Election Day and Fall

Over the past two weeks, we have finished up our unit on Fire Safety and we began learning about the Presidential election as well as Fall.  Our class finished our fire truck craft project.  Students painted fire on white paper and used a variety of shapes to create their fire trucks.  They even had to change some of the shapes!  For example, when we had to make tires for our fire trucks, we had to cut the points off of our black squares to try and turn them into circles!

For the final part of our project, we wrote a sentence using sight words we knew.  Together we stretched out our words and wrote a sentence on the white board.  It said "I see the fire."  I erased the sentence from the board because we should know how to spell these sight words.  The students had to write their sentences independently.  They also had to decided to either use a period or an exclamation point at the end of their sentences.  The final products turned out great!

Buddy Block

Buddy Block was one of our favorite days!  During block time, we were able to spend time with our third grade buddy class.  We walked outside with our buddies and went to Crestwood Park.  We came back to Long and spent some time in the gym with our buddies doing fun movement activities!

Coach Capizzi even wore her cool turkey hat!

Birthdays

Over the past two weeks, we celebrated three birthdays in our class!  Happy birthday to all of our Kindergarten friends who just celebrated their birthdays!

Writing Books

We used our Kindergarten words of the week to create our very own books!  Students made books which were titled, "Look At Me."  On each page, we wrote the sentence "Look at me."  We reviewed that writers use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and spaces between their words.  They also use punctuation marks at the end of a sentence.  

Students illustrated their pages showing themselves doing something they have done in real life or something they wish they could do.  When books were completed, authors sat in our reading chair to share their books with the class.  We still have some more friends who will share their books with the class this week.

We even had a friend who wrote his own Halloween book at home and he brought it to class to share with us!

Election Day

With the election fast approaching, we took this opportunity to talk about what an election is and how people vote.  We read the book, "Duck for President" and it helped us learn about how people run for President and how citizens vote to elect a leader.

There are other books we will begin to read this week such as "Grace for President" and "Arthur Meets the President."  Our school had the opportunity to participate in the program called Kids Vote.  Students filled out voter registration cards at home and brought them to school.  We went to the library and people checked our cards and helped us vote for the President on computers.  Then, we received stickers saying that we had just voted.  Your child brought home his/her voter registration card.  You can keep these cards.

In class, we held our own election regarding candy!  Students were asked if they like Skittles or M & M's better.  At first, students sat with either the Skittles or M & M group.  A few people from each group explained why they chose that particular candy as the one they prefer.  A few people were swayed by other people's opinions and changed groups.  We talked about how this happens in real life during elections.

Next, the Skittles and M & M groups were split into subgroups; they had to make posters supporting their candy.

After the posters were completed and hung up, students wrote down their final vote on a slip of paper and turned their ballots in.  When all votes were accounted for, we counted them one-by-one and tallied our votes.  Skittles won!  Although Skittles had the most people in its group as student worked on their posters, that number had decreased.  This told us that some people had changed their minds at the very last minute.  This also happens in real life!

Red Ribbon Week

During Red Ribbon Week, we had a different theme each day (such as hat day, wearing red to school).  Red Ribbon Week promoted the idea of being drug-free.  Our school counselor, Mrs. Maddock, visited our room and talked with us about the difference between good drugs and bad drugs.  There are good drugs that can make you better when you are sick.  There are bad drugs people take that are not healthy for your body.

Mrs. Maddock talked about the importance of being drug-free.  Students were given a red ribbon to wear on their shirts and they signed Mrs. Maddock's banner.  

Germs Can Make You Sick!

'Tis the season for spreading germs.  Nurse Klahs visited our room and talked with our class about how this is a time of year when lots of people get sick.  We get sick from germs, and we watched a short video about different ways that germs can be spread.  

Nurse Klahs told us we need to make sure we wash our hands and use hand sanitizer to help us stay healthy.  It's also important to make sure you cover your cough and cover your sneeze in your elbow.  She even taught us a song we can sing as we wash our hands!

Here we are pretending to wash our hands while we sing our song with Nurse Klahs.

Counting Candy Corn

In math, we got to count candy corn!  Every student was given a handful of candy corn.  Then, everyone had to count how many pieces of candy they had.  Students were then asked if they each had an even or odd number of candy.  To figure this out, they put the candy in groups of two.  If anyone had one piece of candy corn leftover, they had an odd number of candy corn.  

A student said she had 15 pieces of candy corn and could put it into groups of three.  She had a smart thought that maybe every odd number of candy corn could be broken up into groups of three since three is an odd number.  We tried it with 19 pieces of candy corn and we were not able to split it into equal groups of three.  We discovered that even though a number may be odd (such as 19), it doesn't mean that it can be split into groups of any other odd number (such as groups of 3).  

Next, everyone took their candy corn and split them into one group of ten and then leftover ones.  Splitting our candy into a group of tens and a group of ones would help us with adding and taking away.  We talked about how groups of tens and ones could help us write our numbers in the teens.  For example, if I had 18 pieces of candy corn, I split my candy into one group of 10, and one group of 8.  The one in the number 18 means one group of ten.  The eight in eighteen means I have eight pieces leftover.  I could not make another group of ten with these leftover pieces of candy corn and they were called the "ones group."