A thoughtful, caring class

After winter vacation, we finished up our beloved Gingerbread Man unit by reading The Gingerbread Bear by Robert Dennis. As we read, we quickly noticed one big difference between this version and

the other versions: all the characters were different and the author used interesting words to describe them: the clever park ranger, the sweet mom, and the little girl. After a second read, we tried to think of some interesting adjectives to describe some of our favorite characters from the book. We learned adjectives describe a noun (a person, place, or thing) and that when you describe a character or person you can think about their physical (outside) and personality (inside) traits.

The children enjoyed brainstorming adjectives, which got this creative teacher thinking. To tie in with our wellness goal to strive to be bucket fillers, we should try to showcase the positive qualities of others!

First, the children got to take their partner's picture. The helpful Mrs. Nichols held the ipad while each child practiced zooming in and zooming out before taking the photo.

Next, we worked hard together to come up with a list of possible character traits. Then, the excited children went back to their seats and eagerly got started right away. They couldn’t wait to surprise their partner with their kind words!

Finally, it was time for the fun part! I introduced to the children how to use the cool iPad app Pic Collage.  They learned how to upload their partner’s photo and choose their font style and color after typing the adjectives from their character map.

Thankfully, the gracious Mrs. Mack was available for a last minute request for help with the Pic Collage portion of this class activity.

The masterpieces look stunning and were the efforts of much thought and conscientious work. I am truly impressed! It was so touching to see smiles spread across their little faces as they heard the kind words others thought of them. Then, seeing all of the heartfelt work in the Animoto video, I couldn’t help but get a little teary. I think this little activity on adjectives made everyone’s heart grow three sizes.

Now, without further ado, I present the efforts of my hardworking class. Please understand that the students are very enthusiastic writers and are trying hard to listen for beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words small and large. I wanted to honor their efforts and showcase their spelling that they should be so proud of!

We challenge you to surprise a friend, loved one, or passerby with a kind word or gesture. Fill someone’s bucket with a note of thanks or a picture of beauty.

Vacation Fun

Happy New Year's Eve!  I hope all of you are having a wonderful vacation with your families.  The week is going by sooo fast!  I can't wait to hear about all of the exciting things you did this week.  Add to the padlet below a picture or two or even just a sentence about something you would like to share about your vacation.  On Monday, each of us will be choosing one special moment to start a seed story.  This padlet can help with our brainstorming when we're all a little tired as we settle back into our routine. :)    

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Comfy, Cozy Day

Comfy, Cozy Day was a nice way to end a busy, excitement-filled week. The children drew themselves in their pajamas first thing Friday morning.  

  Later, they were thrilled to find out they each got their own Polar Express ticket that would be punched by Barry the Conductor.  We enjoyed watching a read aloud of the Polar Express with the other Kindergarten students in the library.  

After, we were very lucky to have Barry the Conductor lead us in a holiday sing-a-long!  To conclude our Polar Express morning, each Kindergartner received their very own silver bell!  

We had a wonderful time today!

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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.1

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.6

With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

A time to give thanks during this busy November

We have enjoyed this month of November by thinking about all that we have to be thankful for and we have worked hard to produce neat and thoughtful work.  We sang about fall and giving thanks last week in our Thanksgiving Sing-a-Long.  If you did not have a chance to attend the children's performance or would like to hear the songs again, click here to see the videos Mrs. Carreiro recorded and uploaded to her blog.   The placemats that went home like the one below are precious keepsakes to remember this delightful age and the wonderful memories of Kindergarten.

Thank you for returning the family projects this month!  The disguised turkeys brightened up the room.  I love the creativity!  During writing, we tried to listen for the beginning, middle, and ending sounds as we labeled what our turkeys were disguised as.

Turkeys?  What turkeys?  There are no turkeys here!

The children enjoyed making turkeys out of construction paper and paper bags.  These turkeys were actually glyphs and were unique for each student. 

When the children entered the classroom after team time this morning, they were surprised and excited to be greeted by a visitor!

I didn't make the connection between my turkey and their own turkey glyphs (mine was created for a different purpose) until one boy told me I didn't have enough feathers and another child added, "I know you are definitely not 18!"   So cute and too funny!!

Instead, my turkey was a guest during our classroom feast.  In fact, I got to carve him!  Check out the video below to see what was inside him along with all the fun we had today.  Thank you to Mrs. Kennedy's second grade class for inviting us to watch their performance of a Thanksgiving Reader's Theatre.  It was a special treat and I learned some new facts about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag's first Thanksgiving.
I want to end by saying I am thankful for each child in my class.  All of you make me smile each day and enjoy my job.  I am also thankful for my students' loving families who encourage and inspire a love of learning outside of school.  You are raising some pretty terrific children!   Happy Thanksgiving!  Enjoy this special time with your loved ones!

C is for Connection

 

This is the hand signal students use during read alouds when they have a text-to-self connection they want to share with the class.

   Has your child shared a text-to-self connection with you while reading together?  Keep the praise and encouragement coming!!  The children have been improving their abilities to connect with the text and now LOVE to share their connections! Over the past few weeks, we have been thinking hard to identify how a story relates to our own feelings and experiences.  We thought of times we were wild like Max in Where the Wild Things Are...

    

and times we felt disappointed like The Littlest Pumpkin by R.A. Herman.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the students' work for this text-to-self connection activity, but some of the ideas they thought of for when they were disappointed were when they couldn't carve a pumpkin, when they couldn't go to their friend's house, and when they couldn't buy a toy they wanted.

Finally, one of our most recent mentor texts for Global Read Aloud tied in perfectly with our current comprehension strategy.  Check out our text-to-self connections for The OK Book in the iMovie below.  The children loved using the iPad app Chatterpix to make their pictures talk!

     

 This book has such an important message for students of all ages.  (Click here to check out the book's impressive book trailer).  I feel it is important for children to see that we adults are just OK at various skills and activities as well and that is okay.  So, parents and teachers, what are you OK at?  Leave your connection in the comments section below! 

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.6 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. 

 

Veterans Day

Last Friday, my essential question for the students was "What is a Veteran?"  After reading a book about Veterans Day, we learned that veterans are men and women who have served in the armed forces to keep our country safe.  After, we colored in pictures of people so their uniforms were the correct colors for the army, navy, air force, and marines.  We continued our discussion this week by brainstorming what soldiers are and what they do.     I am truly impressed with how thoughtful your children were when thinking about all that soldiers have done to keep us safe and how they have risked their lives so we can have the freedoms we have today.  

  Each child chose one of the sentence starters ("Soldiers are" or "Soldiers can") and finished the sentence with one of the ideas we brainstormed.  We created our own soldiers to display with our sentences.  

 

Yesterday morning, Fuller Meadow students and staff gathered together in the cafeteria to honor veterans with poems and songs.  Our class was asked to place red poppies under the flag as a symbol of honor and respect. 

 Thank you to those who have contributed to our school's Veterans Day padlet.  We have loved reading what families have written and have enjoyed seeing the projects and videos classes have posted.  It's not too late to add something if you would like.  

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  Happy Veterans Day!    

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!

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.

We read and acted out our pumpkin life cycle poem, read our life cycle books, played a life cycle game, and even matched rhyming pumpkins.

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

Children counted the number of lines on a pumpkin and remembered to use smart counting strategies...

They also determined if pumpkins sink or float, 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. Brown had the children each grab a handful and put a group of ten seeds in each small cup.  At the end of the day, 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, the leftover tens, and the ones.  The total number of seeds for our pumpkin was 544!!  Thank you to families who shared your seed estimates with the class.  We enjoyed reading the comments during morning meeting.

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 with staff members in our school.

Yesterday, we finished up our pumpkin unit by comparing them to apples.  We were surprised to see how similar pumpkins and apples are!  Can your child share with you one way apples and pumpkins are the same and one way they are different?

Lastly, we were excited to hear Mrs. Lancaster's father-in-law was happy to bring his award winning giant pumpkin to school for all the students to see today.  The children asked Mr. Lancaster thoughtful questions about growing giant pumpkins, what the patch and seeds of a giant pumpkin look like, and how he transferred the pumpkin from the patch to the trailer.

This is a Dill Atlantic Giant Pumpkin that won 2nd place at the Topsfield Fair.  It weighs 1,954 pounds!
Thank you Mr. Lancaster for coming to Fuller Meadow!

I am impressed with the knowledge your children have gained!  I am sure you have learned a little more about pumpkins these last couple of weeks as well :).