We’ve made it through 100 days of kindergarten! The last 100 days have flown by with my students gaining so many skills. Our 100 Days of School party was a celebration of all that we have learned so far. The class worked hard on their 100 Days shirts at home and were able to wear them to school that day. I loved seeing all of their personalities shine in those shirts. We started off the day by doing 100 exercises Jack Hartman style. The kids love these videos and beg for them every day. But that’s okay because that also means they are moving and counting EVERY DAY! We also searched high and low for 100 kisses hidden around the room. After finding their kisses the students had to read the number on the bottom and put it in the correct spot on a 100 number chart. We had eight fun “100” stations that the class worked through. They stacked 100 cups, built with 100 Legos, put 100 numbers in order, made a special 100 snack, found out how many licks it took to finish a sucker, and so much more! Lots of practice made these stations pretty independent. The students didn’t feel frustrated and I wasn’t trying to help everyone at once. Win for everyone. Now that we have 100 days behind us I can’t wait to see what these kinders learn in the next half of the year.

Kindergarten is back from the break and already working hard. We are gearing up for our 100th Day of School Celebration in 15 days! Over half of the students have already mastered counting to 100 and understand that 100 is made up of 10 groups of 10. Now we are working on recognizing those numbers and being able to write them as well. This week we figured out the numbers up to 20. Working with a partner the students put number cards in order. They then tried to guess a missing number when their partner took one away. Finally, we played a few rounds of BINGO to make sure the students were able to recognize each number randomly. The best part was using marshmallows as BINGO counters! Of course we ate them after our game was complete.

Halloween is always a fun day with kindergarteners around! The class worked hard all month on their Halloween and fall songs and poems. They loved presenting them at Tri-State Alzheimer’s Alliance while dressed in their costumes. We used dot cubes to “Roll A Monster” and gave these to our friends at the Alzheimer’s center along with treat bags. When we made it back to the school it was time to party. I love minute to win it style games and the quick pacing seems to work well with this age group. We found candy corn in the sensory bins, counted out pennies to buy snacks, built STEM structures with candy corn and toothpicks,  tossed eyeballs into pumpkin buckets, guessed the missing Halloween item, and stacked ghost cups. The students loved getting to do fun center type games and I loved seeing them get along with each other so well.

Kindergarten had fun learning about pumpkins this month. We started off by reading the book Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbel and learning the life cycle of a pumpkin. Then we talked about the parts of a pumpkin and even got to taste pumpkin seeds. Our graph showed that most of the class liked the pumpkin seeds. At the end of the week we were able to do a pumpkin investigation with our very own Pumpkin Jack! We predicted his weight, height, and circumference then measured to check our predictions. We were able to really see all of the parts of a pumpkin when we cut into Jack and carved him. The class practiced using describing words when they passed around a bag of pumpkin pulp.  Finally, when Jack started to decompose we took him outside so we could watch that process as well.

Kindergarten kicked off October with a pumpkin themed Cooking in the Classroom. We read a recipe for Pumpkin Patch Pudding and Mrs. Amanda helped them measure out the ingredients. Each student got a turn to measure, pour, and mix the pudding. While we waited for the pudding cups to chill we crushed up our cookie “dirt”. They really had to get those finger muscles working to break the cookies into small enough pieces. Then we added the dirt and candy pumpkins to our pudding and enjoyed tasting them. The students thought they were just getting a special snack but I loved knowing we were working on writing strategies and decoding words when we read our recipe, counting and sequencing when we made the pudding, and practicing our descriptive words when we talked about how the pudding tasted!