Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. is one of my favorite back to school books. It is a familiar story to most students and has a lot of rhyme, rhythm, and repetitive text that make it perfect for active 5 year olds! We had a wonderful first week back at school diving into this book. The highlight of our week was our STEM challenge on Friday. The students were put into pairs and given a box of materials to make their own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. It is so fascinating to see how their minds work this early in the year. Many of them don’t know how to work well with a partner yet. We talked about how important it is to listen to and try all ideas. You might just be surprised by which idea works. I loved seeing which students were persistant when one idea didn’t work the way they planned and which students couldn’t seem to move on past their first idea. This activity taught me so much about their learning styles! We will have a different STEM challenge every month so there will be lots of opportunities to put what we learned into action. Eventually, all of the teams were successful at keeping their letters on the “tree” and had a lot of fun trying new ways to solve the problem.

I love winter weather but January in Texas doesn’t usually deliver. So we have to bring all that missing winter goodness inside our classroom. Our January centers have done just that. The students have loved “ice fishing” for their sight words, writing sight words in sparkly snow with icicles, and grabbing cvc “snowballs” to read to a partner. Not only are they meeting goals but they are also working on those important fine motor skills and learning to work as a team. We’ve also been reading one of my favorite winter books, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. The class has been mesmerized by Keats’ collage illustrations. We’ve used Peter’s adventures to help us write opinion sentences about our own favorite snowy day activities. If we can’t have a snowy day in Texas we can read all about them!

How do you keep a class of kindergarteners entertained the week before Thanksgiving break while still meeting some of your learning objectives? You go on a scavenger hunt of course! We read the book Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt this week and finished our unit by going on a Noun Hunt. The students have already learned that nouns can be people, places, or things (animals too) but it can be a bit confusing for a five year old to really grasp that concept so we grabbed our clipboards and our Scaredy Squirrel binoculars and went hunting for them. We found nouns everywhere! Many of the students aren’t ready to write out the sounds that they hear in order to spell but we reminded each other that it is important to try and that we can at least write the first sound we hear along with a picture. Our clipboards were full quickly but we made sure to stop by some of the classrooms so that we could write down a few proper nouns with capital letters. Mrs. Tipton was nice enough to even hold up a sign for us. The class had a lot of fun searching around our campus for nouns.

Fall has finally decided to stay at St. James and it was just in time for Pumpkin Week! After reading the book Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell we had our own pumpkin investigations. We measured our pumpkin’s height and circumference then cut into it so that we could see it’s seeds and pulp. The students used sensory words to describe how the pumpkin felt and smelled. The students were able to complete a three dimensional model of the parts of a pumpkin using real pumpkin seeds! They were surprised to learn that you can eat the seed after they are roasted and most of the class was brave enough to give them a try. We made pumpkin patch puddings to eat on Friday. This was the perfect time to practice some phonemic awareness skills since we had just introduced the sound for the letter P! Finally, we completed a watercolor painting of a pumpkin blossom.

Measuring the height of a pumpkin using linking cubes.

Measuring the circumference of a pumpkin.

Pumpkin guts are cold!

What a great start to the year we have had! My kindergarten friends are doing great with their morning routines and are happy to get dropped off every morning. One of the things that they look forward to is our morning work drawers. After they put their things away each student comes in the room to find one of twelve drawers labeled with their name. They pull out that drawer, find a comfortable spot in the classroom and get started on their morning work. These drawers are filled with fun activities that really help to strengthen their fine motor skills. We like to say we are working on our finger muscles! Take a look at our pictures to see how my little friends are really having to use their fingers. They are excited because they think they are playing with their friends. I’m excited because I know how much more capable they are going to be in a few months when we start incorporating more writing work!