Pumpkins

     From seeds, to vines, to a blossom, to a green pumpkin, an orange pumpkin and back to seeds, it is all a part of the life cycle of a pumpkin.  We started our study of pumpkins by reading the book, Pumpkin Circle. 

     We used our observation skills when cutting open the pumpkin to see what it looked like inside.  Before we cut it open, we had to draw what our pumpkin looked like, predict what it might look like inside, and guesstimate how many seeds we thought might be inside.  There were some interesting guesses.  All the way from five seeds to one thousand seeds were estimated.  We were surprised to find that there were about 300 seeds inside our pumpkin. 

   

      During our lessons on pumpkins, our class read the book, Pumpkin Jack. 

     This is a book about a boy who puts his pumpkin out in the garden.  Over the seasons, he watches the pumpkin change.  In the Spring, he finds that Pumpkin Jack has rotted and produced lots of other new pumpkins.

     This week we will put our pumpkin in a plastic crate with dirt in it and observe over time how our pumpkin changes.  The children are really excited about watching how fast our pumpkin will rot.

     We created pumpkins and put them in our pumpkin patch.  Over the next couple of weeks, our pumpkin patch will grow with scarecrows and  crows.

    

         

Apple Days

     We had Apple Week in Kindergarten. We learned so much about apples!  Ask your child to tell you:

                  * how to spell a-p-p-l-e

                  * our apple poem for the week

                  * the story of the little house with no doors, no windows but has a star inside

                  * how to find the star inside the apple

                  * the parts of an apple

       We started our unit by listing our schema (what we already know) about apples.

 

  I told the story of the little red house with no doors, no windows and has a star inside.  I then took an apple and cut it in half to reveal the star inside the apple.  The children were so excited to see the star!  They had no idea that a star was inside of an apple.  During center time, we printed the star on paper.

     We learned about the life cycle of an apple.  From seeds, to trees, to blossoms to apples and back to seeds, the cycle is never ending.  Our class illustrated the cycle.

 

 

      During the week, we ate apple slices, drank apple juice and ate apple sauce.  We then graphed how we like our apples.  Most of us preferred apple juice.

 

 

     We read 10 Apples Up on Top and made a class book by drawing ourselves and putting apples up on top of our heads.  These are Isabel and Isadora's pages from our book.

     Our Family Home Project was to decorate a paper pumpkin with anything the families chose and to write a story about the pumpkin.  Many creative, fun, cute pumpkins came back to school and are on display in the hallway outside of our room.

Lizzy's family created TinkerBell complete with wings.

Evan and Cody's pumpkins

All About Me, Down on the Farm & Buttons

     We started October  with an All About Me unit.  We read the book, Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes.  The book is about a little mouse who was named after a flower.  We learned that she has 13 letters in her long name.  We then counted the number of letters we have in our names and created a graph.  Brooklynn had the longest name in our class with 9 letters in her name.

                                                                         

     Our class made a glyph of who lives in our house.  Each colored window represents a person who lives in our house.  To get a roof, the student must know his/her address.  When a phone number is memorized, a phone can go in the house.

     Last week was Down on the Farm.  We learned about farm animals, the sounds they make and what they give to us.  (No.  Chocolate milk does not come from black cows.)  

     We read a fun book, Mrs. Wishy Washy by Joy Cowley.   This is a favorite book in kindergarten because it is easy for the students to join in and read along.  And they love to be the characters, Mrs. Wishy Washy, the cow, the pig and the duck, and act the story out.  We have some terrific actors in our class!

     In our art center, we made the characters and placed them in our farm on the bulletin board.

     We also read different versions of The Three Little Pigs and compared how the stories were alike and different from each other.  Rosie's Walk gave us practice with directional words.

     Our farm unit concluded with a field trip to the farm and pumpkin patch. 

     We used buttons to practice our math skills of comparing, counting and sorting.  We started the button unit by reading The Button Box, and we were able to explore buttons from our own button box.  

Our button poem