October 24, 2014

Pumpkin Week has been a lot of fun!

Here are some pictures of our pumpkin math investigations:

Pumpkin Measurement

What is the circumference of our pumpkin? 

Will our pumpkin sink or float?

How many ribs does our pumpkin have?

Making pumpkin predictions.

Working together.

How many blocks tall is our pumpkin?

Halloween Party

We will celebrate Halloween on Thursday Oct. 30 in our classroom next week. We will be trick or treating around the school and will carve the pumpkins we have been using in our investigations. However, Mr. Reeves has indicated that costumes are not permitted at school for our party or on Oct. 31 in order to avoid too many disruptions to our school day. 

And speaking of carving pumpkins, if any parents are available to come in on Thursday morning to assist with pumpkin carving, please let me know. I could use a few extra hands for this activity. We will be carving our pumpkins at 10:00. Please send me an e-mail if you can come help.

October Students of the Month

Trevin and Sophie
October Caught Being Good

Reanna

October 17, 2014

Field Trip

Our trip to the corn maze was the highlight of our week last week. The kids had a great time at the playground at the senior center and then at Getzloff's farm. We had a wonderful hayride through the woods and looked at the beautiful fall colors, picked pumpkins from the pumpkin patch, wandered through the corn maze and played on the hay bales and the giant slide. The kids had a blast! Here are some of our pictures.

Fire Safety Week

Last week was also Fire Safety week at Lemmer. Officer Nault and Officer Reese from Escanaba Public Safety visited and shared information with us about staying safe in a fire. We also got a chance to see a fire truck up close and personal. Officer Reese dressed in his firefighters protective gear so that the kids won't be afraid of firefighters if they ever are in a fire. Officer Nault asked the kids to go home and talk to their families about making an escape plan and setting up a safe meeting spot outside the house.

Other activities we did this week:

• Read some Non-fiction books about Pumpkins.
• Made a class poster and mini posters of the pumpkin life cycle in Science
• Wrote a mini-book about growing pumpkins and highlighted some new words we are learning.
• Read a poem called "Pumpkins", focusing on characteristics of small, medium and large and on descriptive words for pumpkins.
• Sorted pumpkins by size.
• Made a list of descriptive words (adjectives) about pumpkins that we can use to describe our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch.
• Learned about the pre-writing stage of the writing process. Started a pre-write organizer for our reports about our field trip to the Corn Maze last week.
• Made the 30th day of school page in our Zero the Hero art book.

Reminders:

• October Book orders are due on Monday
• Keep reading with your child each night for the Pizza Hut Book It! program and complete the reading calendar.
• Friday is library day. Please be sure to send library books back each week.

Next Week:

More pumpkin science and stories

Halloween fun!

October 3, 2014

This week was full of fall activities as we completed our fall and leaf theme. The highlight of our week was our Fall Scavenger Hunt through the neighborhood where we searched for signs of fall. We had a great time walking through the neighborhood looking for the different colors of leaves and for acorns, pinecones and squirrels and other things that show that fall is here.

After our nature walk we wrote a class book based on the story Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you See? Our class book is called Kindergarten, Kindergarten What do You See in the Fall? It is all about the things we saw on our walk.

We also learned a poem called "Fall Leaves" this week. We learned to do the color words in sign language when we read the poem. We used those color words in our class book too.

With the start of the new month, we did an October art project and learned the word October in sign language. We added the October pages to our calendar binders and will begin to graph the weather in October this month. It should be an interesting and busy month!

More alphabet work next week!

Also a reminder to turn in corn maze money in by Monday.

Homecoming is Parade Friday at 5:00 followed by the Homecoming Game.

I will be working the main gate taking tickets. If you come to the game, come say hello!

September 26, 2014

Welcome to our new classroom blog! Instead of the weekly paper newsletter, I will begin posting our classroom activities and news on this page so that parents can access it whenever they wish. Check here often for news of classroom events, items of interest to your child and family, and pictures of the activities we have been doing in our classroom. Please feel free to contact me with any feedback you might have that will help me make this blog the most helpful to you.

Our Week In Kindergarten

We have had a very busy week finishing up our apples unit and starting a unit of Fall. We are also continuing our Alphabet Training Academy. This week we did our quick review of the letters B, C, D, and E.

In science we learned about the changes that occur in Fall. Our anchor story this week was The Colors of Fall.  After we read the story we made this chart to show all of the changes we read about in the story.

In math, we measured everyone to see how many apples tall they are. We are putting these into a book that the kids will each get a turn to take home and share with their families. Our "apple" measuring stick is outside the office so any Lemmer student can see how many apples tall they are and write it on the chart next the the stick. Here a couple of samples of our measurements.

Also for math, we watched a story on You Tube by Dr. Seuss called 10 Apples Up on Top. We used the story to review the numbers 1-10 and then made our own version of the book with our pictures and apple cut-outs. These will be put into a class book that the kids can take turns taking home to share as well.

Here is our September quilt that we made from squares and triangles. We will make a different quilt each month.

Our Students of the Month for September were Brody and Reanna. They have been terrific this month at making good choices and being model citizens. Sophie was our student who was "Caught Being Good" this month. Sophie has also been a great example of positive behavior choices this month. Good Job Kids!

Lion/Packer Friday was an exciting day at Lemmer. We made a graph to show which team has the most fans. Here is our wall graph with our football people. The Packers had more fans but the Lions still came out on top in the game!

Our whole school got in on the action!

Our class Lion fans.

Our class Packer fans.

Check back here regularly for more news on our classroom activities. I hope to update at least weekly but may be able to update more often as time allows!