Kinder-Whale Tales Dear Kinder-Whale Families, I hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving break so far! A HUGE THANK YOU goes out to Ms. Sonali (Aashni's mom) and Ms. Stephanie (Marissa's mom) for being such a tremendous help this week with our Thanksgiving centers! I sincerely appreciate your time and help! Thank you both so much! Featured above in this short week's news is one of the many turkey projects that the students have done this month! The students painted their hand and used their handprint to make the body of the turkey. We used googley eyes, puffy yellow paint for the beak, and some red yarn for the turkey's waddles. Then each student selected four feathers to finish their turkey! The Kinder-Whales enjoyed making silly sentences by mixing up the words in the sentence: "I like my brown turkey." We reviewed the sight words "I", "like", and "my", worked on putting spacing in between the words, and adding punctuation to the end of a sentence. Please see below for some of the silly sentences made by some of our Kinder-Whales! What is Thanksgiving? This week, we did a brief lesson on the story of the first Thanksgiving. The students learned about how the pilgrims left their home in England to find a new home where they could have religious freedom. They rode on a boat called the Mayflower and took a long and dangerous journey that took about 66 days before they landed in America. When they reached land, it was almost winter time. The winter was long and hard, and the pilgrims had to live on the boat as they waited for warmer weather. When Spring finally came around, the pilgrims built their new homes. Some Native Americans came to help the pilgrims and taught them how to hunt, fish, and plant vegetables, such as corn. When it was Fall, the pilgrims had a large harvest and decided to have a big feast and invited the Native Americans to join them. The feast lasted for three days! We had a brief discussion about what the pilgrims had back then compared to what we have now, and one of those things is a refrigerator: The pilgrims didn't have refrigerators back then so they had to make sure that they ate all of the food before it spoiled or went bad. We also had a discussion about things that we do NOW to celebrate Thanksgiving, such as having a big feast with lots of food (turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce), spending time with family and friends, giving thanks for what we have, and some families watch football. This week, we also read some fun Thanksgiving and turkey stories, and shared things that we are thankful for. Thanksgiving Centers At one of our Thanksgiving centers, Ms. Stephanie helped everyone make a Thankful Turkey with colorful feathers! She also helped the students write down things that we are thankful for, including family, friends, pets, dogs, stuffed animals, etc. Our turkeys looked great when they were finished! The students loved playing with them at the end of the day. The students also labeled a boy pilgrim and a girl pilgrim by counting out the number of letters and looking at tall letters vs. short letters vs. letters that have tails to figure out which words go in which boxes. Another one of our Thanksgiving stations was to make a Five Little Turkeys booklet. The students cut out turkeys and matched them to the pages. Please see below for a video of one of our students reading aloud the Five Little Turkeys booklet! Painting Cornucopias! It was the Kinder-Whales' first time painting using watercolor paints! Ms. Sonali helped the students as they used light colors first and moved onto darker colors to paint their cornucopias! The students practiced dipping their paint in water after each color. Their cornucopias look lovely! Writing: Goodbye Brooke! Last week, we said goodbye to one of our Kinder-Whales, Simone. We were told that she was leaving the next day and tried to spend as much time with Simone as we could, before she left Spangler to go to Pomeroy. This week, we said goodbye to another one of our Kinder-Whales, Brooke. We all made cards for Brooke and shared things that we will most definitely miss when Brooke leaves. However, we wish her the very best at her new school and in her new home in Virginia! We will miss both Simone and Brooke, but they will both always have a special place in Room 8 at Spangler! Calendar: We have been in school for 71 days, and each and every one of those days has been absolutely wonderful! We are continuing to use our daily calendar to help us with our math skills, math concepts, and number sense development. The students are starting to become calendar leaders. Pictured below are two students who are leading the class in our calendar activities. The students will continue to take turns leading us with our daily calendar. | Reminders & Updates Next Week:
RECAP Last week, the students read aloud a book called Yuck Soup by Joy Cowley, a book about some monsters who are making some yucky soup! In went some snails, toothbrushes, socks, etc. things that should definitely not be in soup! Please see below for a video of the class reading aloud the book! Yum Soup! This week, we watched the video of the class reading aloud the book, Yuck Soup. Then, we made a quick circle map to share what we would like to have in our soup to make YUM soup. We came up with things such as potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, peas, carrots, crackers, croutons, salt and pepper, etc. Then, we made our own yum soup in class! We used green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peas, and vegetable broth to make our veggie YUM SOUP! We let the soup cook all day in the classroom in Ms. Nancy's crock pot -- THANK YOU, MS. NANCY! While we waited to be served our yum soup, we colored in our Thanksgiving place mat, and completed some pages in our Yum Soup booklet. Some of the students got seconds, thirds, fourths, and even fifths of our yum soup! They said that they just had to have more because it's YUMMY YUM soup! Check out the cute turkey bibs that the students made in preparation for enjoying our yum soup! The students kept gobbling and gobbling in them--it was super adorable! Thanksgiving Treats! Mini Pumpkin Pie Many students shared that they also eat pumpkin pie when celebrating Thanksgiving... so we made some of our own in class! We used vanilla pudding, some canned pumpkin puree, and some mini crusts to make a simple pumpkin pie! Oreo Turkeys! For dessert after our Yum Soup, we used Oreo cookies, candy eyes, pretzel sticks, and candy corn to make TURKEYS! Check out the adorable outcome below! A lot of them didn't make it home because the kids couldn't resist gobbling them up! Happy Birthday, Munisa! Munisa's birthday was on November 22nd, and we celebrated it in class on Monday. Each student created a page in Munisa's birthday book and shared things that we love about Munisa, such as her being a helpful student and an amazing friend to everyone. Munisa also brought in goody bags to share with her classmates. Thank you for celebrating your birthday with our class! We hope you had a lovely birthday! Next Week's Starfish: Dennis! Thank You! Thank you for taking the time to read through the weekly news! We have so many things to be thankful for! I am extremely thankful for all of my amazing students and their wonderful parents and supportive families! For this week's news, please leave a quick comment with your child's favorite dessert! :) I hope you and your family have a very Happy Thanksgiving! GOBBLE GOBBLE TILL YOU WADDLE WADDLE :). <3 Mrs. Lorenzana |
5 Comments
|
Mrs. LorenzanaKindergarten Teacher at Spangler Elementary Archives
June 2016
Categories |