A time to give thanks

It has been a busy month filled with lots of learning and fun.  We made sure to slow down and take time to remember what we have to be grateful for and all that we are fortunate to have in our lives.  Our family, friends, our school, and our pets were at the top of everyone's list.

Last Wednesday, students were surprised they got to wear pilgrim hats and have their own Thanksgiving feast.  Thank you to parents who donated napkins, plates, juice, popcorn, and corn muffins.

 


















I made a giant turkey for my bulletin board.  Boys and girls thought it was just a decoration until I started carving it.  They were very excited the turkey was filled with popcorn!

Ms. Teixeira brought in her GoPro.  The kids loved it!  Thanks Miss T. for creating the video below!

I am very thankful for my kind, caring, smart students that I get to work with each day.  A heartfelt thank you to all of the parents for your support and communication.  You are raising some pretty wonderful children!

I hope everyone had a relaxing Thanksgiving filled with lots of family time and delicious food!    

Kindness Rocks!

November 13 was World Kindness Day. Mrs. Halligan, one of our wonderful Kindergarten teachers, planned and organized our Kindergarteners and first graders to take part in The Kindness Rock Project in celebration of World Kindness Day.  
The Kindness Rocks Project has two goals: 

GOAL #1: INSPIRE OTHERS THROUGH RANDOMLY PLACED ROCKS ALONG THE WAY…

GOAL #2: RECRUIT EVERY PERSON WHO STUMBLES UPON IT TO JOIN IN THE PURSUIT OF INSPIRING OTHERS THROUGH RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS”

My students were excited to work with Miss Klipfel's first graders in the cafeteria to paint the rocks. 

The next day, our two classes joined with Mrs. Halligan's class to brainstorm kind sayings before writing a simple word or happy phrase on our rocks that would make someone smile.  

We used Tagul to create this beautiful word splash of our ideas.

On Monday, the entire Kindergarten and First Grade met in the courtyard to display their collaborative works of art!  You can't help but smile as you see the colorful and beautiful rock display as you walk into lunch from recess.  We also took the Kindness Pledge.  Check out Mrs. Carreiro's blog for more pictures and a video of everyone saying the Kindness Pledge.

This was such a wonderful, collaborative event!  I love how excited my students were to work with other classes and how this was an opportunity for them to make new friends.  It makes me happy when my students pass Miss Klipfel's students in the hallway and they say hello to each other by name and exchange a kind greeting.

Duck for President!

Yes, you read that correctly!

Last week, students listened to the read aloud of Duck for President by Doreen Cronin. In the book, Duck was tired of doing work on the farm and thought if he ran the farm, things would be different.  Soon, he was voted to be governor, and then president.  At the end of the story, he realized being a president is hard work so he returned to the farm to write his autobiography.  We learned election vocabulary such as vote, ballot, and requirement.  
Then students had to share their reasons why they would vote for either Duck or Farmer Brown to be president.  Based on a persuasive list of reasons, it was already looking like Duck was the popular candidate.
Students enjoyed making campaign posters to show their support of their favorite candidate.  Listen to the students' reasons why they would vote for either Duck or Farmer Brown in the video below.


This month's school character trait focus is responsibility.  We discussed what responsibilities a president has as a leader of our country.

We also thought about the responsibilities teachers and students have.  We noticed that there are some similarities in responsibilities for children and adults if we all want to be respectful, caring people. 

This past Monday, students couldn't wait for the afternoon when they had the opportunity to be a part of the voting process and actually cast their vote.  Each child in my class had a job: check people in, hand the voter a ballot, be in charge of the ballot box, hand the voter their "I voted!" badge and thank them for voting, or hold up signs urging others to vote.  Everyone was very polite and patient!

We returned to the classroom and counted up the votes.  I recorded them on a chart using tally marks.  After I counted the ballots, I had helpers recount the votes for each candidate to ensure I counted correctly.  In my class, 11 people voted for Duck and 5 people voted for Farmer Brown.

For the entire Kindergarten, Duck won with 54 votes.  Farmer Brown got 22 votes and 2 children were undecided voters.

Reading Duck for President was a wonderful way to introduce children to the election process!

Pumpkins Galore!

Pumpkin day last Friday was a HUGE success! The day was filled with many pumpkin activities. Check out the fun we had!

We read to pumpkins in the Reading Patch.  The boys and girls were SO excited to read to the pumpkins!!

We played a pumpkin life cycle game, sorted pictures that start and do not with the letter p, and

matched rhyming pumpkins.

We also read our life cycle books with a partner.

The children were very excited for the afternoon when they got to travel to four investigation stations that parent volunteers facilitated.

Children counted the number of lines on their pumpkins and remembered to use smart counting strategies and they determined if pumpkins sink or float.  Some students were very surprised that their heavy pumpkins float!

These hard working mathematicians also measured the height of their pumpkins with cubes, and had the opportunity to feel the gooey inside of a pumpkin and count its seeds.

To count all the seeds, Mrs. Ingalls had the children each grab a handful and put a group of ten seeds in each small cup. On Monday, we arranged the cups of seeds into ten frames so we could practice counting by tens to 100 and then from there counted by hundreds and the leftover tens.  The total number of seeds for our pumpkin was 530!!  Ella estimated the closest with a prediction of 600 seeds.  Thank you to families who shared your seed estimates with the class.  We enjoyed reading the comments during morning meeting.

Thank you to Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Ingalls, Mr. Duran, and Ms. DeSanctis for helping with this fun activity!

We finished up our pumpkin unit this week by reviewing what we already knew about pumpkins prior to the start of our unit and what we were hoping to learn.  

The boys and girls were surprised with how much they learned about pumpkins.  Congratulate your pumpkin experts on the new knowledge they attained and have been eager to share.