Veterans Day

     We wanted to teach our kindergartners about Veterans Day in an appropriate, thoughtful way. We found Veterans Day by Jacqueline S. Cotton at Scholastic.

     We also found this simple, thankful song on youtube, "Thank You Soldiers"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUKL_QU2C4g&list=PL2B3C1F286FA74FED&index=2

     Then, we painted on red and blue papers with a heart drawn in the middle with red, white, and blue paint.  When dry, we cut them out for display.

     We added a poem adapted from the one on first-grade-friends@blogspot.com.

     We also used this simple read and find practice sheet for sight words.  Feel free to copy and use this as well.

     Our Pledge of Allegiance lesson & close reading booklet would be a wonderful match for learning about Veterans Day.  The lesson is available at our Teachers Pay Teachers store either individually or included with 19 other lessons for informational text in our lesson book, 

An Entire Year of Kindergarten Activities based on Informational Text

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Right-To-The-Core-Kindergarten

Yours truly,

     Molly

Thanksgiving Learning and Fun

After reading about the pilgrim families and their many chores, we chose to make our own Friendship Fruit Salad and our own butter for our bread.  We planned what we'd need and each child brought some fruit to share.

A beautiful and delicious cooperative dish!

 

Shaking, shaking, shaking that cream in a jar...finally it thickens to butter!

Decorated turkey feathers dress up our bird & classroom!

Written notes of, "I am thankful for ..." hung on our tree display.

Beautiful watercolor leaves!

Kindergarten Pilgrims and Wompanoag Indians share in the feast.  Check out our shape-patterned headgear!

Cookie Math

     Laura and I are working on a new book with lessons for contextual problems & equations in Kindergarten.  

     We took the "pretend cookies" out last week to work on composing numbers and fair sharing problems.  We'll try some subtraction problems soon as well.

Students record different ways they were able to make 6 cookies for their friends.

Recording ways to make 6.

     We found several books to go along with cookie math problems:

Yours truly,

     

Molly C

Pumpkin Math

     We had such a great time Halloween - and such wonderful learning! 

Telling math stories about pumpkins, ghosts & bats in a field.  Fourth graders helped!

Estimating, then checking the circumference of a pumpkin.  Then, deciding if our estimate was too long, too short or just right!  Fourth graders helped here too!

Color in the beginning of pumpkin patterns and decipher the rest!  Parent helping here - with a little one sleeping right through the fun!

Roll 2 dice, add the amounts together and color that number!

Pumpkin Jumble!  Roll a die, then follow the rules for getting a pattern block.  Try to build the whole pumpkin puzzle!

 Many of these activities are based on Box It & Bag It Mathematics pumpkin math activities.

Yours truly,     Molly