Winter Is Here

The children are going out twice a day. Please be sure to send hats and mittens as the weather is very cold!

Children are asking to go to Dennise for cough drops. If you would like your child to have cough drops at school, please send some in a bag with your child's name on it. We will ask Dennise to keep them and will send your child to her office to get a cough drop. If you don't send any in , we will tell your child that they can not have cough drops. Thanks for your help with this.

If you would like to help out, we try to keep some snacks at school for children who do not have a snack. We would love some donations to our snack supply. Things like pretzels, goldfish, crackers etc. are very welcome. Thank you.

The Dreidl Game

We read a story about the history of Hanukkah last week. We learned to play the dreidl game and "lighted" the menorah. We have also been working on something to give to our 6th grade buddies.

Patterns and More Patterns

We are stumped! Do you count the number of cubes in a pattern to decide how many units are in the pattern? Or do you count a unit each time the pattern starts to repeat? Suddenly two cubes (or even three) count as one!! In the picture we have an arrow pattern on the chart and are using our bodies to show up and down.

Patterns

We are making a variety of patterns in math and trying to predict what will come next in hidden patterns. Children pair up to decide what will be revealed under the question mark on the chart.

Leaf Pictures at Assembly

The kindergartners stepped up to the mic and shared their work at assembly on Friday. Everyone spoke loudly and clearly! It was an impressive first assembly for them. If you were not able to come, a parent got most of it on video. Let us know if you are interested. I'm putting up pictures of everyone. Our apologies if you have dial-up.

The Food Pyramid

Dennise invited some students from a local college to talk to the kindergartners about good nutrition. They learned about different foods and where they fit of the food pyramid. It was hard to figure out some things. What are peanuts?

Counting on the Woods

We have made a first draft of our story about the things we found on a walk in the woods. After talking about similarities and differences between our drawings and the photos of what we found on our woods walk, we will create a second draft. comparing the two will be fun.

Leaf Pictures with Our Buddies

We made some beautiful animals with our buddies on Friday. We used dried leaves to create pictures, ranging from squirrels to snakes. You can see them all this Friday at assembly! The kindergartners will make their debut appearance, with those who are brave enough speaking into the mic. Please come. It's at 2:15, Friday, November 19th.

Sharing and Greeting at Morning Meeting

We are always happy to see pictures of trips children have taken. In this case we looked at photos of New York City. We have a few favorite greetings that will be requested again and again over the course of the year. Whose shoe is this? And the Spider Web greeting, a Halloween favorite!

We've included a few shots of Computer/Library as well.

We have been helping Impulsive Puppy and Slow Down Snail learn how to handle a variety of new situations. What do you do when you are feeling anxious about a situation? Can you find someone to talk to? How about when you bump into someone by accident and they get hurt? Can you tell them it was an accident and you didn't mean it, and then offer them some help? Do you remember things that used to be hard to do, but are easy and fun for you now? Are there situations that are fun for you, but other people are not very comfortable with? There are so many things to think about when you start to see things from another person's point of view.

We are also beginning some early drafts of a story based on the book Counting on the Woods. We took a walk in the woods to look for things like acorns, mushrooms and leaves and will make our own counting book using the things we found.

Making Applesauce and Rainbows

It took all week, but we finally had our applesauce today! We cut up and cooked our apples on Monday, pressed then through the food mill on Tuesday and spiced it up and served it on Thursday. All to rave reviews. Maybe we'll try apple butter next.

We have been measuring with towers of 10 cubes and now are comparing handfuls of cubes and deciding which one is bigger. The photo shows the comparison being recorded on paper. In addition we have begun playing Compare with a deck of cards. The children are using many strategies to determine which number is larger.

We have some photos of children making rainbows in art today. This lesson branched out from their study of lines earlier in the year; wavy, squiggly, twisty rainbows!!

A Leaf Walk

We took a walk with our buddies on Friday to collect leaves. We are pressing the leaves and will use them to make pictures the next time we get together. This is a tradition going back many years and several of the 6th graders still have the leaf picture that they made in kindergarten! We will share these at assembly when they are done.

We had a number of teachers visiting our classroom on Friday to observe and participate in kindergarten math. We were measuring a collection of objects with a stick that is 10 cubes long. We sorted them into bins showing which were longer and which were shorter than out stick.

We cut up apples to make applesauce today and will put it through a food mill tomorrow. We hope to enjoy our homemade applesauce on Wednesday.

We have been talking about beginning, middle and ending parts of stories. Children listened to Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells and illustrated the three different parts of the story. Some children wrote sentences to go with their pictures. We plan to do some alphabet sorts and initial sound sorts over the next few days.

Overlays in Art

The children worked on overlaying tissue paper to create new shades of color in art today. They made some beautiful collages with some autumn colors.

We have included pictures of our morning meeting. Today's greeting was a high five.

There are a few shots of recess. The sun was very welcome this afternoon!