5 for Friday Catch-Up

Somehow I have gone almost an entire month without posting....how did that happen?

Are you busy busy like me trying to keep on top of things?  I look back over this month and there have been some good things happening that I would like to share and probably a couple I would like to forget.  Here are 5 pictures to show you a few of my happy memories of the month.

 My husband first surprised me by suggesting we buy a new car for me (okay...not new, but new to me).  My old refusing to die car was becoming unreliable even around town.  And then he ordered these new license plates which he put on just yesterday when he went to do all the registration stuff for me.  I LOVE that man!

 

Here we are on our get away weekend to Stanley Lake, Idaho.  It was a little smokey the day we went, but we had a great time and vowed to stay longer the next trip (we spent too much time in Twin Falls shopping for the above vehicle).

 I am loving my classroom this year.  And this is one reason why.....the view.  Can you see the trees?  My room looks out onto the outdoor ed area of my school.  I LOVE it!  Trees, weather rolling in from the west, bird feeders, quiet....I just love my view.  It makes me happy every day.

This year the apple blossoms froze, but we have tons of pears.  We went out and picked them last week (or we picked some of them).  

We looked at the skin, core, stem, and seeds.  Then we made pear sauce.  I was a little disappointed about not having any apples as we moved into Johnny Appleseed mode.  But my grocery store provided plenty.

We had a switch around day on Friday.  All the kindergarten classes do one activity and the classes switch every 30 minutes.  It is fun for us to get to know all the kiddos and fun and different for them too, as they get to be in each of our classrooms.  In my room we tasted apples, picked a favorite, and graphed them by painting the apples.  I did the same activity last year (you can read about it here), but this year I had 5 of my moms come and help me and they were awesome!!  I cannot thank them enough.  I got so caught up in the day I kept forgetting to take pictures.  Here is a couple of the finished graphs.

Thanks to Deanna Jump and Fran Kramer for all their apple fun (we will be continuing next week).

In honor of apple week, fall, and the fact that I am having so much fun making new missing addend themed recording sheets.....here's my latest apple one.  Just for you!

Here's to a great week!  I am so excited to be linking up with Doodle Bugs again!!  Happy September...almost gone, bring on fall.

More Apples...What a week!

We have been having an apple-licious week.  Getting to present great learning to students in a fun-themed way makes me love Kindergarten.  This week was all about apples.  Yum!

Some of the highlights included my climbing the apple tree in our outdoor education center and handing apples down to my students so we could make applesauce.  Don't worry I really wasn't that high in the tree, but what was a person to do....all the low apples had been picked.  Students worked on their circle maps and torn paper mosaics while I washed, peeled, and cut the apples.  The apples went into the crock pot with brown sugar and a bit of water, it was ready by 2 o'clock snack time.

Wednesday was our "Switch Around Day" in honor of Johnny Appleseed's birthday.  Once a month my Kindergarten team gets together and we rotate all four classes through each room.  We often pick a theme and everyone chooses an activity to go with the theme.  We then move the kids from room to room and we teach our lesson four times.  Fun for the kids....fun for us! 

Night before.... getting ready.

 In my room we tasted apples and graphed the results.  I made a graph for each class because I knew we would not have time to talk about the data during our short half hour class.  Plus I was hoping they would be so cute everyone would want to hang them up.  The idea for the graph came from Deanna Jump's Apples! Math and Literacy Activities.  Our recording page came from there too.

An apple graph will go here.

Apples ready to taste

After tasting the students will stand at the table of the color of apple they liked best.  They will paint an apple on a quarter sheet of construction paper, cut it out, move to the table you can't see in the picture to make a stem.  Then I will help them put the apple on the right tree.  Voila!  Cute graph and then it's time to look at the data.

Finished graph...I love how the apples turned out!  This will hang in the hallway tomorrow along with our data page.

  In another classroom the students learned about growing apples.  

The half hour switch around time was not long enough to finish these...but they were too cute to let them stay unfinished.  We worked on them again on Friday and everyone took home their finished product..  This student is using a neighbor's to help guide her as she finishes.

Finished poster...how cute is that for teaching how an apple grows and sequencing.

Does your classroom get as messy as mine?  Best thing I pinned and started using this year is a scrap bucket at each table.  Scraps go right in the bucket as they work.  Most of the time it doesn't come close to this messy...but even when it does clean-up is quick.

Ready to go again.

All week long we made circle maps, labeled apples, learned about brace maps and tree maps.  I saved all of these and they will make a little apple portfolio of their work.  Many of our math stations centered around apples too.  We made an apple seed counting book, patterns with little die cut apples, sorted apples and practiced talking about more and less, and we illustrated Ten Apples Up On Top.

With our second grade reading buddies we sequenced the story of "Johnny Appleseed" planting, growing, picking, and eating apples.  The stories went in little apple books and our buddies helped us write a sentence on each page to tell the story.  These books also went home on Friday.

Phew!  I'm tired.  But I am already looking forward to next week.

Terri

Apples Apples Apples

Are your celebrating Johnny Appleseed's birthday with apple activities?  We are going to taste apples and decide which apple we like the best.  I try to pick a good green apple (Granny Smith), and very red apple (red delicious), and the most truly yellow apple I can find (usually Golden Delicious).  I cut them into bitesize pieces using an apple slicer.  I tell my Kinder Kids that they should only take one bite, because they may need to take another bite when it is time to make up their minds.  To make the cutting go quicker I used to use this:

But now I use this!!   I got mine at IFA...but I saw they have them on Amazon too.
 









 I love it!  The kiddos like watching it spin, and I like how quick it is.  I can peel the apples or leave the peels on (and thus have color).  After tasting the apples, we pick the one we like the best.  We graph the results using die cut apples.

This year I want to change things up a bit.  We are going to paint the apples and put them on trees like Deanna Jump suggests.  Same graphing activity, same discussions of more and less, a little more fun because we get to paint. Also it will look great in our hallway with the poem Deanna had included in her unit (Apples! MathandLiteracyActivities).  I can't wait for Wednesday.

Terri