Fall crafts!

My class has been loving fall! For the last few weeks we've been immersed in everything apples, autumn, and pumpkins. Here are some of the crafts we've made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fall trees were very easy-just torn paper for the grass, tree trunk, branches, and leaves. Then students told me something they like to do in the fall and we added the typed sentence to the bottom of the paper. I like how each tree really has its own personality!

 

The apples are probably my favorite craft though! I don't ever want to take them down from our classroom windows-they look so pretty! Just put an apple outline on some clear contact paper, have the kids fill it with tissue paper squares, then cover with another piece of clear contact paper and cut it out. Pretty quick and easy projects! 

 

Learning about Dia de Los Muertos

Last week was an exciting week in kindergarten. After all of the Halloween festivities at school on Monday, we picked right up with another celebration the next day. On Tuesday my students and I learned all about Dia de Los Muertos-The Day of the Dead. This is a holiday celebrated in Mexico, and it was a great opportunity to expose my students to another culture.

I have to thank Mrs. Parker for this idea-she shared some great resources on her blog. I began by sharing with my students a little bit about what the Day of the Dead is, and how people celebrate it. We discussed how this is not a scary holiday, but instead how it is a time where families can remember loved one that have passed away. Many of my students shared memories about relatives they missed, like grandmas and grandpas, that were no longer with them.

Even the skeletons associated with this holiday look festive to me! I didn't have any Day of the Dead books, so instead we read a past version of Scholastic News about Day of the Dead that Mrs. Parker recommended. You can find it here (the English version starts on page 5). It had pictures of the celebration and explained many of the traditions.

I set up a little Day of the Dead display for my students with some items I had collected. I happened to be visiting family in Chicago last weekend and had the chance to visit the wonderful National Museum of Mexican Art which was running an exhibit on the Day of the Dead. I snapped a few photos to share with my kids. The museum also had a woman making the little sugar skulls for Day of the Dead, so I picked up a set to bring to my class. I also visited a Mexican bakery where I found some of the special "pan de muertos" or bread of the dead. My students were very curious about this!

I downloaded the free skull mask here for my students to decorate. After they decorated their masks we attached them to popsicle sticks and had a bit of an impromptu parade around the classroom. We also enjoyed learning some Spanish words throughout the day. I then encouraged my students to take their masks home and teach their families about the Day of the Dead.

The Day After Halloween...

Wow-so glad it will be several years before Halloween is on a Monday again!! My students were wild yesterday-they'd clearly been up late the night before trick or treating and then eating tons of candy! I'm pretty sure that all they could think about was their Halloween candy....so we went with that!

 Two of my favorite books about Halloween candy are Harriet's Halloween Candy (Nancy Carlson's Neighborhood) and Julius's Candy Corn which is from Kevin's Henkes' set called: A Box of Treats: Five Little Picture Books about Lilly and Her Friends.

The kids really loved both of these books. Kevin Henkes' book about Julius is very simple-but has a great storyline about the little mouse stealing candy corn off the tops off all his mom's Halloween cupcakes. Harriet's Halloween Candy is about a dog that learns the hard way it is better to share Halloween candy than eat it all yourself!

Later, during math time, we made a candy graph. I had asked them all to bring in the wrapper from their favorite piece of Halloween candy, which we used for our graph. We decided to sort the candy wrappers by "chocolate candy" vs. "other candy" - but you could sort and graph candy tons of other ways as well. In fact, sorting candy is a math activity that kindergarteners LOVE! Since not everyone remembered to bring in a candy wrapper, we will keep adding to the graph today as more kids bring the wrappers in. It will give us some additional time to talk about the graph, which candy more students liked, which less students liked, how many liked chocolate candy, how many more like other candy, etc.

Hope you all survived the day after Halloween-and hopefully today will be much calmer!

October Math Work Stations

Math stations are moving along...we're still working on things like noise level and cooperating with our partners, however the students are independent enough now that I don't need to be constantly monitoring the stations. This has been particularly nice this week since I have been able to use my math station time to pull students for some of the endless report card testing that needs to be done one-on-one.

This week the math games were a bit of a hodge podge of all our October themes (bats, fire safety, pumpkins). We are currently working on numbers 1-10 in our math book, and our math stations this week focused heavily on number recognition and counting skills.

Station 1: Boo Game

(This game is from Mrs. Wills' Halloween Math Work Stations Pack. Students roll the dice and cover up the ghost on the game board with that number. Mrs. Wills also offers a more challenging game board with bigger numbers to help differentiate this activity.)

Station 2: Halloween Counting

(This free game is from Kelly's Kindergarten. Students pick a game card, count how many pumpkins are on the card, and then cover up that number on the game board's gate. The students had such fun folding up the paper to cover the gate on this game. Kelly also offers a fall version of this game board-which is a good option if you can't use a game board with witches on it.)

Station 3: Spooky Numbers

(This game is from Mrs. Wills' Halloween Math Work Stations Pack. My kids never tire of this game. You roll a dice and then trace the corresponding number on the game board. Somehow just the name "spooky numbers" and the clipart of "spooky eyes" at the top of the sheet made this game seem completely new to my students even though they play some variation on this game every week! Mrs. Wills also includes a more challenging recording sheet with larger numbers where students can roll two dice. )

Station 4: Firedog Math

(One of my teammates created this game long before we were all using computers to design math stations! I love how simple it is, you just roll the dice and color in a square with the number you rolled. The kids liked seeing which firedog would win by getting the number above him rolled the most.)

Station 5: Number Matching Game

(This game is from Julie Lee's October Small Group Intervention Pack. Students counted the objects on the picture cards and then matched the picture card to the corresponding number card and number word (the number words provided a nice challenge to really get my students thinking!)

Station 5-part 2: Pumpkin Seed Counting

(Since the number matching game above doesn't take that long, I also included this simple game in Station 5. Students counted how many pumpkin seeds each pumpkin card had and then matched it to the corresponding number card. This game could easily be made by drawing seeds onto pumpkin die-cuts.)

Station 6: Candy Corn Count

(This game is from Julie Lee and Deanna Jump's Autumn Math and Literacy Centers Pack. Students took a card out of the candy corn bag (finally a use for this darling bag from Target's dollar spot!), colored a candy corn on their sheet the same color as the border on their card, and then recorded how many candy corns were on the card. I just found another cute candy corn math game to put in my little candy corn bag next week-check out this free set of candy corn number puzzles at Mrs. Freshwater's Class.)

Station 7: Pumpkin Counting

(This was probably the most exciting station for my kinders this week. I bought the little pumpkin containers a few years ago (possibly at Target?) and wrote a number on the back of each one. Students can practice lining the pumpkin containers up in number order and then they count out the right number of pumpkin erasers to put into each little basket.)

Station 8: Batty Ten Frames

(This game is from the Nocturnal Animals Math and Literacy Centers Pack by Katie at Little Warriors. The students pick a bat card, color a bat on their sheet the same color as the bat card, and then record how many dots were on the bat's ten frame.)

Station 9: Polka-Dot Pumpkins

(This game is from Julie Lee and Deanna Jump's Autumn Math and Literacy Centers Pack. Students picked a pumpkin card, colored a pumpkin on their sheet the same color as the polka-dots on their pumpkin card, and recorded how many dots were on the pumpkin.) 

Halloween Eraser Patterns

(This was not actually one of our math stations this week. However, yesterday I had a student that was causing some trouble during math stations time and needed a little time out from her station and a little time away from her partner! After a few minutes though, I figured I didn't really want her just sitting in time out wasting her precious math time, so I had her practice making patterns with these mini erasers. I am finding so many great uses for these little erasers that I will have to do a separate post on them!)

I'd love to hear how your math stations have been going this month!

Also, if you post about your stations, then be sure to link up to Mrs. Wills' Stations Linky Party.

If you decide to post about another fun part of your week, go ahead and link up to Clutter-Free Classroom's A Peek in My Planbook Week in Review Linky Party.  

Bat & Owl Books

My class had so much fun learning all about bats and owls last week! There are some great books out there about bats and owls-both fiction and nonfiction. Here are some of my favorites.

I think my favorite book about bats is Hello, Bumblebee Bat by Darrin Lunde. This cute book is written in a question and answer format, and tells all about the smallest bat in the world- the bumblebee bat. After reading this book, we of course had to find out what the smallest owl in the world is- the elf owl.

I just happened to spot a wonderful book about elf owls at the Scholastic book fair my school had last month. It is called The Perfect Place for an Elf Owl. You absolutely have to check it out-it was written by first and second grade students! It has a darling repeating format, where a baby elf owl looks for his mama owl in all different environments (the forest, the arctic, etc.) so you get info on the owls that live in all of those different places. Finally at the end of the book the baby owl finds his mama where elf owls live-in a cactus nest in the desert. My students adored this book-because they could tell the illustrations were made by kids like them. There are also several pages at the back of the book with photos of the book's student authors researching owls and writing the book-so inspiring for my young writers!

We read many informational books during our study of bats and owls. Gail Gibbons is a great nonfiction author and my students enjoyed learning tons of facts from her Bats book and her Owls book. We learned about the different kinds of bats and owls, where they live, what they eat, and so much more! There are great diagrams in these books too for the parts of an owl/bat. After reading these two books we had lots of good information to use to compare bats and owls.

If you're looking for unbelieveable photos, you have to check out Seymour Simon's books. His nonfiction book Amazing Bats has amazing photos that fascinated my kindergarteners. There were lots of up close shots of bats and even little baby bats!

Two fun fiction stories about bats are Bat Jamboree and Bats Around the Clock. Both books are written by Kathi Appelt and have really cute illustrations. I especially like these two bat books because they can be used to tie in math concepts. Bat Jamboree is a counting book and Bats Around the Clock can be used for teaching about telling time to the hour. Both of these books also rhyme-which is always fun!

I have to admit, I'm a little sad to move on to studying fire safety this week since I don't have nearly as many good books around that theme! If you have any fun book recommendations for the month of October-please share. I am a total book addict and love finding new books to add to my classroom collection!

Apple Themed Math Work Stations

My kindergarten students had a great time this week learning all about apples. We read countless apple books, learned how apples grow, graphed our favorite color apple, and even made applesauce. Of course we had to continue with the apple theme in our math work stations too!

Station 1: Apple tree counting mats

(Each counting mat has a different number on the apple basket. Students count out the right number of apples to put on the tree. I happened to have little apples from another game, but you could easily use red pom-poms for the apples. These mats can be downloaded for free from Kelly's Kindergarten-just scroll down the page until you see "apple counting" and click on it.)

Station 2: Roll an Apple Tree

(Students roll the dice and then color in an apple on the tree that shows that number. I'm using those little baskets I got over the summer in Target's dollar section as my dice containers-without the container the dice were all over the floor! You can download this game for free at Kindergarten Hoppenings along with some other awesome apple activities.)

Station 3: Share With the Bear

(Students roll the dice and trace the corresponding number on the sheet. This game is from Mrs. Wills' Apples Math Work Stations pack-click here to check it out. Lots of great apple math stations in this pack!)

Station 4: One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Bunch Game

(Students spin the spinner and color the corresponding picture on their graph. Students loved playing to find out which would win-the apple or the worm. This game is from Deanna Jump's Apples Math and Literacy Activities pack- click here to check it out.)

Station 5: Apple Counting Practice

(Students count how many seeds the apple has and match it up with the corresponding number card-I cut a slit on each apple card and inserted a paperclip so that the number cards could be easily attached. This game can be downloaded for free from Confessions of a Homeschooler along with some other great apple activities!)

Station 6: Spin a Shape

(Students use the 2 spinners to spin both a color and a shape, and then color in the shapes inside the apples on the corresponding game sheet. My students were amazed by the concept of a double spinner! This cute game is a part of the Apple Math Centers pack from Katie at Little Warriors- click here to check it out. This pack was well worth the money since it came with 4 awesome games my kinders have loved playing!)

Station 7: Apple Patterns

(I used our school's di-cut machine to cut out some different colors of apples. Students practiced making different patterns with the apples. Although it's not in the picture, my students used an apple pattern recording sheet to record the patterns they made. Musings of Me made a great (and free!) Apple Mini Unit which is where I got my apple pattern recording sheet.)

Station 8: Apple Math Mat

(Students take turns rolling the dice and using little red pom-poms to fill in that many apples on their apple math mat. The first student to fill up all the apples on their mat wins. You can download this free math mat from Making Learning Fun.) 

Station 9: Graphing Apple Colors

(Students spin and then record what color apple they got on the graphing sheet. This game is a part of the Apple Math Centers pack from Katie at Little Warriors- click here to check it out. The nice part about this game is that it comes with 3 different graphing sheets you can choose from for your students to record their spins.) 

Station 10: Apples Number Match

(Students take turns picking apple cards and clipping them under the corresponding number on their game board. There is also a corresponding student sheet for this game where they trace numbers and draw apples to match their gameboard-I didn't get a photo of it though. This game is a part of the Apple Math Centers pack from Katie at Little Warriors- click here to check it out.)

Station 11: Apple More or Less Game

(Students each pick a card, count how many apples are on the card, and then spin the spinner to see if the child with more or less apples gets to keep the cards.  This game is from Mrs. Wills' Apples Math Work Stations pack-click here to check it out. Mrs. Wills describes how the apple cards for this game can also be used for other fun math games.)

I'll probably never be organized enough to have all of my math stations match my weekly theme again-but it was a fun week of math stations! So fun in fact, that we'll be keeping the apple math stations for at least another week. I'd love to know how your math work stations are going!

Coming up tomorrow- a post on my stations work board and station organization....