A Trip to the Farm

We had a fantastic time on our visit to Hinchley's Dairy Farm!  We were pretty excited to ride on a big yellow school bus for the first time.

Feeding the goats was fun - they ate the corn right out of our hands!

Sometimes the goats tried to eat us!

This goat was in a pen all by himself because he was naughty :)

We got to bottle feed a baby goat.

Our tour guide showed us the milking machine.

The baby calves liked to suck on our fingers (or anything else we put in their mouths)!

We all took turns milking the cow.

Lunch time!  For most of us, it was our first time eating a packed lunch.  

After lunch, we took a hayride to the pumpkin patch.

There were pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colors!

So many to choose from!

We had to choose a pumpkin that we could carry all by ourselves.

This one is perfect!

Next, we stopped at the corn field to pick an ear of corn.

We had such a fun time!

Fire Prevention Week

We spent this week learning about fire prevention.  Here are some of the activities we did this week:
 

Firetruck 1:1 - Students rolled a die, then covered the appropriate number of firetrucks.  We're still working on counting with 1 to 1 correspondence!

Flame Finger Painting - Students mixed red and yellow paint to finger paint, and then made "smoke" with black paint.  These are now hanging up in our classroom!

Firetruck Letter Match - students clipped clothespins to a mat to match letters. Some students worked on matching uppercase to uppercase, while other worked on matching uppercase to lowercase.

The highlight of the week was of course the fire truck visit on Wednesday.  We had a fire drill and practiced evacuating the building.  Then, the fire fighters showed us all of their equipment and we got to go through the fire truck. 

 The firefighters put on all of their gear so that the kids could become comfortable with them dressed that way if they ever needed to be rescued. 

On Friday, we pretended that we were firefighters and that there was a fire in the school.  We crawled on our hands and knees around the school to put out the fires with our hoses.  We were pretty tired afterward!

We also discussed how and when to call 911, and practiced dialing 911 on a big phone at school.  We also talked about ways to prevent fires, and how important it is to have a family meeting place in case of a fire.  Lots of good learning went on this week :)

We have a busy week coming up!  Monday is picture day.  Please send your child's picture form back to school on Monday if you haven't already.  Tuesday is our trip to Hinchley's Dairy Farm.  We will be leaving school at 8:30 so please try to have your child to school by 8:15.  Don't forget to wear warm clothes and send a packed lunch!  We will return to Cargill by 1:30. 

Have a good weekend....see you Monday!

Falling in to Learning

Last week we spent our time talking about fall.  We tried to think of different activities that we do in the fall, like picking apples, visiting the pumpkin patch, jumping in leaves, etc.  We talked about seasons and how the weather gets cooler in the fall and the days get shorter.  We used our senses to discover a gourd in our mystery box and used descriptive words to tell our friends what we felt (it was cold, hard, and bumpy).

We also introduced some very important "kindergarten" skills this week - counting with one-to-one correspondence (this means pointing at one object and saying one number, in order), coloring within the lines of a picture, and uppercase letter recognition and formation. 

Students played a cover-all math game where they rolled a die, counted the dots, and then covered up that many squares on their game board.  We played several times, and the last time we raced against a friend.

We also talked about the color orange this week.  Students brought orange things from home to share - thank you!  We also painted with many different types of orange paint (foam, neon, tempera) over masking tape in the shape of the first letter of our name.  Ask your child what happened when we removed the tape!  These paintings are hanging in our classroom in the block center.  PS - If you haven't brought a paint shirt for your child, we'd appreciate having one at school.  Thanks!

                                                                        
We also started working with our wood pieces to learn how to properly form uppercase letters.  Each letter can be made with a combination of four wood pieces - big line, little line, big curve, and little curve. 

The skill of patterning was also introduced this week.  We focused on making AB repeating patterns using leaves to make a crown.  Students chose two different types of leaves and then taped them to their crown in a pattern. 








We also counted apples and placed them on a tree with the corresponding printed number.  We still need a lot of practice, but we will work on it throughout the year :)





We talked about coloring in the lines and going slowly and taking your time while coloring (not scribbling!).  Students worked really hard staying in the lines and were proud of their work!  Please don't be discouraged if your child hasn't mastered this skill - it is tricky!  The stronger our hands and arms get, the better we will get.  We work on coloring every week and by the end of the year, we'll be great!  Coloring is one of those basic activities that is good for so many things, but the big thing is increasing fine motor skills (which lead to more legible writing later on!).



We opened up our listening center this week as well.  During free choice, students can choose to independently use a CD player to choose a book on CD, play the CD, and follow along with the story.  Lots of fun!



During free choice, students also had the option to use liquid watercolors to make leaves for our tree in the hallway.  They are beautiful!  

Finally, we played a game throughout the week where we matched leaves with letters to a tree with the matching letter.  We focused on the letters S, A, T, I and P.

We read many books related to fall last week and will pick up learning about fall again next week.  This week, we are moving on to Fire Prevention.  The fire department will visit on Wednesday, and we will have our first fire drill of the year.  We are also talking about what to do if there is a fire in your house, where to meet our families, and how to call 911.

Next Tuesday we will be visiting Hinchley's Dairy Farm near Cambridge, WI.  We take our P4J kids here every year because it is a real, working farm.  We will milk a cow, see lots of animals, take a hay ride, and pick a pumpkin.  We will even get to eat lunch at the farm!  We do ask that you send a completely disposable lunch with your child so that we don't have to carry around lunch bags or containers.  Parents are welcome to join us!  Please keep in mind that we will not be back until 1:15-1:30 this day, so please make pick-up plans accordingly.  Thank you!

Upcoming Dates:
Monday, October 15:  Picture Day
Tuesday, October 16:  Trip to Hinchley's Dairy Farm 8:15 to 1:30.  Please return permission slips by the end of this week.
Wednesday, October 24: Afternoon/Evening Conferences
Thursday, October 25: NO SCHOOL - Morning Conference times
Friday, October 26: NO SCHOOL
Tuesday, October 30: Cargill Halloween Bash

An Apple a Day...

We had such a great time learning about apples this week!  We spent time thinking of all the things we knew about apples and what kinds of things are made from apples.  We read apple books, sorted apples, and of course, ate apples!

On Monday and Tuesday, we painted with apple peels (these paintings should be up in the hallway later this week), learned how to use the Math Center, and practiced our cutting and gluing skills by cutting out trunks for apple trees.

Later in the week, we experienced apple play dough.

 It was pretty gooey (Miss Katie forgot the cream of tarter)!  

We also practiced sorting by color, shape, and size using apple cut-outs.

 

We made a "Counting Apples" book where students needed to draw the number of apples indicated on each page.  This was tricky for lots of us!

And of course, we ate apples!  We tried yellow, red, and green apples, and also used good descriptive language to tell others how each kind tasted.  Some were sweet, some were sour, crunch, soft, etc.

 

After tasting each kind of apple, we then graphed the results and counted how many students liked each kind of apple best.  Students also colored a page for a class book that showed their favorite kind of apple.

 

On Thursday and Friday, students used their critical thinking skills to play "What's Missing?"  Miss Briann showed children a group of 5-8 objects, then secretly removed one of the objects from the tray, and the students had to try to figure out which item was missing.  Most everyone did really well!

 

Students were also introduced to tracing this week.  We practiced going REALLY slow, taking our time, and tried really hard to stay on the line!  This is also our first taste of "independent" work time. 

The best part of the week might have been our "Apple Party" on Friday!  Students all helped to make applesauce to have at our party!

Chopping apples is hard work (and great exercise for our hands)!  We used butter knives to cut the apples and some students told us they were not allowed to use knives :) 

 

 We also tried apple pie (with a little bit of ice cream, of course!) and apple cider.  YUM!

Thank you to the families that brought apples for us to use this week! 

We also learned an important skill this week using our Second Step curriculum - focusing attention.  When we focus our attention, we block out all distractions and look at one thing (or person).  We've been practicing focusing attention during morning meeting, when listening to directions, and when friends are talking.  We will send home the practice sheets Monday with some activities for you to try at home.  

This week, we will start to learn about fall.  We will learn about the color orange, and squares.  We will have another show and tell day on Wednesday of this week - please bring a small ORANGE item to share with the class on WEDNESDAY. 

Upcoming Dates:
Friday, October 5: Scholastic Book Orders Due
Monday, October 15:  Picture Day
Tuesday, October 16:  Trip to Hinchley's Dairy Farm - more info coming this week!
Wednesday, October 24: Afternoon/Evening Conferences
Thursday, October 25: NO SCHOOL - Morning Conference times
Friday, October 26: NO SCHOOL
Tuesday, October 30: Cargill Halloween Bash