Fall/Halloween Centers

Here's what we've been up to:

Literacy Centers

ABC Center: Halloween Upper/Lowercase match up, Candy Corn Matching

Leap Pads: Short Vowels

Listening Center: Disney Stories

Pockey Chart: Spider Beginning Sounds

Library: Pumpkin & Halloween Books

Computer: Starfall.com

Writing Center: Monster roll & write

Word Work: Fall Words

Game Shelf:  Scarecrow Beginning Sounds

Teacher Table: Scarecrow letter/word/sentence sort

Math Centers

1: Spider Web Counting

2: Monster Dice Roll

3:Monster/Door Number Count

4: Candy Corn Number Mathch-up

5: Halloween Roll the Dice

6: Computer

7& 8: Teacher table - Mr. Funny Bones Math (Sorting & Graphing Candy Bones)

Letter P

Most of our week was spent on pumpkins, but we also....

Sorted with P and the other letters we've done:

Brainstormed P words:

and that's about it... LOL. See my pumpkin post for lots of other ideas!

Here are our P show and tells:

A great book we loved this week...

Pumpkins!

This week our letter is Pp and we've been learning all about pumpkins. Here are some of the fun things we did:

Learned the poem 5 little pumpkins and acted it out:

Made pumpkin life cycle books:

Described pumpkins and wrote about them:

Investigated a pumpkin by drawing it, counting it's lines, measuring how tall it is, seeing whether it sinks or floats, guessing what was inside then cutting him open to see:

After we got all his seeds out the kids made their own pumpkins to show how they would like me to carve our pumpkin. I cleaned him out while they did their art. When everyone was done we tallied up the shapes the kids chose to use to find our winners..... our pumpkin got square eyes and a rectangle mouth! I put a halloween strobe light inside... the kids loved this! 

 

We have been working on Position words in social studies so we made a pumpkin book working on those words

 

 We started our Pumpkin Jack Experiment!

And we ended our week by roasting and eating our pumpking seeds! 

Some great pumpkin books we enjoyed:

 

Centers Part 1

This week we began our literacy centers. We only did one center and I did not pull any groups. I walked around and monitored that all my students were working and knew what to do. I am losing 3 students to a new teacher soon and then we will start centers for real. Here are the things we worked on this week:

Pocket Chart Center - Students picked a spider out of the bucket and matched the picture to the web with it's beginning sound. 

Listening Center - Students listened to a book on tape then filled out a response page.

Leap Pad Center - Students worked on short vowels in the Leap Frog books.

Computer Center - Students worked at starfall.com and typing sight words into Microsoft Word.

ABC Center - students matched up halloween themed Upper and Lower case letters.

Library - Students selected a book to read.

Writing Center - Students rolled the dice and wrote down if it landed on capital or lowercase Mm.

Game Shelf - Monster Sight Words, students picked a monster and colored their sheet to match. Then they practiced writing the sight words.

Name Game - Students picked a classmates name and sorted the letters that were/were not in their name.

Word Work - Monster Sounds. Students picked a monster, colored their sheet to match and gave a happy face for a beginning Mm sound and a sad face for any other beginning sound.

These are the basic centers we will do each week in addition to me pulling reading groups. The activities will change from week to week and the students will rotate between 3 centers and my table. More on how I organize that later....
Next week we will begin rotations and I will be putting more halloween themed stuff into the centers.
The monster games are from Julie Lee's Monster Unit.

Calendar Time

Guess what I spent my Friday night doing? Making calendar folders! I know, I know... I need a life. I have been thinking for a while now of how I can make our calendar time more engaging and meaningful. I saw this great idea from Heather at Kindergarten Days. Each child will have a calendar folder to keep at their seat. In the morning when we line up for our arts classes they will take their folder to their spot on the carpet before getting in line. This way it is there waiting for them when we return to do calendar. Here is what is in each folder:
A calendar. As we add days to our class calendar the students will trace the number on their own calendar. At the beginning of the month they will also trace the month and year. We will use this page to work on things like days of the week, first day of the month, last day of the month, how many saturdays, etc.

A weather graph. As we put up the weather each day the students will color in a corresponding box to graph the weather. At the end of the month we will count up the groups and mark more and less.

A 100s chart. Each day we add a number to our 100s bug on our wall. As we add the number the students will write it on their chart.

A Birthday Chart. At the beginning of each month the students will color in the cake for that month.  Each day that we have a birthday we will add that friends name under the correct month.

A tooth chart. As students loose teeth we will add tally marks to that months tooth. At the end of the month we will total them up.

Sight Word Practice. Each day we will choose one sight word to practice writing.

Tally Chart. Each day we will add one tally to practice making four tallys then crossing the fifth. On the line next to each row we will write the total number to practice counting by 5s.

Number Practice. For the month of October we will work on one number each day. Tracing, learning the number rhyme to go with it and coloring in that many objects.

Math Page. On this page we will graph our favorite animals. I will ask one or two children each day to pick their favorite and we will color in the corresponding boxes. Then we will practice counting dots on the dominoes and tracing the corresponding number.

I will update in a few weeks to let you know how our new calendar time is going!

Most of these pages can be found at Heathers Blog Kindergarten Days.