Scarecrows...Oh My!

Good Evening!  I hope that everyone had a safe and fun Halloween night!

Remember:  Pledge envelopes for the Read-a-thon are due tomorrow.  Be sure to put that white envelope in your child's bag to bring to school tomorrow!

Today was full of excitement.  For starters, we had our annual Kindergarten Scarecrow Parade. Here is a slideshow of our parade:

When we got back to the classroom, we made a Witches Brew snack.  We added things like "bat wings" (fritos), and "skeleton teeth" (marshmallows).  It was super delicious and there is plenty leftover to have for tomorrow's snack too!

We had four different Halloween centers today.  We made a book called, "Green Witch, Green Witch."  We graphed candy corn and candy pumpkins.  We played with pumpkin pie play dough-which smelled delicious!  Finally, we made rip art pumpkins with shiny jack-o-lantern faces.  There were so many pictures, I out them into a slide show as well:

This afternoon we final got to be the illustrators for the Backwards Alphabet Halloween Book.  We have been singing this song for several weeks and looking at pictures that were drawn by last year's kindergarteners.  Today, we had our turn to draw the illustrations and now our book will take the place of last years!  We were super excited!!!  Here are a couple example pages.  The entire book will be available to view at conferences in the upcoming weeks.

Had to get a shot of this.  Our friend Jesse read some Sponge Bob books to his friends at choice time :)

Jesse was also the weekly winner for the Read-a-thon drawing!  Congratulations!

Tomorrow there will be a drawing of the white envelopes for a pillow pet!  Get those envelopes in!

See you in the morning!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl 

Workin' Hard

Today we worked super hard to completed several different tasks.  Throughout the day we took turns putting the finishing touches onto our Scarecrow costumes!  We are super excited for the parade tomorrow!

We talked about different community helpers today and we each picked a community helper that we might want to be someday.  We added Miss Bindergarten to our writing because she takes her class on a field trip to visit different community helpers in our story this week.

This afternoon we made scarecrows using pattern blocks.  Then we had to sort the shapes we used, and record the number of each shape on our recording sheet. 

Mr. Tinjum talked to us about personal space today.  Ask your child why Mr. TInjum brought a hula hoop to class today!

Have a wonderful evening and rest up!  Tomorrow will be full of excitement!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Pumpkins

Good Afternoon!

We had a very productive day today!  A lot was accomplished!  You may have noticed your child's prize from the Readathon came home today.  Each student in our classroom received a water bottle.  Inside is a tooth brushing chart.  If you fill it in and bring it to the location listed, you will receive a gift card to Barnes and Noble!

This morning we worked with words and used our Promethean board to make the word little.  We also did some great reading!  Our story this week is Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip.  We read the story today and talked about some of the Amazing Words from the story. 

We made our masks for our scarecrow costumes today.  Tomorrow we will put on the finishing touches so that we are ready for our parade!

We ventured down to the library today and most of us picked out some sort of Halloween book.  It is a special treat to get our turn to read in the tree house!

This afternoon we did some pumpkin science!  We estimated the number of seeds that would be in the pumpkin.  Some estimates were: 100, 1 "bazillion", and 25.  We separated the seeds into cups of 10 and counted...399 seeds!!!  Tomorrow morning we will fill record our pumpkin data in our science notebooks. 

Have a great evening!  Remember the Spooky Reading Night tonight!!!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Practice Makes Perfect

Good Evening!

We spent a great deal of time this morning re-building our stamina and practicing our reading.  It is important that even the youngest students start building their stamina for reading and learning in general.  Of course we build this stamina little by little, but each second counts and they do add up!  While reading today, each kiddo picked out a "Reading Buddy" to keep in their book box.  This encourages students to whisper read aloud, rather than just reading in their head.  When first learning to read, it is important to self-monitor your reading and any errors you may make.  It is easier to hear your errors if you are reading out loud rather than in your head. 

One of the focuses in our curriculum this week was discussing what we look like.  We talked about drawing a person and even watched a short video on how to draw people.  After that we gave it a try ourselves.  We are looking for drawing to include important body parts, such as arms, legs, head, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, etc.

We met with our 2nd grade buddies this morning.  We read and also spent some time playing a math game.  This math game is called, "Top-It."  It is basically what you and I grew up playing, but we called it "War."  The game is intended to teach students greater than and less than a specific number. 

During our own math time, we played the game, "Spin a Number."  We created a spinner using a pencil and a paper clip.  We took turns with our partners moving our game piece that number of squares that the spinner indicated.   It was great watching partners work together and help hold the spinner while the other person took their turn.  Way to go!

This afternoon we started decorating our scarecrow costumes for next week's annual kindergarten scarecrow parade!  We put patches onto our vest and added some "stitches" with our black crayon.  Can't wait to see the finished product next week!

Enjoy your weekend!  Keep reading!  Let's end this Read-a-thon with a bang!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Goal!

Good Evening!

The most exciting news today:  We made our classroom Read-a-thon goal!!!  Everyone has turned in an orange reading slip! We will be receiving a prize tomorrow of a water bottle.  The water bottle will have a tooth brushing chart included.  Filling out the chart and bringing into the dentist listed will earn your child a gift card to Barnes and Noble!

This morning we met Mrs. Huettl's fish named, Lips.  Lips the Fish reminds us to get our lips ready for the first sound.  We each took a picture card and got our lips ready to say the first sound of the word that matched our picture.  We walked around the room and looked for others that had the same beginning sound as us!

We also had SMART time today.  We walked across the balance beam with puzzle pieces.

We also practiced naming our shapes.  The challenge shape was the rhombus.

See you in the morning!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Shapes!

Good Evening!

I hope everyone is curled up with a good book during this rainy weather!  Write those minutes down.  We have one week left of our Read-a-thon!!!  We found out this morning that we already made our school goal!  This means Mrs. Bowman and Mr. Tinjum will be Sumo Wrestling!  Our class winner from the Read-a-thon today was Garrett!  Congratulations!!

We completed our second set of centers this morning.  Then we participated in our SMART time.  We had some fun pumpkin themed fine motor stations today.  Students had to use a baby spoon to scoop popcorn kernels out of a cup and into a pumpkin.  Some students said this was the hardest station because it took a lot of control to balance the spoon so that the kernels didn't roll off.

We used the tweezers again, but this time instead of picking up pom-poms, we picked up pumpkin and ghost erasers. 

During math today we made shape scarecrows out of squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles.  We also cut strips of hay to "stuff" our scarecrow with!  These turned out super cute and are hanging out in our kindergarten hallway!

Enjoy your evening!  See you all tomorrow!  For those that have signed up, Fusion Lab begins tomorrow! 

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Centers and Shapes

Hello Reading Families!

This morning we worked in four different centers.  As usual, we completed two centers today and will finish the rotations tomorrow.  For word work we matched up our new "popcorn" words, the and little.  We can sing these words too!  We sing the to the tune of "3 Blind Mice."  We sing little to the tune of "Happy Birthday."  Hum the melody at home and see if you child can sing their word!

After finishing the worksheet, we played a game called, Roll and Read.  Students roll a die and read the words in the column that corresponds to the number that was rolled.  This is a fun way to practice reading the words in isolation.

Our technology center was ABCMouse.com.  We changed some levels so that each student is working at their own appropriate pace.

One of the characters in our story this week is Plaidypus.  We made Plaidypus paper bag puppets at our art center today!

Students with Mrs. Huettl worked on listening to reading with ipods.  We are beginning to show independence with this activity which means it may become a part of our Daily 5 (Reading Choices) time soon!

In math we talked about shapes.  We went on a shape hunt in magazines.  We are working on creating shape posters as a class.  Each day this week tables will get a different shape poster to add to!

This afternoon during journals, I challenged students to use at least one popcorn word in their journal.  They did great and their confidence was through the roof when they realized they could spell the words correctly without looking!!!

Enjoy your evening!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl