Five for Fraturday ~ Halloween and some Freebies!

Well this week has been all kinds of crazy...I am sure it has been for many of you. I was just too exhausted to post last night so I am linking up a little late with Kacey at Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday Fraturday.

We have had a busy but super fun week.  This week we finished up our study of pumpkins, it was red ribbon week, we had our fall dinner and of course we celebrated Halloween.

This was our focus wall this week.  Yes there was no shape of the week.  With all of the craziness going on I decided to pass on adding a new shape this week. We rocked our circle maps once again.  They are really getting good at thinking of words that start with our focus letters.

Here are just a few of the great books that we read this week.

One of the ways we celebrate Red Ribbon week is by having a door decorating contest.  I usually try to tie it into a Halloween theme as well since they almost always fall on the same week.  I gave a sneak peek on Wednesday...drum roll please...

My kiddos did a fantastic job making their tear art mummies. 

I have to give a big shout out to my friends LuAnn and Amber from Kindergarten Rocks! for the idea and inspiration for this project. Be sure to check them out they have some great ideas.

We spent almost one whole day investigating pumpkins.  The kiddos were so excited to get started and had a great time!

Last week we made an anchor chart of the outside of the pumpkin. This week we made one to diagram the inside, before we started our investigations.  First we measured the height of our pumpkins using snap cubes.  Next we measured the circumference using a piece of string and a yard stick.

Then we predicted whether our pumpkins would sink or float and then discovered if we were right.  Next up was to weigh our pumpkins.  They were too small to register on the scale alone, so we weighed our selves with and without the pumpkin and then subtracted.  Each one, we had 4, weighed between 1.8 and 2.2 lbs.

We counted the ribs on our pumpkins to make a prediction of how many seeds we thought they would have. Then we cut our pumpkins open and dug out all our seeds.  It was a crack up to see some that dove right in and others that would barely touch them.  They were actually pretty quick getting them all cleaned out.

For only weighing about 2 lbs. our pumpkins had a LOT of seeds, as you can see from our numbers above. We put them into piles of ten and then counted by tens to find out how many were in each of our pumpkins.  (We had 4 groups and each counted 1 pumpkin) We used a terrific recording sheet to keep track of all of our data.  You can get it free here from Kristin Smith

My kiddos just love math centers.  I try to have hands on activities for them to practice skills that we have taught already.  One that is always popular is our bead counting center.  This helps build one to one correspondence as well as number sense.  You can also compare numbers/sets. There are many different ways to use this easy prep center.

I just printed my numbers on colored card stock.  Cut them out, hot glued them to pipe cleaners.  Put them in your bin with some pony beads and you are ready to go.  Easy peasy. Students choose a "stick" and put that number of beads on. If you like my numbers click here to get a copy for yourself for free.

Love these cute circle frames from my favorite graphic artist Krista Wallden aka Creative Clips.

Our Halloween celebration started off with the annual costume parade. 

The kiddos looked great!  I didn't do too bad either.  With my snow white costume I won best over all for the staff.

We had a great time at our Halloween party too.  We had 3 stations where the students could complete different fun activities.  Once everyone had finished all of the centers we gathered around our tables and enjoyed the rest of our goodies!  These cute activities were the great idea of my friend Kelly at Lattes and Lunchrooms. Our first center was making ghosts out of bananas.

They barley got them made and they gobbled them down. Yum Yum!

We also had a candy graphing center.  They each had a small bag of candies that they counted and then colored in their graph.  The best part...once the graph was done they could eat their candies.

Our final center was a Halloween writing activity.  They had to draw a picture of themselves in their costume and complete the sentence prompt.  Now I will admit I wasn't sure how this would go over...maybe they would think this was more like work than fun...but no, they had a great time drawing their pictures.  They did great sounding out their words as well.

These two little cuties got smart and found the name of their costumes in our writing center and copied them down.  It is great to see them using the resources in the room all on their own.

I had to include the picture of these little guys.  There are some little smarties in math and completed their candy graph very quickly.  We were not ready to rotate centers yet so they asked if they could go to the library and practice their sight words...really...I kid you not.  They were having a blast quizzing each other.  It just makes my heart happy to see them excited and having fun while learning.

So how crazy was your week?  I would love to hear all about it.  Leave me a comment, but be sure you are not a no-reply blogger I would love to be able to comment back via email. Now you can go check out the linky to see what everyone else was up to last week.

~Laura

Five for Fraturday ~ Pumpkins Everywhere!

Well it is finally starting to feel like fall.  I just love this time of year.  Cool mornings and evenings, warm afternoons, leaves changing colors and of course, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice...lol.  This week I am joining in on one of my favorite linky's Doodle Bugs Five For Friday Fraturday. 

This week we dove into our unit on pumpkins. It is one of my favorites.There are just so many opportunities for fun learning. Here is what went down this week.

First up our focus wall for this week. We are making such great progress and I am super proud of my kiddos.  Here are our circle maps from the week. We really rocked the "Tt" chart.  The kiddos thought of more words than I could fit on our chart.

We are moving right along with our sight words as well.  75% of my kiddos have mastered our first list, the Baseball words and are so excited to move on to Soccer words.  They ask to practice their "ball words" whenever they finish early.  It makes my heart happy that they are so eager to learn.  I am working on a post all about how we learn sight words, so stay tuned.

Another win we had this week is, 12 of my 18 kiddos have made it to the Top Banana Club.

To make it into the club they have to identify all of the upper case and lower case letters and their sounds, as well as write the upper and lower case letters in order with out looking at the alphabet wall.  

This may not sound like much, but in our rural area there is no preschool.  So my kiddos have had no school experience when they come to me.  I will admit that 7 of my kiddos are back this year as they were my TK's last year, they were still 4 when they started school.  In addition, when they did come to me last year they didn't speak English so not only have they made huge progress on their skills, but they are making great strides in learning English as well.  

Do you have any fun achievement clubs in your room?? 

We started the week by reading several books about pumpkins.  These are just a few of the titles we read...

Our Poem this week is a fun little ditty about Pumpkins on the Gate, of course.  This is from Deanna Jump's  Pumpkin Palooza Unit.  We also created an Anchor chart about the outside characteristics of a pumpkin.

Next we completed a craftivity about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  I had major teacher fail...I was taking pics up a storm of them working on this project only to discover, after school when I went to look at the pictures, that there was NO memory card in my camera...all I could do was shake my head and laugh. So I snapped a few pics of the finished product.

They did a great job and they look super cute displayed on our window sills. If you like this activity you can find it from Robin Sellers here.

On Thursday we took a field trip to the pumpkin patch.  They had a fantastic time of learning and fun.  We had a hay ride, heard a story about the farm, played in the corn pit, (a class favorite), then took a walk in the "forest" and the corn maze. Finally we heard all about how pumpkins grow from farmer Billy Bob and then we chose our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch.

When we got back we did a little writing all about our filed trip. This great little activity is a freebie from Elizabeth Hall at Kickin it in Kindergarten. 

We completed the top half of the paper together.  They would sound out the words and tell me what sounds they heard to write on the board.  Then for the "My favorite part..." they completed it all on their own.  For my low students I told them to just draw the picture and any sounds they could hear to tell me about their picture.  They all did a fantastic job.

Next week we will have part 2 all about pumpkins with a full day of experiments. The kiddos can't wait.

Yesterday was our 22nd Wedding Anniversary.  The hubby and I started going steady my senior year in high school on October 24th, six years later we got married on that same day.  Don't do the math...just don't...I am old I know. It seems weird to think that we have spent more years of our life together than not.

You can tell it was the early 90's by the hair and dress...lol.  It hasn't all been a bed of roses but being best friends has made it all worth it and I wouldn't change a thing.  In honor of our special day I am offering 20% off at my tpt store this weekend to celebrate.

What were you up to this week?  I would love to hear all about it. Enjoy your weekend!

~Laura