Gingerbread Man

My kiddo's loved the Gingerbread Man!  

Our vocabulary words for the week where: wink, ginger, dough, batter and delicious!

To help with the difference between dough and batter, we made gingerbread play dough in class.  The kids loved making it and helping count out the number of scoops for each ingredient. 

We labeled the parts of a gingerbread man and at the end of the week we retold the story using picture prompts.

My kids love to decorate things, so I gave them tons of art supplies and a gingerbread man made of paper and let them go to town!

For our large motor activity we changed the refrain of the gingerbread man!

We stomped, jumped, hopped, skipped and walked!

Spookly The Square Pumpkin

This week we read the book "Spookly The Square Pumpkin". 

This book is an amazing book for teaching many different skills. 

I used this book to teach about being unique and shapes

During the week we cut open a pumpkin and looked at the different parts.  We then created and labled our pumpkin on the anchor chart. 

Here is a picture of or pumpkin paintings. 

I let the kids color a piece of paper any color they choose, once the picture was dry they told me what shape their pumpkin was.  We then cut it out and added stems and leaves. 

Our kiddo's also enjoyed creating their own square pumpkin at the art center.

I love to make predictable charts to read durning the week.  
After we tasted pumpkin seed, pumpkin pie and pumpkin cookies, I had each child tell me what they liked.



After we have read the chart during the unit, I cut it up and create class books to place in the library.  The kiddos love these books!  At the end of the year I plan to hand these books out to the kids for a keep sake.

These are just a few of the things I was able to snap pictures of.  

Bats

My kids loved learning about bats!  

These are the three books that I used to teach my kiddo's about bats.  

Click the titles below for a link to buy!

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bat

Fantastic Bats

Amazing Bats

Bat vocabulary

It was so fun to hear them use these words and to know what 

the meaning of each word was. 

We created two different bat anchor charts!

The first we labled a bat and the second we did a tree map 

about bats. 

The kiddo's created their own bat using pre-cut materials and cup cake papers. I got this idea 

from another blogger at IHeart Crafty Things.

I dyed bow tie noodles three different colors orange, purple and black.  I put them in the sandtable for the kiddo's to sort by color. 

Spiders

Spiders!

What a fun and exchiting few weeks we had learning about spiders!

We spent a week on each book!

Aaaaarrgghh Spider! Our vocabulary words where sparkly, pet, spider and spider web. 

The Very Busy Spider, we worked on the words, silky, field, fence post and beautiful. 

Anchor Charts

We spent one day creating a spider and the second day labeliing him.  After spending time learing about spiders we created a tree map about spiders.  For story retelling we used The Very Busy Spider. 

We sang the song the Its Bitsy Spider, I created a class book to keep in the library and sent home a mini book for the kids to read to their parents. 

We did much much more and I am going to try really hard to remember to take pictures!  I just get so busy with my kiddo's I forget to take pictures and document all the fun we are having!

Aaaaaarrgghhhhhh a Spider!

During our spider unit, my little sweet hearts, informed me that we had a spider under the sand table. I quickly told them that it was just one of the spider rings that I added to the sand table.  Our girls kept telling us that it was brown and big and that the spider rings where orange and purple.  After some convincing, I decided to investigate!  No! it was not a spider . . .   it was a man eating spider!  I swear that sucker was the size of a silver dollar.  I attempted to put a cup on him to keep him in place until the janitor could come and deal with the beast.  However, as I approached him he full on attacked me.  I have never in all my years had a spider run at me.  The next thing I know I am on the table screaming and I have 20, 4 year olds on the table standing behind me yelling!  What a sight we where!  The assistant from next door, came and saved the day.  She hunted down the beast and sleighed him!

Come to find out he was a Wolf Spider!

The are known for attacking their pray, I told you that thing was trying to catch me and eat me!

Classroom Behavior

After creating anchor charts with my class, I created these mini anchor charts to post around the room.  They are like a 2nd teacher with in the classroom. 

Thanksgiving

We spent the week learning about the Mayflower and what it was like to travel to the new world on a cargo ship. 

This is our anchor chart on the different parts of the Mayflower and how the sails

 made the ship move. 

Brace map on the parts of the Mayflower (Whole to Part)

We also talked about what it was like to be a kid back then and now. 

We used a flow map to track the time line of how the first Thanksgiving came about. 

For writing we created a riddle about turkeys.  

Happy Halloween

It's been a pretty busy and strange week.  It is so strange to be teaching about Halloween and Nevada Day, when I just got my classroom up and running!

First we learned about pumpkins and had a pumpkin tasting day.

We learned about the whole and part of a pumpkin. 

I found this song on Pinterest and feel in love with it and so did the kiddo's.  I am not sure who's blog it came from but I will look some more so I can give credit where credit is due. 

We read "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything" 

and we talked about story order.

For Halloween I was Olaf from Frozen.  My kids where in love!  My daughter really hit the nail on the head when she ran across this costume on youtube. 

We also learned about our state, since Nevada's birthday is on October 31st.