In light of Johnny Appleseed's birthday, our kindergarten class centered our week around apples. We learned about how apples grow, what colors and tastes apples come in, and what we can make with apples! K-3 may just be experts in the apple field! In our science unit, we are covering trees, and apples are a perfect way to find out how trees provide us food to eat. As a group, we read a non-fiction book titled, "Amazing Apples." We talked about how non-fiction books include real information (facts) along with real pictures. After reading facts about apples, the kids got with their "knee partners" and discussed what facts we could include in our "Can/Have/Are" anchor chart on apples. After discussing, we came up with a final chart. Later in the week, we focused on literary, or fiction, pieces on apples as well. We discussed the differences between fiction and non-fiction, and how we can use both to learn. We use non-fiction to gain information with facts, while we use fiction to learn elements of a story (characters, setting, plot). We read the book, "Apples Apples Everywhere," which is a story about two children's trip to an apple orchard. The children picked apples, tasted them, and learned about apple harvesting at the farm. After the book, we used our new learning from both fiction and non-fiction books, and wrote an opinion piece about apples. Students wrote their names, colored what apple was their favorite, and drew a portrait of themselves eating their favorite apple. We then used red, yellow, and green to create our own colorful apples as the cover to our apple opinion book. The pieces are currently hanging up in K-3, and it is a joy to see and read the writing our kindergarteners are doing! Friday was the fan favorite for apples! We had three different apples to sample for our "Favorite Apple" graph. We all tried the different apples, and took placed our favorite apple with the corresponding color on the graph. We also had the discussion about describing the taste of the apples. The red was sweet, but tart. The yellow was sweet. The green was SOUR! We had so much fun counting and comparing the numbers on the graph. Students answered the questions, "Which apple had the least amount of likes? Which apple had the most?" I even had students visually deciding what columns would go in order from least to greatest! Math is such a wonderful subject, and we spark many discussions from numbers! We then filled out our own graphs by looking at our data from the big graph. This was such a fun lesson to do, because there was so much learning! Tune in soon to see our learning on spiders, and the activities we do based upon our schema and new learning!
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Wow, the beginning of the year has gone by so quickly! I feel like the first day of school was just yesterday. I am having so much fun with my students; I know that this year is going to be an AWESOME year. During the first week, the kindergarteners were introduced to many new things at Meadow Lark. One theme we focused on was Pete the Cat. Who doesn't love him?! We started by reading "Pete the Cat: Rockin' in Our School Shoes" in the morning to set the tone. The story is about how Pete is at a new school and how he encounters all the cool rooms and their uses. I used a cute YouTube video to pair with the book so the kids could sing the song that goes with Pete and his school shoes. The kindergarteners sang their way through the book and LOVED Pete! After, I had "found" a note from Pete telling the kindergarteners that he was somewhere in the building! We went all over the school, touring where the Office, Gym, Music, Computer, and Lunch rooms were. Pete left notes the whole way; even back to our room! The kids were so excited that Pete had been to the school.
We then started to make our own Pete the Cat to display in our classroom. I took basic shapes and asked students how I knew the shapes were what they said they were. One student mentioned that a rectangle is a rectangle because it has two long and two short sides! I modeled to students how to make Pete. The creations were so cute! We also read, "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes." After talking about colors, we added shoes to Pete, and wrote our favorite color on a sentence strip. "I love my _____________ shoes!" Here are a few for you to see! |
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January 2018
AuthorI sing, dance, and laugh my way through life! I love to teach, but my desire is to always learn more. I am truly blessed with the life I have! Categories |