Five for Fraturday! Loads of Apples!

Well it was another fantastic week in Kindergarten.  Just love my kiddos.  It is so exciting to see that many of them are really making fantastic progress. Once again I am linking up a little late with Kacey at Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday.

Our focus wall this week.

Again we competed our circle maps for the letters of the week.

Our Poem this week focused on environmental print, thank you Deedee Wills for such fantastic poetry units. 

 The kiddos all brought in words that they could read without help. 

Then they each got to put their name, beginning letter of their name, the card that started with the same beginning letter as their name and then the piece of environmental print that they had brought.  Each child “read” the poem by themselves.  They loved it and were so proud of themselves that they could read it without help.  Their little faces were just beaming. We have been working hard on teaching tracking, one word one point, and they were demonstrating this perfectly as they read.  They were begging to read it again and again.

 This week we, like every other week, were working on our sight words.  We use many different activities to work on these throughout the year.  One of our favorites is using our sight word songs from Heidi Songs.

Her videos are fantastic.  They are fun and engaging and the kiddos really learn from them.  They are perfect as a brain break too.  Also, they work great when you have just a few minutes to fill before your next activity.  Like if we have just 3 minutes until we leave for lunch we will do 1 or 2. My kiddos actually ask to practice their sight words, how great is that!

This is a sample of one of her videos from YouTube.  We have the DVD’s which are so convenient, you just click on the exact song you want and you’re ready to go.  I just keep the disc in my computer so we can practice at a moment’s notice. Easy peasy!

This week we were finishing up our unit all about apples.  So we did several apple investigations.  On Friday we did our ELA block then the rest of the day was apple day.  The kiddos had a blast.  I was a little disappointed that I had 5 kiddos out sick so they missed all the fun, but it was still great.  First up was to get our applesauce going in the crockpot so that we could eat it after PE in the afternoon. 

Each student got to help put one of the ingredients into the crockpot.  We turned it on and let it go.  By lunch you could really smell the cinnamon.

The finished product!  We used quite a bit of cinnamon, that is why it is brown…lol.  The kiddos all loved it!

We also did a prediction on what the inside of the apple would look like.  However, I cut it crosswise instead of length wise like you normally would.  This creates a star in the center and the kiddos thought I was magic.  They were asking if I used a special knife and how I did that, it was so cute.  Then we recorded our observation.

The next investigation was to predict if an apple would sink or float.  After we gathered around the table and put the apples in the water we all went back to our tables to again record our observations.  We went over that it didn’t matter if you were right or wrong in your prediction, that is what scientists do.  They test things out to see what really happens.

Next up was our apple taste test.  We had red, green and yellow apples cut up.  They each tested all three apples and had to record if they liked them or not by coloring in the happy or sad face on their recording sheet.  Then they had to choose their favorite, write that down and draw a picture of it.

Then we made a bar graph of our favorite apples to see which apple had the most votes and which one had the least.

All of these super cute observation and recording sheets can be found here from Wild about teaching .

To finish out our week we did this super cute apple craft to celebrate Johnny Appleseed.  We had watched a video on Brainpop Jr. and read a book all about Johnny Appleseed as part of our study. So this was the perfect way to end our unit.  I am a little bit, ok maybe a lot, of a control freak so we cut, glue, color etc, each piece together and go slow so that everyone can follow the directions correctly.

I think they just turned out adorable! If you want to do this craft you can get the pattern for FREE here, thanks to The Bubbly Blonde Teacher! 

So how was your week?  I would love to hear. Leave me a comment and let me know all about it.  Don’t forget to check out Doodle Bugs teaching to see what everyone else did this week.

~Laura