Scarecrows and Carnival

This week the K-Kids learned about scarecrows.  They made a circle map and brainstormed ideas about scarecrows.  This was a great way for me to assess their prior knowledge.  As we brainstormed ideas, the kids wrote the scarecrow facts in their own circle maps.  It was a lot of work to brainstorm, read what Ms. S. wrote and write the facts, but the kids did a great job!  We also made a tree chart to brainstorm what scarecrows have (physical attributes/nouns), do (verbs), and are (adjectives).  I was so impressed with the kids' ideas and ability to begin to distinguish between nouns, doing words, and describing words!

In literacy corners this week, the focus was again on spelling and reading words of the week (WOW).  The kids used letter blocks to spell the words and found the WOW words in a scarecrow book.  During this independent literacy corner time, I am able to ask groups of students to read with me, complete their Explode the Code phonics books, and play games that reinforce phonics sounds and rules.

We were very excited to have our Monday helper, Ms. Jamie, teach a lesson this week!  Ms. Jamie is a National Louis University graduate student and is completing her practicum in our classroom.  She is so patient, kind, and has a natural instinct for teaching.  She introduced addition to the K-Kids and used a fun pumpkin activity so the kids could practice creating and writing number sentences.  Some of the K-Kids even used the pumpkins to find all of the ways to make the sum of 10 - an introduction to fact families!  During math this week, we also created a candy corn graph and learned about those tricky teen numbers (14-19).  Tricky teens are difficult because you do not "read" the number the way you do most higher numbers (34 is thirty and then 4).  You read the second number first and then add the word "teen."  We organized the numbers on the number line, wrote the numbers out, and used stamps to count out how many for each number.  Please practice reading the tricky teen numbers at home!  We also used magazines and cut out pictures that had patterns - stripes on a shirt, a necklace chain, etc.  Patterns are very evident in math and in language arts.  When kids are able to identify patterns in numbers and words it makes solving the problems or reading the words that much easier!

Coloring the Carnival bag

In Writer's Workshop, we continued to practice writing fictional stories.  With Halloween around the corner, we again read books about fun Halloween monsters.  One fun activity we completed this week involved the book, Go Away Big Green Monster!  The monster is introduced piece by piece and then goes away piece by piece.  The kids recreated the monster using construction paper and wrote about the monster in their writing journals.  All of that cutting was also great practice for fine motor skills, too!

A big thank you to all of the parents who were able to attend Carnival and the Fall Party.  I am so lucky to have such a great group of parents to help and donate food.  The afternoon went off without a hitch, and the kids had a lot of fun!  Enjoy the slideshow in the below post.