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!