Where Animals go in the Winter

We had a field trip planned to Mosquito Hill (New London, WI) in which we were going to be discussing what animals do in the winter.  We did this very theme in our room.

 Monday we made a Know, want to know, learned sheet.  It was cool to see how much the students knew!  They had some really good questions as well.  

Tuesday was our trip to Mosquito Hill.  We had a lot of fun. Pictures are posted on the class website. (cannot publish this link due to some students parents not consenting to the publication of their child's picture outside of our class site)


Wednesday, we finished filling out the KWL chart with the information we learned on the trip and looked to see if it answered our questions.  








We also made a goose that is going to fly in our class in V formation!  It was fun to stuff the paper bag and cut out the pieces and assemble it all.  

Pre-K Packs

I have recently discovered "Over the Big Moon."  It is an AMAZING blog.  They have these printable Pre-K packs that I am IN LOVE with.  I used them with my students and they are also in love.  I cannot tell you how much I appreciate, Over the Big Moon.  Please visit their blog!

I have used these packs for our table top time (size order, sorting, cutting practice, writing practice).   The students know the procedure to line up on the orange x's on our classroom floor starting at my desk, get their work and supplies, do the activity, turn in the activity in "the high five basket" (Target dollar spot purchase: a paper box with hand prints on it) and supplies in the same bins I pulled them from, and then go find a quiet place to play.   The procedure is a great way to teach routine, multi-step directions, as well as the actual skills of the project.  Once student turn in their work, I collect it.  For cutting and writing practice I simply take a look at and see that they are practicing theses skills.   For some things such as the sorting, size order, etc. I open a spread sheet note how they did with something as simple as :),  :\,  :( for their understanding so I can see if it is something we still need to work on or soemthing we have mastered. This way, I know what they need more teaching on or something they have mastered.  I can then use this in my report card writing as well.

Fall Harvest, Food of Thanksgiving-Election

We started the first full week of November discovering the new pattern on our calendar (turkey, turkey, cornucopia).   We discussed what a cornucopia was, what is was used for, and why they used that instead of things we know about now.  It was a wonderful discussion with our class.

We started the week with making an Indian Corn Stalk.  Students cut out the small squares in the color's of their choice.  They then glued them on the corn stalk.  We then "got out our counting finger out" and counted the number of kernels of corn on our cob.  For now, we are simply working on our counting skills, one to one correspondance, and number identification so I wrote the number in yellow. I read the 'big number' and then told them the two numbers that made that up.  They then worked on writing those numbers and identified those individual numbers.  This also introduced some good vocabulary.

Tuesday was election day

We discussed that today is the day Mom's and Dad's vote for who they want to be the president.  **A little boy pipes up, "YEAH! You can vote for Bobama or what's that old guys name again?"***  We discussed what it means to vote: everyone picks their one favorite, put it on a ballot, puts that ballot in a box, a ballot box, and then they count those.  The one that got the most picks to be favorite wins to be president.  Finally, we discussed that we are not old enough to vote for real so we can do a pretend election.

We then got our turn to vote.  Students lined up at the polls, and waited their turn.  I had a "blind" set up so that their vote could be private.  They then took a marker and ballot from a pile, write "O" for Obama or "M" for Mitt Romney.  They then put that in the ballot box and we had the next voter come up.  We will tabulate the results the next day.  We developed many election vocabulary words today!

**I want to note***

We had no discussion on the candidates and what they stand for.  I just wanted them to work on the voting process, voting vocabulary, and some writing skills. **

At our circle time, we took the ballots out, read the vote, and tallied it on the board.  We then saw who our president we chose was and compared to who our projected president was.






We then made sensory acorns.  I found an acorn template and printed it out.  Students cut out the acorns.  Students painted the bottom with glue on a paint brush (I did water it down a bit).  They then sprinkled this area with coffee.    They then brushed the top of the acorn with the glue mixture and paintbrush and sprinkled it with oatmeal.  This project smelled good, looked good, and was fun to make!





We read a book, Thanksgiving Day, from Scholastic.  It discusses why we eat the food we do for Thanksgiving.  This opened up discussion again about the Cornucopia and the first Thanksgiving.  I highly recommend reading this book to young students to help them understand the "why" of what we do.

Next week we are talking about what animals do for the winter.  We are going on a field trip on this topic and will tie this into this book next week as well.