October
is more than half over, and we're having a terrific time with pumpkins,
spiders, bats, the farm, fall leaves, Halloween, harvest, scarecrows, and
a whole lot more! Every day has been filled with language-rich literacy
experiences, from whole-group shared and choral reading to one-on-one instruction
and assessment. Almost all of the reading and writing we do integrates
math, science, and social studies into our daily routine while allowing
us to focus on language acquisition and literacy skills.
As
always, Literacy Center activities play a large part in our daily routine,
and offer my students the opportunity for multiple readings of familiar
text in a variety of mediums, including Big Books, Pocket Charts, trade
books, blackline books for their individual book boxes, Read the Room,
and Song and Poetry cards.
Now
that my routines are firmly in place and most of my children are able to
work independently during extended portions of our Language Arts block,
I can continue introducing new activities and content-rich books and games
to our Literacy Center workboard. Each of my flexible reading groups
now has five or six activities to work with each morning, all done at each
child's individual pace and for as long as they like. In my room,
that's Best Practices at it's very best :o)
This
week I added several new sets of fun flashcards (for alphabet, colors and
shapes, and vocabulary/picture recognition), plus a Floor Puzzles Center
a Math Games Center, and a Reading Games Center, to give my children additional
practice with basic skills and subject area content.
I also
made centers/work tubs from my Discovery
Packs traveling homework packets on Spiders and Bats, and I'm reading
and re-reading the books in those tubs so that the kids can read and enjoy
them on their own. Non-fiction books with photographic illustrations
are always high-interest and highly motivating to even the most reluctant
readers.
I'm
just finishing my quarterly Benchmark Assessments (from Scholastic's Literacy
Place, Kindergarten level), and am pleased with the growth all of my
students are showing. Each child is making progress at his or her
own pace by participating in multi-level and appropriate activities that
meet each child's needs and abilities. This assessment, combined
with ongoing kid-watching, individual reading instruction, running records,
portifolio pieces, and other measures of student growth, will give me a
very balanced and informative profile of each of my students to share during
our parent conferences in early November.
This Week in The Pumpkin Patch
Pumpkins and the Pumpkin
Patch are my BIG October theme this year, expanded greatly from what I
taught the past few years, with most of the credit going to KinderKorner
subscribers who have been kind enough to share their favorite ideas
with me. We're still reading and enjoying new pumpkin books, and
I've been sharing the pumpkin pictures I took in the fields around Avila
Barn over the past few weekends. To see more of Avila Barn, go to
my online emergent reader called I
Went to the Farm ... you'll even see my sons and husband in one or
two of the photos. Digital cameras are SO much fun!
Here are a few of the
pumpkin books I introduced this week:
I love Rockwell's simple books for emergent readers (and listeners)
and this one is no exception. A gentle story about a young boy's
search for the perfect pumpkin for Halloween.
A fun look at growing pumpkins with a multi-cultural/Hispanic flavor.
Old Juana grows enormous pumpkins that always win her the "special pumpkin
crown at the big fiesta each year." Envious Fernando vows to learn her
secret and capture the crownfor himself. Humorously told and thoroughly
enjoyable. Terrific reader reviews @Amazon.com
The sequencial story of the journey from seed to pumpkin and back
again. The story features softly illustrated pages with interesting details. Under $6.
A captivating ABC book that takes us through the seasons in the garden.
Children entering Patty's pumpkin patch will not only find a continuous
story, told in the main text and illustrations, but also an introduction
to the alphabet, presented in smaller illustrations along the bottom of
each page. Read the reviews at Amazon, this is a gorgeous book!
We're writing about pumpkins,
too, after drawing or painting pumpkin pictures. Our focus is descriptive
words, using two words per sentence in the following frame:
My
pumpkin is ______ and ______.
This great blackline (color-it-yourself)
pocket chart set came from McCracken, along with a copy of The
Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. I bought it at
the California Kindergarten Assocation conference three or four years ago.
This is a great story for promoting phonemic awareness, pattern, repetition
and rhyme, and sequencing.
We'll be working with
this story from now until Thanksgiving, as it's an important part of my
unit on Scarecrows, as well as being a fun
Halloween book. The kids are having a great time with the story --
which we also have on audio tape -- and love acting it out and making all
the sounds/motions for the various parts of the scarecrow. The book
is available at the teacher store and also from Amazon.com in a paperback
edition, as well as a book
and audio cassette package.
Next week we'll be measuring
and weighing pumpkins, and completing a graph titled "Have You Ever Carved
a Pumpkin?"
In case you missed it
in last week's photos, here's a picture of the
nearly-complete Pumpkin Patch teaching wall that will take us right up
to Thanksgiving:
I just discovered this
innovation on Little Miss Muffet, with rhymes that are perfect for phonemic
awareness while introducing small children to some rather exotic and fun
animals. There's more info on this great book further down the page.
We did a KWL chart on
spiders at the beginning of the week, and made creepy spiders as a follow
up activity to show what we learned: most spiders have 8 legs and
6 or 8 eyes. Although each child counted the proper number of legs
and eyes, one of the KinderKids "borrowed" some of the legs from the child
sitting next to him, and ended up with a spider that had 10 legs, all on
it's left side :o)
I put the spiders up around
our October quilt. The breeze from the air conditioner vents makes
them wiggle and jiggle all day long!
A Few of Our Favorite
Spider Books from our Spinning Spiders
Literacy Center
Underlined Titles are
links to Amazon.com. The other books are either out of print or should
be available at your local teacher supply store:
We use these in my Along
Came A Spider unit, and have an extra set in my Spider Discovery
Pack traveling homework bag. There are 10 workmats in each set,
with spider rings from the dollar store used as counters (kinda hard to
see in this picture, but the right number of spiders are on each web).
I drew spider webs with
a wide black marker on 9" x 12" construction paper, using orange paper
for odd numbers and yellow paper for even numbers (KinderKids and First
Graders can never get enough pattern practice!).
Yes, these were in last
week's pictures, but I decided to put them in again with our other
spider stuff :o)
October
Math Workjobs
~
Haunted
House Workjob
Like most of my math workjobs,
these are 9" x 12" construction paper in alternating colors to make an
ABAB pattern. There are ten cards in the set, representing the numbers
one through ten, with the corresponding number of stickers at the bottom
to help kids who haven't quite learned to read numerals. I used a
blackline of a haunted house that I had in my October files, and printed
it on yellow paper. The counters are Halloween erasers from the Dollar
Tree store, sold in packs of 20 or 30 erasers for a dollar -- I got mine
in 1999, but saw them at the Dollar Tree this week, so they're still available.
55 counters are needed for each game, so the entire workjob cost less than
$4, including laminating.
Here are a couple close
ups, so you can see the erasers. There are pumpkins, bats, ghosts,
witches, and black cats:
Going
Batty Workjob
This is a very basic workjob
mat made from a 12" x 18" sheet of construction paper. I add the
sticker dots and then fold a sharp crease in the center, so that it will
fold easily after lamination. The seasonal counters are all inexpensive
rubber toys from the Dollar Tree store, sold in packages of 4 to 10 toys
for one dollar. The include spiders in webs, larger spiders in several
sizes and colors, mice and rats, and flexible bats. The KinderKids
really like handling and playing with these toys as they match and count,
and they often sort the counters into matching items or ABAB patterns.
A lot of "playing" goes on the first few days this job is out, but like
all free exploration with math manipulatives, the play has value and leads
to the development of math language as well as expressive vocabulary.
Bats
Are all bats hairy, scary
things Rushing past on muffled
wings, Out of caves into the
night, On some silent, secret
flight?
I think not! I think they're
great! No matter size or shape
or weight. From radio waves to airplane
wings Bats can teach me many
things.
~~~
For more bat activities,
stories, songs, and poems, visit my Going
Batty thematic unit.
This Week's TLC Art Project
Hickory
Dickory Dock
This was a fun project
to do, and a bit challenging as it required the kids to cut a rectangle
diagonally, to make a triangle for their mouse. The pictures went
up on the art wall on top of previous work, covering some of the KinderKid's
Humpty Dumptys (you can see Humpty's hand sneaking out from behind the
picture on the upper right), making our art wall an ABAB pattern.
I try to work it out so that each child has two projects visible at any
given time. Right now the projects on display are Humpty Dumpty,
Jack Be Nimble, and Hickory Dickory Dock. The bare spaces will be
filled in with out next project.
For more information about
TLC -- Teaching Little Children -- art projects, visit TLC's website at
www.tlcart.com.
This Week's Favorite Books
My
Little Sister Ate One Hare
This is one of the
funniest books I've read this year, and the KinderKids loved it!
I use it with my Going Batty unit, because the
little sister eats 5 bats in the course of this terrific counting rhyme
story.
I introduced this story
as a companion to There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed
a Fly, which we've been reading since school started. My
Little Sister Ate One Hare is also a good lead-in to I
Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie,
which I read in November.
I think the KinderKids
like this book because it has the words throw
up on almost every page, and also has the word underwear,
which always has them rolling on the floor and giggling. Here's a
sample of the text:
My
little sister ate 6 mice, She
spit them out and ate them twice. She
ate 5 bats, 4 shrews, 3 ants. She
even ate their underpants. She
ate 2 snakes. She ate 1 hare. We
thought she'd throw up then and there. But
she didn't.
The illustrations
by Kevin Hawkes are wonderful, and perfect for a discussion on how illustrations
help shape a story. My guess is the KinderKids won't let me put this
one away until June. My copy is the
hardcover edition, and I just ordered the softcover/paperback
so the kids can have a copy for Self Selected Reading time. Both
are discounted 10% at Amazon.com.
Here are our two favorite
versions of There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a
Fly, plus two great innovations to extend
the learning and literacy experience. Click on the titles
or pictures for more information:
Illustrations both terrific
and tongue-in-cheek horrific lead us through Thanksgiving day, when an
old lady swallows the pie in one gulp than works her way through the rest
of the feast, long before it ever gets to the table. Lots of fun
and a huge hit with my students when it was released last year.
Eye-popping paintings
capture the scenery and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest in this energetic
recasting of a favorite children's rhyme. The buoyant text bobs along as
the old lady swallows a salmon, an otter, a seal, a walrus ... until eventually
she swallows the entire sea and the trout swims free!
I just discovered
this innovation on Little Miss Muffet, with rhymes that are perfect for
phonemic awareness while introducing small children to some rather exotic
and fun animals. Here's the review from Kirkus Press, which describes
it more comprehensively than I can do by telling you how fun and delightful
this book is:
"When little Miss
Muffet plunks down on her tuffet, the spider she sees is actually the first
guest to arrive for her surprise birthday party. As the guests filter in
bearing presents, food, and party favors, the poem expands ingeniously
into a counting rhyme: ``When along came two Lemurs, With trumpets and
streamers'' and ``When along came eight puffins, With blueberry muffins.''
These animal guests and their gifts are both satisfyingly out-of-the-ordinary
and fun on the tongue."
The book ends with
10 crocodiles bearing a huge box, accompanied by the following verses:
Little
Miss Muffet Jumped
up from her tuffet, And
looked at the box in dismay. Were
they taking her back In
a box as a snack? But
she waited to hear what they'd say.
There
was cheering and prancing, And
whooping and dancing -- And
what did the crocodiles say? "You
have made a mistake; We
have brought you a cake! Don't
you know? It's your birthday today!"
This is another story
that we'll read all year long, beginning with my B
is for Birthday unit the first week of school, and rolling right into
my Nursery Rhymes unit and the Along
Came A Spider unit which I usually teach in October, but have also
taught in March and April, as part of my Going
Buggy unit.
Stellaluna An
October Classic / Must Have Book!
Baby
bat Stellaluna's life is flitting along right on schedule - until an owl
attacks her mother one night, knocking the bewildered batlet out of her mother's
loving grasp. The tiny bat is lucky enough to land in a nest of baby birds,
but her whole world has just turned upside down. Literally. Stellaluna's
adoptive bird mom accepts her into her nest, but only on the condition
that Stellaluna will act like a bird, not a bat ...
An American Bookseller's Book of the
Year and a Reading Rainbow selection.
Stellaluna is another one of those stories
that my students enjoy hearing over and over again. I introduce it
in October, and we read it all year long. Also available in a Big
Book Edition
... Soon Stellaluna has learned to behave like a good
bird should - she quits hanging by her feet and starts eating bugs. But
when she finally has an opportunity to show her bird siblings what life
as a bat is like, all of them are confounded. "How can we be so different
and feel so much alike?" one asks. "And how can we feel so different and
be so much alike?" asks another. "I agree," Stellaluna responds. "But we're
friends. And that's a fact."
This just-published
book is terrific, and costs less than $2 at Amazon.com! There are
11 double-page Where's Waldo? type pictures, with lots of nifty Fall and
Halloween things to search for.
And for those
of us who would go nuts if we couldn't find them all, there's an answer
key in the back, showing smaller versions of the pictures with the objects
to be found circled. Lots of fun and great for visual discrimination
and recognition skills.
Around Our School
I
thought it would be fun to show you some of the terrific things going on
in other classrooms on our campus, so I wandered around with my camera
Friday afternoon and took a few pictures.
Ms.
B's Room
Rachel
Buboltz is our kindergarten Spanish Immersion teacher. She has some
great things on her walls, including these:
TLC
School Bus
TLC
Stoplight
TLC
Scarecrow
Fingerpainted
Pumpkins
Q
Tip Skeletons
We're
doing these next week, but I didn't want to wait to share them with you.
Miss
Paulin's Room
Jennifer Paulin teaches
first grade and thinks and teaches very much like me. Her students
are my KinderKid's Reading Buddies this year, and many of them were in
my room last year. I sure hope I spelled her last name right :o)
Picasso
Cats
Whirling
Ghosts
Hanging
Candy Corn
Word
Wall
Mr.
Emaheizer's Room
I'm
beginning to wonder if I know how to spell anyone's last name ...
am I the only person who knows most people on their school site by either
their first name or last name, but not always by both? Mr. E teaches
second grade and is also our site technology coordinator (a job he keeps
trying to give to me, but I'm not taking that responsibility on again anytime
soon :o)
Autumn
Trees
Reading
Room
I
had trouble getting a good picture of this old-fashioned outhouse that
Mr. E built as a reading retreat for his classroom. Right now it's
decorated for Halloween, with huge spiders, spooky webs, and Picasso cats.
Mrs.
Landucci's Room
Margaret Landucci is a
second year teacher, and has been teaching next door to me since I moved
to Pauly School in August 1999. She does terrific stuff with her
kindergarten class, like this cool TLC project for Columbus Day:
TLC
Columbus Boats
That's all for this week,
and it was actually a lot more than I had expected. Moderation is
tough when it comes to working on KinderKorner stuff, because there are
so many terrific things I want to share. I hope to have my We
Are Thankful unit online in the next few days, so be sure to come
by soon to see what's new at KinderKorner.
Happy Teaching!
Victoria :o)
For more fun Fall, Farm,
and Harvest activities, visit these units:
