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.  

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.

Fall and Pumpkins

 We started with reading the book: The Was an Old Lady who Swallowed Some Leaves.  We discussed what we see in the fall, why the things were in the book, and the colors we see.

I started with this pinterest idea to teach about fall and the color of fall.  I precut the center of the template out, the colored dots, and the squares.  Students wrote their own name as long as it fit in the box.  Students were told to cut around the outside of the trees and the blue box.  They then colored the trunks of the trees brown.  They then put glue on the leaf part and filled it up with the leaf squares.  They then carried their pieces to the teacher and waited in line.  When they reached the teacher, they were told to scoop 1 scoop of each color (a frosting container filled with dots and a plastic spoon) and say what color it was. We then stapled it all together and viola!  Leaf globes!

This taught/reinforced: fine motor skills, cutting/scissors skills, waiting in line (rules, patience, and turn taking) colors, and the concept of fall.

I also created another Pinterest project to display the projects in the hallway.  It is currently holds our "fall leaf globe."

We also worked on hand washing more.  The nurse that visits dropped of a UV black light in which shows the white lotion and powder the students put on their hands.  We told them it was magic germ finding lotion and powder.  We showed them all the "germs" on their hands with the black light.  We then sent them to wash their hands.  When they returned, we used the lights again and saw all the places we missed.

 We finally went back and washed our hands one last time.  I really think they are getting it.

We watched short videos on:

Germs and How germs spread


The parts of the hand to wash


A hand washing song



We started the next week with pumpkins.  In our discovery center I had a bin with a pumpkin in it. I had already cut off the pumpkin and the only rules I have the students were: keep it in the bin,  only 4 at the table at a time, and wash your hands when you are done.  I didn't want to limit what they wanted to do to explore the pumpkin.  Some of their faces were priceless!

In small group we did a pumpkin observation sheet, found from the Teaching Mommies Website.  They looked at, smelled, touched, listened to, and even tasted pumpkin.  The kids did great, though they did NOT enjoy the taste of pumpkin.

We watched a video of the life cycle of a pumpkin in the seasons including a time lapse video of the growth:



We then talked about what they discovered in the discovery center that day and the day before.  We used a scholastic "parts of the pumpkin."

After watching the video, playing with pumpkins, and looking at the chart, I felt they had a good understanding of what a pumpkin was, the parts of it, and it's life cycle.

We then did a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast apples and pumpkins.  The students had some great ideas about their similarities and differences!

We practiced our cutting and the star and circle shape with paper strip pumpkins.  Students were given a piece of construction paper with lines drawn on it. They were told to cut on the lines and then make their papers into a star (all 5 pieces touching in the middle going out in 5 directions).  The teacher then staples the center of the star.  They then help bring all the pieces up to the top making a circle/sphere and their rolly-poly pumpkin!

Finally, We made Jack-o-lanterns.  I had cut a template out that had the bottom of the pumpkin on a fold so it opened up.  The students put the face on with choices of ovals, triangles, and rectangles (since conferences are coming up, I have been doing assessments and discovered students needed help with these shapes).  I had all three shapes in a bag and they had to say: "Can I have ___ for the eyes/nose/mouth."  For the mouth, I have them the choice of 1-5 of that shape for the mouth.  When they completed their jack-o-lantern, they moved on to the inside of the pumpkin.  We talked of the "science word" for pumpkin guts: pulp, and used yarn to illustrate this.  One pinch of pulp and glue it on.  They then picked a card I hand wrote with the numbers one through five written on it.  When they picked a card, they had to name the number, count that many seeds, and glue them on.  They then put it on the drying rack on their own.

This activity taught/reinforced the following: following directions of increasing complexity, shapes, parts of a pumpkin, art, recognizing numbers, counting, and fine motor skills.