Pumpkin Fun!

Thank you to my four parent volunteers...Megan's mom, Lauren's mom, Tucker's mom, and Amanda's mom!   We had a lot of fun exploring pumpkins in our classroom this morning.  We measured and weighed the pumpkins.  We counted the ribs on the outside of the pumpkin.  We even carved the pumpkins, scooped out the pulp and seeds, and named the pumpkins.  It was messy, but we had fun and learned a lot too!  I hope your child was able to tell you all about it.

This week we will be wrapping up our unit on pumpkins as well as some of our fall themes.  We will, however, continue to explore our Five Senses during the month of November as part of our science curriculum.  Working with leaves and pumpkins has certainly helped us to begin exploring our Five Senses. 

During November we will also begin learning about families as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We will compare and contrast families of today and families of long ago.  We will also spend time talking about our own families and what makes our families special.  Please think about having a family photo available for an upcoming November family project!  As part of our family unit, I would like to have a Mystery Reader from your family come in during the month of November or December.  This person can be mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, an aunt, an uncle...you decide!  The children love having visitors come in to read them a story.  I will send home more information about this in your child's folder next week.   I will also be sending home information about our November Family Project.  I hope that you enjoy working on these projects as much as we enjoy sharing them. 

During our literacy activities, we are continuing our work on the different parts of Daily Five.  So far we have practiced:  Reading to Self, Reading to Someone, Listening to Stories, and Writing.  This is the time during the day where the children will eventually work in different literacy stations throughout the week while I meet with small groups of children.  Right now we are working on building stamina and independence in these areas each day.   We are also learning about more letter sounds, thanks to our Letter Experts each week.  We have recently learned about the letters Cc and Pp.  We will learn about the letters Oo, Ii, and Gg this week.  During Word Wall activities we are also practicing reading sentences, stretching our letter sounds, and reading sight words (the, is, at..) to help us build our reading and writing skills.  I am so proud of the children and their excitement about reading and writing!

During math, we continue to explore the numbers 6-10.  We are learning about adding one more, two more, one fewer, and two fewer to make larger numbers.  Please note that the math papers are just a small part of the math lessons and activities that we do each day.  We work with math manipulatives, white boards, math vocabulary, whole group discussions, and small group activities to enrich our math lessons each day. 

I hope this gives you a sneak peek at some of the learning that is taking place in our kindergarten classroom.  We sure are busy!  :)

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne