Trains!




After reading The Polar Express and seeing April Larremore's unit on The Polar Express at Chalk Talk http://larremoreteachertips.blogspot.com/search/label/Polar%20Express
I just had to add a mini-unit on trains. 

 



I LOVE this story...I read it to my girls when they were small.  This book loosely ties in with the train theme but I mainly use it to teach Christmas traditions in Appalachia. (I'll have more on that later with another post on Christmas Around the World.)

 

We charted what we already know about trains first. 
It was surprising what they already knew.

I liked April Larremore's sentence train so we made our
own using our color coded noun, adjective and verb format.



Sight words are written in black, adjectives are in red, nouns are blue and verbs are green. We brainstormed various adjectives and verbs and everyone chose their own from our list.



Of course, it was time for a fresh hall display! They had to read their sentence to me before we posted their work on our wall.

  


The red train is moving.

I plan on using this format at least once a month using our

seasonal theme.  So next month, snowmen or snowflakes...

I'll be honest, literacy, social studies and science come fairly

easily to me...math is another story. I did find some great train

math activities from http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/TrainPrintables.  I downloaded the train number book that can actually be used as

a literacy center since it requires the children to stamp out the

number words.  My team has gotten so many ideas from my friend, Suzan, at krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com/ for seasonal math

activities that we are very excited about.  Thanks, Suzan!

 

Before we say goodbye to Thanksgiving...

Before we begin all of our December activities, I had to post one more page about Thanksgiving.  Of course,we read some of my favorite books...

We read a poem daily and then enter it into our Poetry Journal.  Of course, we identify rhyming words, punctuation and sight words.



We also add the Five Fat Turkeys poem to our Thanksgiving Book.  We tear paper for the tree and use thumbprints to make the turkeys.



The cover of our book...

We write a Journal Page for the Thanksgiving Book using facts we have learned after reading Gail Gibbons' book Thanksgiving Is... 

Of course, we include our Three Sisters page.

We learn about how happy the Pilgrims must have been to hear the words, "Land Ho!" after their long, hard journey. We all yell, "Land Ho!" and do a happy dance.  It's Kindergarten...

This is an activity that I just added this year.  I wanted a way to help the children distinguish between nouns, adjectives and verbs.  We use a different color for each part of speech- adjectives are red, nouns are blue and verbs are green.  I am wanting to have an art/writing project for every month to help reinforce this skill.

Of course, we work on this in small group so that I may help guide them in the right direction since this is a new skill.  Practice, practice, practice!

For our Thanksgiving Feast, we make a headband and a necklace our of Fruity Cheerios ( hopefully in a pattern).  We also make our own "buckskin shirts".  I dye t-shirts brown and after we have each chosen our own Native American name, we paint the name and its' symbol on the shirt.  I (or a wonderful parent) will help with the fabric paint, the children also add an AB pattern to the collar of their shirt.  We wear all of these things as our costume for our feast.  Ms. Potts has done this activity with her class for years so of course, I had to steal copy it!

We spread butcher paper down our hallway and share our feast

(grapes, cheese cubes, deli turkey and juice boxes) with other classes. 

We couldn't have this fun activity without some amazing parents.  And that is Thanksgiving in Kindergarten!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!

We finished our Pumpkin Books and sent them home today so I thought I would share some of our activities.  I was so happy to get them out on time! My team has been using these pumpkin literacy based activities for the past several years.  We all have our own take on them but each page includes an activity that directly relates to a story we have read for the month of October.  My friend, Lana, makes an October science book about bats, spiders and owls.  I will try to post some photos of her book.  They are looking good!  My photos are a little out of order, I just didn't feel up to duking it out with the blogger format and the way the photos upload.  It's Friday...








Michele, Maisha and Susan read Dem Bones and incorporate a lesson on our skeletal structure into the book.  We also read Don't Look at It, Don't Touch It! and the children make predictions about what Sara finds behind the door.  This year I included the Big Green Monster and a cute, surprisingly easy paper plate art project.  I got this idea from Suzan at  http://krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com.

In our Math Journal, we measured the circumference of our pumpkin. 

Everyone got to estimate how much yarn it would take to reach around our pumpkin.  With the help our Peer Mentors, Kennedy and Kionna, each child measured how many Inchy the Inchworms it took to reach the end of their yarn. 

I made the Inchy rulers using clipart-each Inchy is of course, one inch long.  We will graduate to rulers by the end of the year but I wanted to give this method a try-it seemed more concrete.



We made pumpkin pancakes!





Thank you to Kerstin's mom and Brianna's mom for coming and helping us with our projects!



We stamped an AB pattern in our Math Journals.

We used adjectives to describe our pumpkins.



The apples will come down and we will add turkeys to our scene for November.




Of course, the best part was going to Tate Farms!



We wrote about our trip to Tate Farms and will include this in our Kindergarten Scrapbook for the end of the year with some of our pumpkin artwork.


Now on to turkeys, the Mayflower, Squanto and Thanksgiving!