Perler Beads

Every year we make a perler bead photo frame as a gift for our 5/6 buddies. Of course we put a picture of ourself in the frame!

Working with Clay

We have been exploring clay and making clay pots in art over the past few weeks.

Looking at Patterns

We have been doing many pattern activities during the past month. Here we see children playing What's Next? with paper cups hiding the continuation of the pattern and a child building a pattern based on a card he has drawn. He then rolls a die to determine how many units he should put in this particular pattern. We have done many activities to figure out how to break patterns into the units that repeat again and again.

Leaf Pictures

In a long standing Shutesbury Elementary School tradition the kindergartners collected leaves with their buddies in the fall, made pictures out of the leaves and presented them at assemblies.

I Know an Old Lady

We tell the rhyming story of an old lady who swallowed a pie, which is a take off of the children's song of I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. As we tell the story the children put all the Thanksgiving food into her stomach. We also made a book of all the things we are thankful for and a tree with leaves highlighting the things we are grateful for.

Language Arts

We learned some computer games for reinforcing our phonics skills using the Smart Board. Children had fun moving images across the board and playing games to fill in the sounds in various words. We have also been playing a lot of rhyming games; sometimes rolling a ball as we say words that rhyme, naming pictures that rhyme such as a chick on a brick and playing lotto games with rhyming words. We continue to do writing projects and have reading groups on a regular basis. We have also been having drama time where we act out short skits written by the children. These are very popular and are familiar to children who went to preschool in Shutesbury.

Shutesbury Town Play

The kindergartners will be Spring Peepers in our play. Our art teacher, BZ has been actively preparing all the classes for the play. They are working on their frog masks in these pictures.

Parade Pictures

Halloween Parade

Despite weather delays we held a parade on Friday, November 4th. A big thank you to the parents who came to school and helped the children get into their costumes. We paraded through the assembly with musical accompaniments. We also baked some pumpkin muffins.

Lots and Lots of Math

We finished our unit on counting and comparing with many activities such as comparing names. Each child built a tower from the letters of his/her name and compared that to other children's names in the classroom. We also built towers out of handfuls of cubes and arranged these in order. A final activity was to draw four cards and arrange the numbers in order from smallest to largest.

We moved on to a unit on patterns, starting with a story called Ni Macho, I Am Eyes. With our attention focused on making careful observations of our surroundings, we took a walk around our school. Recently we read a story called The Sultan's Snakes, a book with many opportunities to find patterned snakes hidden in the pictures. We have been building patterns with cubes, pattern blocks and tiles. Today we each began our own snake, gluing a pattern onto a cardboard strip. We have also been building patterns on a pocket chart and figuring out what comes next. There are also picures of a game called What's Missing? a game where children have to figure out what has been removed from a tray of nine objects.

Free Choice Activities

We are very busy every morning before we begin our morning meeting. Here are a few of our favorite activities.