The Three Bears' Halloween

We read the story The Three Bears' Halloween by Kathy Duval.  We practiced telling the sequence of the story since that was our comprehension skill for the week.  We used candy corn to  remember that sequence means what happens first, next, and last in a story.  In this story, the bears go trick-or-treating first.  Next, they go in the witch's house.  Last, they run home.  Oh, and of course we go to eat a real candy corn so that we would "for sure" remember what sequence means.  And, to finish our activity we compared two stories...Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Bear's Halloween.

Ten Timid Ghosts

A friend of mine shared this idea with me a couple of years ago and it is so much fun to do with my kids.  Check out her blog at http://krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com.  We read the story Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell.  It's about a witch that moves into a haunted house where 10 ghosts live and she decides she wants them out.  So, she tricks the ghosts by scaring them out one by one.  The last and clever ghost decides that they must get their house back so they band together to scare the witch and get her "out".  We made haunted houses and used lima beans for our "ghosts".  We colored one more bean green for the witch, then the fun part...retelling the story!  The kids loved it!

More Symmetry!

My kids have really took off with the concept of symmetry.  They love to say "symmetrical"...it's such a big word for them, yet for the most part understand what it means.  We sorted mini die-cut shapes into symmetrical or not symmetrical.  I loved the conversations going on as I walked around the room.  They were checking out all sides of those shapes and discussing which shapes looked the same on both sides and which ones did not.  They also were learning that it depends on the way you fold a shape to figure out if it was symmetrical or not.  We also played a game with a partner where one student started a design their partner had to copy the design so that it showed symmetry.

Math with Popsicle Sticks

I found this great idea from firstgradeparade.blogspot.com.  I saw it and we did it the next day.  My students love it and came up with some great designs.  They chose a number and picked out that many sticks to create a design with.  After they made their design I had them use markers to draw it using the correct colors and then they wrote the number.

Scarecrows!

We had a lot of fun this week doing scarecrow stuff!  I wanted to post pictures of some of our center activities and theme activities.  Enjoy!

We picked crows out of the corn.  Then we counted how many we got and recorded the number on the sheet.  (another great idea from Mrs. Estes...visit her blog at http://krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com )

we rolled the die and put that many patches on our scarecrow

we drew a shape out of the bag to build a scarecrow

measuring our class scarecrow with pumpkins.  We recorded what we did on a sheet.

we labeled a scarecrow with color words and words that matched his suit

mean                                  silly

 surprised                             sad

happy

We read The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown and then we decided what kind of face we wanted our little scarecrow boys to have.  We completed a sentence to match our face.

Max from Where the Wild Things Are visiting our classroom.  We also watched the video that morning on BSLK television.  (We have an Awesome librarian)