We
had a wonderfully busy week in our room, with lots of fun October activities
and projects. We learned more about Spiders
and Bats, read Stellaluna
and did follow up activities, did three seasonal art projects, and read
even more books about pumpkins! We also began our next Fall unit,
The
Leaves Are Falling Down, with a simple pocket chart activity that the
kids really enjoyed and which you'll see below.
I also
got things prepped to begin my Scarecrow, Scarecrow
unit on Monday, the day before Halloween, and worked hard to finish my
quarterly benchmark testing, though I still have several students who need
make up tests due to absences and/or the classroom changes we made this
week to accommodate children who needed English Language Development support.
It's
hard and sometimes discouraging to have to move students from one classroom
to another 8 weeks after school began, but it's a Federal law compliance
issue, so we moved 9 or 10 of our 100+ KinderKids to different teachers
this week, and things are settling in nicely with everyone seeming to do
OK with the changes.
Grab
a cup of coffee and something yummy to munch on, and come see what's new
In My Room ... there are lots of great photos and information about all
the things we've been up to this week.
~
Victoria
This Week in The Pumpkin Patch
Scarecrow photo taken
at Avila Barn, copyright Victoria Smith.
I began last week's
Pumpkin Patch notes by saying the following -- and since it's all still
true, I'm going to say it again this week and not have to make up anything
new to say :o)
Pumpkins and the Pumpkin
Patch are my BIG October theme this year, expanded greatly from what I
taught the past few years, with most of the credit going to KinderKorner
subscribers who have been kind enough to share their favorite ideas
with me. We're still reading and enjoying new pumpkin books, and
I've been sharing the pumpkin pictures I took in the fields around Avila
Barn over the past few weekends. To see more of Avila Barn, go to
my online emergent reader called I
Went to the Farm ... you'll even see my sons and husband in one or
two of the photos.
I know that many of you
plan to end your Pumpkin units on Tuesday, in order to move on to other
things. I keep all of my October workjobs (including the ones on
Pumpkins, Bats, Spiders, and Halloween) available until the end of November,
and sometimes longer if the kids still want to work with them.
My Welcome
to the Pumpkin Patch Unit continues until Thanksgiving, and integrates
nicely with other units on Harvest, Scarecrows,
Autumn, Falling Leaves, and Thanksgiving traditions.
Here are links to those units, and I'm working hard this weekend to finish
the Thanksgiving unit and get it online:
The sequencial story of the journey from seed to pumpkin and back
again. The story features softly illustrated pages with interesting details. Under $6.
My class still wants this book everyday! I love Rockwell's
simple books for emergent readers (and listeners) and this one is no exception.
A gentle story about a young boy's search for the perfect pumpkin for Halloween.
A captivating ABC book that takes us through the seasons in the garden.
Children entering Patty's pumpkin patch will not only find a continuous
story, told in the main text and illustrations, but also an introduction
to the alphabet, presented in smaller illustrations along the bottom of
each page. Read the reviews at Amazon, this is a gorgeous book!
We'll
be doing the Jack O'Happy activities below on Monday and Tuesday, which
is Halloween:
Jack
O' Happy
This
is our "Happy Poem" for October:
This is Jack O' Happy.
This is Jack O' Sad.
Now you see him sleepy.
Now you see him mad.
This is Jack in pieces small,
But in a pie he's best of
all!
On the day we carve pumpkins in class, I always carve a small pumpkin
(5 to 6 inches tall) to resemble Jack O' Happy. If your school allows it,
place a candle inside so the kids can learn the terrific autumn smell of
roasting pumpkins.
The following day, we chant or sing our Jack O' Happy poem several
times, then I cut Jack into Pieces Small (the pieces are actually quite
large, so that individual pieces are recognizable ... eyes, mouth, etc.,
maybe 5 or 6 pieces in all). I then gently place the pieces in a
one-gallon glass pickle jar (using glass -- not plastic -- is very important,
as plastic allows air to enter and gases/odors to escape).
Once Jack in Pieces Small is inside the jar, I place him on our Science Observation table, where he remains for the rest of the
year. We make a Language Experience chart for the kids to predict
what will happen to Jack, and there is a composition book, markers and
pencils, and magnifying glasses next to the jar, for the children to record
their observations for the remainder of the school year.
This is a fun project that the kids don't lose interest in, as Jack
slowly softens and turns to mush. Some years, he even grows mold,
but it's surprising how well Jack holds up inside that glass jar :o)
A KinderKorner
subscriber sent the following note to the list on Saturday:
> There is a new
book I ordered from Scholastic something > like Pumpkin
/Circle? that is non-fiction and it has pictures of a > pumpkin decomposing
in it. Perfect for ending this unit.
Glorious color photographs
steal the show in this book on pumpkins in all their sumptuous rotundity
and diversity. From the opening spread of a mound of giant pumpkins, dwarfing
the preschooler nestled in their midst, to a concluding series of shots
of a seed toothed jack-o' lantern gradually subsiding into the regenerative
earth -- i.e., decomposing over time -- each spread is a visual delight.
My
KinderKids love the Pumpkin
Circle book! It's featured in my Welcome
to the Pumpkin Patch unit and I keep it on the table next to our carved
pumpkin while we watch the decomposition process. I chop up our jack
o lantern and put him in a one gallon glass jar (so he's "Jack in pieces
small," from the Jack O Happy poem) and we watch him turn slowly to sludge
for the rest of the year. Lots of fun for the kids, and they get
to record observations/drawings in a journal. I keep colored pencils,
markers, and magnifying glasses with Jack for easy student access.
There's
also a terrific website
for The Pumpkin Circle Project. They produced a Pumpkin Circle
video, but I can't get it to load on their page this morning, possibly
due to heavy Internet traffic. There are lots of other terrific things
on their website, so be sure to bookmark it to use in your classroom.
Another fun link for ending
your Pumpkin Patch unit is the Virtual
Jack O Lantern Page, where you can "carve"
a pumpkin online.
This Week's TLC Art Project
Trick
or Treater
This is a favorite TLC
project every year, and one that's great for beginners who are still learning
how to hold their scissors.
Because I had laryngitis
on Friday, I got to try something that TLC authors Kaye and Virginia suggest
... I told the students they would have to watch me for all instructions,
as I wasn't going to talk at all during the lesson! And, believe
it or not, it worked and I was thrilled with the results :o)
As you can see, most of
the kids are on task and attentive, and they stayed focused though waits
of 2 to 5 minutes while other students were working. All but
one student kept up with the group and correctly finished their project.
I have a mom helper who
comes every Friday, and she took the pictures for me while we worked.
She also resisted the urge to "help" children who weren't paying attention,
and commented afterwards that it was very interesting to see how the project
-- during and after -- clearly showed the broad range of abilities in the
children.
Most amazing of all is
that the class was virtually silent for more than 30 minutes, as we worked
on our Trick or Treater Ghosts!
For more information on
TLC -- Teaching Little Children -- projects, visit
the TLC website.
More Art Projects We Did This Week
Halloween
Cats
This isn't a TLC project,
but is done in a similar fashion. I had the KinderKids fold the large
square in half to make the head, so that the sides would be symmetrical.
The kids that didn't listen and follow directions ended up with heads shaped
like butterflies instead of like circles. I love how these types
of art projects serve as simple and effective assessments of my students'
abilities and skills in many areas.
Cotton
Swab Skeletons
I showed you these last
week, done by Ms. B's class, so now I have to show you how our's turned
out.
This was an outstanding
lesson in listening and following directions, as well as in counting and
one-to-one correspondence. Each skeleton takes 21 Q-Tip cotton swabs,
10 of which are bent in half to break them into two pieces each, to be
used for fingers and toes.
My room looks extremely
busy right now, and is bursting with student work on the walls and cabinet
doors. Everything but the October spider calendar will stay up until
after parent conferences the week of November 6th through 8th. I'll
be making a new quilt for November, featuring hand print turkeys and neat
9 patches done in Fall colors. Be sure to check next week's pictures
to see how it looks!
Mrs.
Landucci's Skeletons
Mrs. Landucci's kindergarten
class did a neat directed art skeleton project too, using white paint on
a black background. Her kids did a terrific job!
We watched Charlotte's
Web over a three day period, and the children really enjoyed the story.
They liked predicting
and discussing Wilbur's fate ("he's gonna die, he's gonna die!") and made
some interesting remarks about spiders, too, that had a stronger scientific
basis than their Wilbur thoughts :o)
They found Templeton suitably
comical, and laughed in all the right places. Several of the KinderKids
had already seen the film at home, but were good about not telling what
was going to happen.
Because the KinderKids
enjoyed the video so much, I'm going to read them the chapter book and
see how it goes over in small doses. My class does very well with
long read-alouds, so I think they'll enjoy this one, too, especially since
they already know the story. We'll do an ongoing comparison to the
video version, and will make predictions to see how well they remember
the story line from the movie, as well as to check for comprehension and
listening skills.
Shared
Writing / KWL Chart
This is the KWL / Shared
Writing chart we made on Spiders a week ago. After it was finished,
I hooked it to a pocket chart with clothespins, so we could refer to it
often and use it as part of our Read the Room Center during Literacy Centers.
On the other side of the
chart stand is the Bats KWL / Shared Writing Chart we made this week (see
below).
Going Batty
Shared
Writing / KWL Chart
This is the Bats KWL /
Shared Writing Chart we made this week, before reading any of our bat books.
The questions the kids wanted to find answers to are on the bottom, below
the bat (yes, I drew the wings upside down :o) You'll notice that
some "facts" are in complete sentences and others are single words (black,
brown, gray).
If you look closely, you'll
see that I've crossed out spelling / handwriting / punctuation errors,
because that's what I want the kids to do when they write. I don't
give them erasers in Kindergarten at all, and have KinderKids as well as
First Graders write with those "fat" pencils that are easy to hold and
have no eraser. Another advantage of those pencils is they only need
sharpening about once a month!
One other thing that's
difficult to see in the picture is that I coded some of the letters to
make the words easier for the children to pronounce (that's a relic from
being trained in Total Reading seven or eight years ago).
Make way for the Acro-Bats! 55 bats put on an annual
jamboree with fun and costumes, while introducing children to number, rhyme,
and counting. Under $4. Also available in hardcover.
Stellaluna was our main
literature selection in the classroom this week, and we read it daily.
The KinderKids really liked the comparisons between bats and birds, their
friendship, and the fact that Stellaluna and her mother are reunited.
Aside from the story itself,
what I like best about Stellaluna is how many facts about bats are slipped
into the story, to be used as first teaching or reinforcement of facts
and characteristics of bats.
An American Bookseller's
Book of the Year and a Reading Rainbow selection. Also available in a Big
Book Edition
Introducing bats as insect
eaters, Earle puts their prodigious appetites in terms that children will
understand: "Each night a bat chomps half its own weight in bugs. If you
weigh 60 pounds, that's like eating 125 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
every day." Under $4 and highly recommended!
An introduction to nocturnal
animals, with an emphasis on bats and owls. Part of Scholastic's
First Discovery Series.
Venn
Diagram
After several readings
of Stellaluna, plus reading close to a dozen other books on bats, we made
this Venn Diagram comparing bats with birds.
Batman
Song For
Phonemic Awareness
This is the Batman song
we sing all through October, to help us learn our onset/initial consonant
sounds. It's sung to the tune of the old Batman TV Show theme song,
making the letter sound (not singing the letter name), and it goes like
this:
b
b b b b b b b b
b b b b b b b Batman!
c
c c c c c c c c
c c c c c c c Catman!
Mostly we sing this one
outside, walking around the dodge ball circle and using the manual alphabet
hand signs for each letter as we sing ... the KinderKids can get very loud
and have a great time with this one.
For more bat activities,
stories, songs, and poems, visit my Going
Batty thematic unit.
Literacy Centers and Workjobs
This week I finally did
something I've been meaning to do for a very long time ... I redesigned
and moved my Literacy Centers Workboard. It used to be a laminated
sheet of tag board that was never large enough, had the students' names
written in Vis-a-Vis marker, and got very messy when I moved students from
one group to another.
Now I have the workboard
outlined on my white board, and the students' names are written on tongue
depressors with peel-and-stick magnetic strips on the back (the kind you
buy in rolls and cut to the desired length). Moving students is now
super simple, as is rotating the job cards, which also have magnetic strips
attached instead of doubled over masking tape.
My job cards are on laminated
cardstock, and I have matching cards on the tubs that hold the various
centers and jobs. I was given a set of blackline masters several
years ago, and have added many cards of my own design since then.
Fountas & Pinnell have exellent work job blackline masters in their
book "Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children." If you're
looking for a simple and concise explanation of how to set up and manage
Independent Literacy Centers, you'll find everything you need to know in
their book.
I've practically worn
out my copy of this terrific book on developing a guided reading program.
Contains great information on creating a set of leveled books (with wonderful
indexes of hundreds of pre-leveled books sorted by both level and title
for easy reference), setting up a school bookroom, how to take a Running
Record, managing your classroom during guided reading (or "what are the
rest of the kids doing?"), creating Literacy Centers, and more! Great for
Four Blocks teachers, too.
Here are some of my Literacy
Centers worktubs, so you can see what they look like. Many of these
are on the floor against the Pumpkin Patch wall, for easy access.
Some tubs stay in place and the children take items from them as needed.
Others are intended to be picked up and carried to any available work spot
in the room.
Many of these are
my current Thematic Unit Work Jobs, which I'll keep out as long as the
KinderKids are interested in them ... chances are we'll be doing Bats and
Spiders and Halloween jobs alongside Christmas Tree and Gingerbread Men
jobs. No matter which tub or center the children are using, they're
getting valuable practice in reading and math skills.
Alphabet
Cards
A
selection of 12 sets of flashcards that I rotate regularly. Students
choose one set at a time to work with.
Alphabet
Puzzles
I
cut the lids and then taped them to the boxes so that they flip open, and
now my boxes last much longer and are easy to open and close.
Workjob
Tubs on the Floor
Blue ones are portable.
Tan ones are choose an activity and leave the tub in place. From
left to right ... Alphabet Puzzles, Games, Pumpkins, Spiders.
More
Portable Literacy Centers
Bats,
Star Author, and Halloween
Student
Book Boxes
These
are stored on the floor against the wall, on the same side of the room
the child sits on ... half are against the east wall and half are against
the west wall, to alleviate crowding when the kids need to take them out
and put them away.
Pumpkins
Literacy Center
Includes books, plastic
pumpkins math work job, and reading buddy puppets from the Dollar Tree
store.
Pocket Charts
I
also did some minor rearranging in the north end of my room, turning a
long table to fit flat against the wall, which made storing my Pocket Charts
easier, more convenient, and more space efficient.
Here's
how they look completely tucked away ... there are 5 stands turned sideways
here, holding 10 charts in all:
And here's how they look
with three charts turned for use during Opening / Story Floor Time, for
whole group or small group instruction. My desk is to the immediate
right of the charts, adjacent to the window:
I
used the next two charts on Thursday and Friday, to begin building familiarity
with some of the poems and stories in our next thematic unit, The
Leaves Are Falling Down! The first chart is an interactive song
using the kid's names, sung to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell:
"Our Colorful Fall" is
an original story by my friend Vicki Witcher, and it's terrific for
seasonal vocabulary and color words. Each child gets their own blackline
copy of this story to keep in their personal book box:
I have matching text to
make the chart interactive. At this point in the year, my KinderKids
really enjoy matching text in the pocket charts, which shows me that their
visual discrimination skills are developing.
The chart below ... Who
Lives on a Farm? ... is an original story by me. It's one of the
first charts the kids learn to track, and they still don't want me to take
it down.
I hope you'll visit my
online thematic unit called The Leaves Are Falling
Down. Much of our November work comes from this unit, and the
kids really enjoy the songs, poems, books, new Literacy Centers and Work
Jobs, art projects, and multi-level integrated activities.
That's it for this week,
and I know it's a lot, because it took me over seven hours to put the page
together. It's amazing how time flies when I'm deeply involved selecting
and editing pictures and writing the stuff that goes with them.
While I was typing that
last sentence, a little bell rang on my computer to tell me that "Windows
has updated the clock settings on your computer for the end of Daylight
Savings Time. Please verify that the settings are correct."
I've never been sitting at the keyboard when that change took place before,
and I was startled by the bell and the pop up window's sudden appearance.
I sure wish all the clocks and appliances around the house would reset
themselves as well.
Now that it's officially
an hour earlier than it was just moments ago, I guess I won't have
to count the hour it will take to get all the files uploaded for this page
before I head off to bed.
