5 for Friday - 11/15

This week we did the theme of food in Kindergarten, perfect timing to introduce vocabulary like feast, delicious, combine, etc.  Along with this theme we teach The Little Red Hen & then {of course} we make wheat bread:

 To align with our food theme, we learned all about cranberries.  This was a unit gifted to me from a teacher friend - it's from "the 80s" but has 5-7 different stations.  We taste cranberry products, sink/float cranberries, balance cranberries and blocks, shake and listen to cranberries, & then we bounce them:

Tuesday seems like a lifetime ago - because of 2 late starts & 3 mornings of 10 degree weather {or less}!   We had an amazing assembly to honor veterans - many have the day off, but I like that we have school & create a special assembly to recognize those who serve, have served, or will serve in the military:

I introduced the "Retell Center" {aka: Felt board} and my students were SO.EXCITED. to retell The Little Red Hen *proud teacher moment*!!!!  I love these super inexpensive sets from Lakeshore:

Look who got to go home on 11/12:

Mom & baby are doing great!  I'm counting down the days 'til Thanksgiving...when I can snuggle with this cutie day & night.

Happy FriYay,

Miss Kristan King

Healthy Body & Healthy...

We did lots of fun nocturnal/diurnal sorting last week - learning about owls & bats.  This week I had a lag...what to teach during writing?

Well, I have tons of skeleton things & we were reading The Little Red Hen, to discuss characters & setting...so I thought how about healthy food/body/bones!  We'd wrap up Halloween, dig deeper into the bones they explored from owl pellets, & we could make bread - TA DA everything all tied up!

So in the afternoons we set out making bone books - for the past 2 weeks we've really worked on unscrambling sentences...to recognize that sentences need: 1. A capital letter at the beginning. 2. End marks at the end.  3. Spaces between words. & 4. Pictures need labels & details!!

My Kinders are getting it - just look:

Then once all 4 sentences were unscrambled...I pulled out the Q-tips & we decorated a skeleton for the cover of our bone books:

Finally, we discussed healthy eating for our bones & sorted things that were good/bad for our bones!

And since we read The Little Red Hen all week - we made bread!  It turned out GREAT, again.  The children really enjoyed some of the variations to this tale:

Billie Armadilly makes chili, not bread.  It has a fun twist at the end - a great lesson for friendship & forgiveness.

Iguana's throwing a party...no one wants to help.  Will they get an invitation...do they deserve one?

Out of the Egg, a next generation LRH book!

Who doesn't LOVE pizza!

Hope you had a great 1st week in November - I DID.  {Celebrated my birthday & a SWEET Kinder brought me a honey stick sampling...and 1 for each student!  I love how thoughtful they are, don't you?!?!}

Miss Kristan King

MIA...Halloween, Pumpkin Reports, & Little Red Hen Bread

So I haven't blogged in a bit...

We had a BLAST for Halloween!  We learned all about bats & made these:

The idea came from a 2006 (?) Mailbox magazine.  I made the tracer myself, and every year the 5 x 8 index card has something different.  In 1st it was Beginning, Middle, & End of Stellaluna.  This year, for my Kinders, it was 2 bats can, bats are, or bats have sentences.

Then, we did some fun Halloween rotations with our 5th grade buddies.  Two of the rotations were making Frankenstein glyphs:

And finally, we finished the week learning about spiders & doing some spider experiments...thanks for both (spider & Frankenstein ideas) Deanna Jump!

This was all after returning from a 2 week fall break - where my students completed these take home projects:

Then last week we learned about elections & voting.  We read Duck For President and had a class election, duck vs. pig.  Duck won, but it was a close call...we even had a ballot or 2 go missing (just like the story & it was an HONEST mistake!).  We had the cutest ballot box...thanks to great parent helpers!!

Because election was a mini-theme, we also did the folk tale The Little Red Hen.  I was trolling Pinterest {yeah, like who isn't} and found a recipe for crock pot bread...SERIOUSLY!  My teammate suggested we make wheat bread to accompany the story.  I am always down for some baking with my kiddos, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  Well, my crock pot was otherwise engaged {simmering a cheese tortellini & spinach soup recipe - which was also pinned from Pinterest...don't judge!} so I decided to bake my bread in my trusty bread machine...it turned out wonderful & my room smelled HEAVENLY all day!  {FYI my 2 teammates did the crock pot bread recipe & it WORKED - that is AWESOME!!!}

Hoping your days are as great as mine have been,

Miss King