  Both teachers and children have a great time learning the rules of the road as we practice driving.  We make the cars as a part of our Emergency Responders and Safety Unit.  So we review road signs and then practice with our cars before we can get our driver's license for the parade.  If a child is being an unsafe driver and breaking the rules of the road they get pulled over and get a ticket.  Once we get our driver's license we get to be in the car parade for the whole school at the end of the day.  This year we were excited to see that some of our second grade friends had used their computer skills and made signs encouraging us during the parade!
     Check out our video!  Kindergarten Car Parade

Pattern Blocks

Getting to know the shapes in our pattern blocks.  We used the pattern blocks to practice position words.

Mrs. A can always make us laugh!

Making triangles!!!

When we work together we can build something amazing!

Fire Department Visit

This afternoon after our school fire drill we had a special visit from a firetruck!  After spending September learning all about Emergency Responders our kindergartners were ready to answer all of Firefighter Kathy's questions.  We remembered that we need to call 9-1-1 if there is an emergency and we reminded her to stop-drop-and-roll if our clothes ever catch fire.  We got to look at all the neat tools they carry on the firetruck.  We found hoses, ladders, an ax, and some scissors that were a lot bigger than our classroom scissors!  After learning about the truck we all got to go through the back of the firetruck and when we got out the ambulance pulled up and we got to go in there as well!  Firefighter Kathy reminded us not to be afraid of firefighters when they are all dressed up and she choose our awesome physical education student teacher, Ms. Applin, to demonstrate what a firefighter looks like in all their gear.
Check out our visit:   Fire Department Visits Lincoln!

Apple Counting

One of my amazing teammates found this awesome math activity to tie into our October farming theme.  We have been learning about fall changes, particularly with apple trees.  For math we are focusing on counting and one-to-one correspondence.  With this game the children each need a die, the worksheet,  and three crayons, red, yellow, and green.  They color the apples on the tree in relation to the number they roll.  Each color crayon takes a turn until all the apples are colored.  Once the tree is all colored the child counts the apples and writes the number in the matching row.  I am going to use this as one of the games for independent math centers throughout the farming theme.
Watch us learning how to play!!!  Apple Counting

First Day of School

Our pictures from the first day of school:  First Day of School

iPads

We are looking forward to having our own classroom iPads!!!  We will have 5 iPads to use in our classroom.  Check back here to see all the new ways we are using them to explore, learn, and create.

October Math Focus

For the month of October our math focus will be:  measurable attributes, classifying objects and counting.

Making Meaning

Each week we read a new story as a class.  These stories are part of our Making Meaning Curriculum.  We read the story twice as a class and then spend another day learning new vocabulary words from our story of the week.