A little of this, a little of that!

My kinders really enjoyed hearing all of our pumpkin stories this week.  

I planned a week of pumpkin themed activities, 

but we also did some Halloween crafts and some pretty cool math lessons along the way.  

My amazing teaching partner, Mrs. Everwine, found these really cute Halloween crafts online.  We just had to make them with our Kinders.  
They look so cute hanging in our hallway.

The kids loved having their feet painted...lots of giggles!

Mrs. Everwine helped paint piggies too!

We have been doing a lot of practicing counting up and counting back.  
We had loads of fun counting while playing hop scotch. 
 It was pretty rainy on Wednesday when I had this lesson planned, 
so we had to do our hoppin' in the classroom!

We had the first of many "Crazy Kindergarten Days" (that is what we call our half-days) this Thursday when we shared part of our day with Mrs. Everwine's class.   She and I planned a really neat math lesson on buoyancy.  The kids had to predict which objects would float and which would sink.  
We experimented with things like: paper clips, crayons, rubber bands, cotton balls.  
At the end we even tried to see if a pumpkin would float!  

When we asked what their prediction was for the pumpkin; all 35 kiddos yelled, "SINK!"  

Boy were they surprised to see that a pumpkin actually floats ;)

Fire Safety Week

We had a jam-packed week after enjoying our 3 day weekend for Columbus Day!  We read books all about fire safety.  We even got a chance to read while practicing pointing to words with our own little book called Fire Truck.  I hope your kinder showed you how to read each word while pointing to them :)  After reading so many great books, we were able to fill out our own chart to talk about we learned about firefighters.

I found the idea for this anchor chart on a great blog called "Pencils, Glue and Tying Shoes!"  When the firefighters came to visit on Friday, we learned that their tanks are not filled with oxygen, but with regular air -- so we had to make corrections after they left us!

Before the fire fighters came we made them a pretty cool personalized thank you card.  Each of my kinders made a finger print for the dalmation's spots, then we all signed the inside!

Before the firefighters talked to us, we got to meet "Sparky"!  He to the time to give each student a high five from both AM kindergarten classes :)

Chief Rosen talked all about the importance of having working smoke detectors in our homes.  He showed us how to test the batteries.  He gave everyone a homework assignment to check their detector batteries....did you check yours?

Captain Gill got dressed in all of his gear to teach the kids that it is just a regular guy under all that stuff, and not to be afraid if they are ever in a fire and a fireman comes in to save them.

The last thing to do after getting dressed in all of his gear is to hook up the air tank.  Chief Gill showed us a really cool new piece of equipment that they have.  Can you see the speaker hooked to his air mask?  He is now able to talk to you through that speaker, even with the air tank connected.  It was really neat!

Once he was all dressed,  he showed us how they crawl on the floor 

under the smoke looking for people to rescue! 

*I hope the video works*

This week.....on to pumpkins!

First Post.....finally :)

Well, here is our first official post.  I can't promise that it will be perfect!  Last week, we learned all about apples!  We read apple books and played with apple themed centers all week.  The kids had so much fun on Apple Day.

 We tasted 4 different kinds of apples: red delicious, golden delicious,

granny smith and honey crisp.  We all chose a favorite and graphed the results.

Granny Smith was the big winner.....by a landslide! 

Mrs. Contarino helped us make patterns using real apples as the stamps.

 Mrs. Carson helped everyone make thumbprint apple trees.

Mrs. Struzynski read Ten Apples Up on Top by Dr. Suess then helped
us make a craft that went along with the book.

Mrs. Monahan helped the kids make their own book called
 Apple Faces.  She helped them read it too!

Our awesome parents sent in apple snacks and drinks.  I tried to get a picture of a full plate.......

....but the gorgeous cookies that King's mom made were hard to resist!!