- a) the first few months of school (especially kindergarten) are dreadfully boring in that most of my time is spent teaching procedures and getting my behavior management down, and
- b) I have caught myself not putting as much effort into creating awesome hands-on and engaging lessons as I would have liked! Therefore, you have not seen them.
But alas, my favorite month and holiday (Halloween!) of the year is upon us, and this week is the week I have deemed the Week of the Pumpkin! A lot of my lessons this month have been centered around the fall season, leaves, apples, pumpkins, etc. because I am O.B.S.E.S.S.E.D. and there is no better way to satisfy that obsession than to teach kindergarteners who are equally as (if not more so) obsessed. :)
Here is a sneak peak into my week!
So I filled up a plastic jack-o-lantern with all of the letters we've covered so far in our literacy program! Then I picked out word cards that have the same beginning sounds as those letters. In this center, the kiddos will have to pull a letter and find the corresponding beginning-sound card.
In language arts, we are learning to use our five senses to create a description of an object, as well as to expand on our vocabulary when describing things. Our observation time will also incorporate some math as we count how many lines and seeds our pumpkin has. :)
Later in the week, I also plan on having a class discussion just about the seeds of a pumpkin — how they look, how they taste and why they are important to the life cycle of the pumpkin! I'm going to roast the seeds the night before with some salt and cinnamon sugar to see how my kinders like them, so we can take a class vote.
In addition to pumpkins, we are also continuing to work on our unit on rhyming words. I've been seriously impressed by how quickly my kids have picked up on this concept, which is SO fundamental to developing oral fluency and being able to complete predictable sentences. This is such a cute story (written in rhyming verse) about a witch who loses some of her things while flying. When some helpful animals return them to her, they all want a ride on the broom as a reward. But will there be enough room on the broom?? ;)
My kids love, love, LOVE math manipulatives, so of course I added a little pizazz to them this week! I found these creature rings and various Halloween erasers at the Dollar Tree...
…and threw them in this equally adorable bag! The good thing about these manipulatives is that they can double as treats for our class goodie bags on Halloween! :)
Since we are still working on addition, I figured the manipulatives would make this math center a little more fun for the little ones. Using their ten frame, they will work on adding numbers up to sums of 10.
For differentiated centers for my babies who are still having trouble with number recognition, I plan on substituting this and other similar sheets to strengthen their counting/cardinality and number recognition abilities. Also Halloween themed, of course… heheh.
Finally, our science unit this week focuses on plants and animals, and determining the difference between the two. I thought this would be a great time to do a mini-study on the life cycle of plants (of course, more specifically, pumpkins! ;). I'm saving this craftivity for nearer to the end of the week after we talk about our pumpkin seeds and why they are important.
Next week, we will carve our own classroom jack-o-lantern — just in time for Halloween! Stay tuned for more kindergarten fun. :)
