Group work this week…

Monday
Guided Writing – The Bats at Night – Inspired by the book the Cat at Night by Dahlov Ipcar, students dictated a page of writing to me, collaborating to create a story about what bats see at night.  Students needed to draw upon their knowledge of nocturnal animals to think about what a bat might see outside at night.
Memory Game – The Secret Door –  JK is a great age to play memory games.  We have a few favorites in our class, including The Secret Door.  We work with students to build strategies for remembering where items are.
Research – Bats at Night videos – In preparation of filming our bats at Night video, we watched videos that former Lemur classes have made.

Tuesday
Illustration – Bats at Night Page – Students created a detailed drawing to illustrate their page in the Bats at Night book.
Math – Ten Timid Ghosts –  Mrs. Swanson read Ten Timid Ghosts and then students labeled 10 foam ghosts 1 – 10 to paste into a paper haunted house.
Bats at Night – Costume/Prop Planning – The rest of the week we worked on creating a video of our Bats at Night book.  This day we planned what costumes and props each page needed and who would act out what part.

Wednesday
Guided Reading/iPads – I worked with students individually on specific reading skills.
Math Intro to the Pan Balance – Mrs. Swanson showed students how to use the pan balance.  Students compared the weight of different classroom items.
Read-Aloud – Frederick by Leo Lionni – We are beginning a short unit on hibernation that will continue into next week.  We started this off with the story of the little field mouse Frederick who stores up sunshine and colors and poetry while his mouse friends store up food.  During the darkest days of Winter, the mice are grateful for Frederick’s supplies.
Illustration/Emergent writing – Warm thoughts for winter – Inspired by Frederick the mouse, students thought about their warmest Summertime memory.  They created a colorful picture with oil pastels for our classroom board.

Thursday
Bats at Night – Video with costumes and props –  We acted out and videoed our Bats at Night story.
Listening Skills – Students practiced listening skills with sequences singled step directives.
Illustration/Emergent writing – Warm thoughts for winter – Students sounded out words to describe their warm memory.

Friday
Bats at Night – Video with costumes and props – We continued filming our story…look for our movie to be available for viewing next week.
Game Day – Outfoxed! – Students played this fun who-dun-it game again.

Group Work This Week..

Monday
Math – Monster Number – Students are introduced to a number line with this fun game.  We use a giant number line on the floor with a “monster” card on each end.  One student thinks of a number and the others guess.  The student needs to say “too high” or  “too low” and the monster cards are moved in narrowing the range.  Students must guess the number before the monster gets there.
Science – Pumpkin Cycle, Scooping out a pumpkin – We cut open a large pumpkin and scooped out all of the insides to get the seeds.  Students made a guess at how many seeds we scooped out.
Read-Aloud – Little Boo – A nice story about a pumpkin seed that illustrates the pumpkin cycle.

Tuesday
Science/Art – Nocturnal Creature Book – Skunks – They may be smelly, but skunks are also polite!  We learned all of the different warnings that a skunk will give before resorting to it’s ‘Stink” creature power.  It’s stark white stripe is it’s first warning, then it will stamp it’s feet on the ground, then it will stand on it’s hands.  If you havn’t heeded it’s warning at this point…prepare to be skunked!
Math – Counting Pumpkin Seeds by 10s – It’s much easier to count by 10s!  We glues down all of the cleaned and dried pumpkin seeds into groups of tens.  Then we grouped ten groups of ten together to make groups of 100.  Check out our hallway for the final tally…532 seeds!
Read-Aloud – Sassafras – We read this story about a little skunk who felt left out until his stinky-power helped to save the forest animals.

Wednesday
Literacy – Guided Reading – I worked with students one on one while the waiting students used iPad literacy apps.
Math- Shape Pumpkins – Students identified shapes and used them to create a jack-o-lantern face.  They counted how many of each shape they used.
Read-Aloud – Cake Girl – One of my personal favorite stories.  A lonely witch creates a girl made out of cake to be her friend, and also do all of the housework and then become her dessert.  The cake girl convinces the witch of the value of having a real friend instead of a tasty dessert!

Thursday
Science/Art – Nocturnal Creature Books – Bats – such an unusual creature!  It does not have wings…it has webbed hands with long creepy fingers!  It doesn’t see with it’s eyes, it “sees” with it’s ears!  It sleeps hanging upside down!
Math – Counting Pumpkin Seeds – We continued to count our pumpkin seeds
Math – Tricky Teens Ghost Game – A common number error at this age is to reverse teen numbers…reading 14 as 41.  We played a fun game with number ghosts to help us get those “tricky teens”

Friday
Literacy – White Board Letters – Students practiced correct letter formation and sound for all of the vowels.
Listening Skills – This is a new addition to our JK curriculum, practicing listening skills.  Using picture sheets and crayons, students need to listen carefully to verbal directions.  Our first lesson began with one direction at a time.  As the weeks go on and listening skills strengthen, student will move to more complex and multi-step directions.
Game Day – Tricky Teens BINGO – We practiced those teen numbers more with Mrs. Swanson’s teen BINGO game.
Read-Aloud – Stella Luna & Secret Pizza Party – Two fantastic nocturnal books!

Group work this week…

Letter & Vowel Blends – (Blends, Digraphs, Trigraphs and Diphthongs)
We finished our letter songs last week and began a new set of songs to learn multi-letter blends. This week we were introduced to:
sh, th, ch, unk, ing, aw, oo

We will continue to practice these sounds and others all year with songs, guided reading and journaling.

Monday
Math – October Calendar – Students practiced number writing by filling in the numbers for the October calendar.  Then students made a pumpkin collage for the picture.
Science/Art – Intro to Nocturnal Forest/Nocturnal Creature Power Book – We started our unit on nocturnal creatures by learning how some animals eyes are different enabling them to see at night.
Night Vision – Wild Kratts – We watched a Wild Kratts episode about the tarzier and how it’s eyes see at night.

Tuesday
Art – Pumpkin Paper – Pumpkins come in different colors so we painted papers with 5 different shades of orange.
Literacy – Feed the Raccoon – Students searched the nocturnal forest for lower case letter magnets and then needed to match them to the upper case letter magnet before they could feed them to our cardboard raccoon.
Math – Weather charts for September – We used weather data collected over the month of September to chart the most common weather and temperatures for that month.

Wednesday
Literacy – Guided reading/iPads – I read with students at each level while waiting students used literacy apps.
Math – 100 Pumpkins Farm – Using the painted pumpkin paper, students cut out 100 pumpkins in 10 groups of 10!
Read-Aloud – Owl Babies by Martin Wendall

Thursday
Science/Art – Nocturnal Creature Powers – Owls – Owls are top predators because of their incredible night vision and literally soundless flight.
Math/Art – Symmetrical Pumpkins –  Students used paint to create a perfectly symmetrical pumpkin face.
Flying Like an Owl – We used large soft ostrich feather to fly as silently as we could across the room like an owl

Friday
Science/Art – Noctural Creature Powers – Fox – We watched this amazing video of a fox listening for mice buried deep in the snow.  The fox has many creature powers, hearing, night vision, silence, digging, speed, smelling.
Game Day! – Outfoxed – Addictively fun board game by Gameright.  Use deductive reasoning to figure out which fox is the thief.
Read-Aloud – The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything