October 13, 2000
It was another very busy week for Mrs. Smith's KinderKids, with lots of terrific ideas to share. I even have some pictures I saved from last week because I thought there was already too much for one week's page. That means this week's page will take a couple extra minutes to load fully, depending on the speed of your computer and your connection. Thanks for your patience and for taking the time to come see what's new In My Room :o)
I'm out of town again this weekend, enjoying the sunshine and the ocean in beautiful Pismo Beach, on California's central coast, about 20 minutes from the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo. Since so much of the country is having an early Fall (and even an early winter ... people are telling me they've had SNOW already!), I thought I'd add a couple pics of the views from my room and from the sundeck. Who wouldn't want to be here as often as possible, huh?
looking west, the view from my groundfloor patio
looking north, towards Avila Bay
looking south, towards Point Sal and the Pismo Pier
Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch
Our pumpkin patch activities are in full swing, and we're having a ball. Here's the rundown and getting the teaching wall ready. You'll find lots and lots of great ideas and activities in my Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch thematic unit.
Our Pumpkin Patch teaching wall/bulletin board got started a week ago, when I was out sick ... the kids fingerpainted pumpkins, and I put them up on the wall this week, along with a jointed cardboard scarecrow I've had for several years.
This is the bare bones of
this bulletin board, which will be up until the day before Thanksgiving.
I'll take everything off except the fence and grass/hills, and cover it
with more blue paper so that I can uncover the fence in the Spring for
my Come Into the Garden unit.
Next I added sentence strips
about the scarecrow, using high frequency words and seasonal vocabulary.
I also put up a torn paper tree on the side, which will become an important
part of the wall later this month, when we begin my The
Leaves Are Falling Down unit.
Mr. Scarecrow
I put lots of leaves on
the tree, in Fall colors. The tree will "lose" its leaves as the
leaves outside begin to fall.
Here's a close-up of the
tree. I used two different types of Ellison leaves, to give it added
texture and dimension. The sentence strips are the basic text in
several books and projects we do as part of my The
Leaves Are Falling Down unit. They're actually a bit high on
the wall for the kinderkids to read, but they like reaching up with the
long pointer during Literacy Centers time.
A picture of the whole wall, the way
it is for now. I'll be adding more student artwork over the next
few weeks, including Family Turkeys (a November homework project) and Indian
Corn made by the students as a patterning exercise. There's room
on the floor for the entire class to sit during whole group instruction,
and lots of room for the kids to work during Literacy Centers and Self
Selected Reading time. The cubbies on the floor in front of the wall
hold seasonal work jobs, like the Spinning Spiders game below, which I
talked about last week. The very messy
table in the right foreground is where I do my individual reading instruction,
and the table in the left foreground is a student table.
Another look at the student
table ... the whiteboard to the immediate left of the scarecrow holds our
Word Wall, which we're just beginning to use. If you've been looking
at the pictures each week, you may finally be feeling oriented as to which
wall is where and the changes that are occuring in the room. Maybe
I'll figure out how to do one of those nifty 360 degree video tours that
pan around the entire room.
This picture of the room
-- taken during our Reading Buddies visit -- makes the room look deceptively
large, probably because it's on the diagonal, corner-to-corner. But
it does give you a good look at most of our work areas. With nearly
40 kids in the room, we're an explosion of color.
Reading Buddies
Many teachers I know have Reading Buddies for their class. Typically, they work with a 5th or 6th grade class, and the big kids come down and listen to the little kids read once a week.
This year, we're trying
something different. My class and Miss Paulin's first grade class
are reading together and having a great time! She and I teach in
much the same way, and our students have many of the same books in their
book boxes, so it's truly Shared Reading for the children. This week
the first graders each brought a book or two from their book boxes (some
chose to bring their Literacy Place readers, which my kids really enjoyed
seeing), and we paired the kids and let them go for it on their own for
15 or 20 minutes, then had a large group session to end our day.
Miss Paulin locked my room while I walked the KinderKids to the bus.
We're looking forward to visiting their classroom next week.
School Library
This
was the first week we got to go to the school library and check out books,
and the kids were very excited -- so excited that I forgot to take pictures
inside.
These pics show us walking back to class carrying our books. We have lines painted on the playground to delineate different areas (playground versus field and track, etc.) as well as to mark "quiet zones" that kids are supposed to stay out of during instructional time, since not everyone has the same recess and lunch times. We use the lines to find our way from our classroom to the library, cafeteria, and restrooms, which is especially important once the children start going to the restroom on their own during class time.
This picture shows what the outside of our buildings look like :o) Three of our four original instructional buildings are "pods" or "units." Each unit has six classrooms, with a center room used as teacher offices/workspace/storage. When the school was built, there were no interior walls separating the rooms/classes, and the noise and lack of defined space became a problem, so there are now non-structural walls separating the classrooms in the units..
My room is a portable/trailer,
and it was brand-new last year. I love it because it's so fresh and
bright. Our other classrooms -- and the older trailers -- are very
dark inside. Our district has 30+ campuses (elementary schools and
middle schools), and last year I read in the paper that there were enough
portable classrooms on our playgrounds to make another ten schools.
We have lots of portables, though they seem pretty permanent when you see
them.
This Week's TLC Art Projects
Apples
The KinderKids made apples on their own! This picture shows how I set up the pre-cut paper for each table, putting the pieces in frozen dinner containers. A sample of the finished project is in front. I showed the kids how to make the apple, then turned them loose to do it on their own. The apples will end up on our walls with the children's names on them.
5 Little Pumpkins
We also made the Five Little Pumpkins picture, as a whole group activity. By looking at the end product, it's easy to tell who was listening and who was letting their mind wander. One of the great things about this particular project is that the kids end up with six pumpkins and have to throw one out, so it's a good check for counting and following directions. Most of the kids are getting very good at making circles from squares, by snipping the corners in straight lines, which is the basic cut in all the TLC projects.
I always have the children
hold
up the next piece we'll be working with, to show me they're ready to move
on. This also keeps their hands out of mischief while we wait for
slower students to finish.
The finished product ... 5 pumpkins on the gate and a big yellow moon. We glued the 5 Little Pumpkins poem on the back. Several people have written to the KinderKorner list this weekend asking for the words, so here they are:
Five Little Pumpkins
(traditional fingerplay
-- author unknown)
Five little pumpkins sitting
on a gate.
The first one said "Oh,
my, it's getting late."
The second one said "There
are witches in the air."
The third one said "But
I don't care."
The fourth one said "Let's
run and run and run."
The fifth one said "I'm
ready for some fun"
Woo-ooh! went the wind and
out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins
rolled out of sight.
I also have this poem recorded as a song by
Raffi, and we enjoy singing it as well as chanting it.
This Week's Favorite Stories
The Teeny Tiny Woman ~ A Traditional
Tale
and some great innovations, too!
Teeny
Tiny
By Jill Bennett &
Tomie dePaola
We LOVE this book! First grade loaned us the big book and tape from our old Houghton Mifflin reading series, and we've had so much fun listening to the scary ghost voice all week long. The kids are much better than I am at saying "Give me my bone!" in their spookiest voices. And they love the ending, when they all get to shout "Take it!"
Amazon carries the student-sized tradebook from Houghton Mifflin, but it's currently on back order. Your students might enjoy one of the other versions of this traditional tale, as well as the innovations we've been reading this week.
More Favorite Versions of the
Traditional
Story of the Teeny Tiny Woman
