Wordless Wednesday: Trick or Treat!

Shape Centers and 40th Day

It has been a math-tastic week in KA. We continued our unit on shapes and celebrated the 40th day of school. We worked together to find circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles in our classroom, and further explored these shapes during centers. Some of our activities included making shapes with play dough, working in pairs to trace and identify shapes in sand trays, making shapes using the Geoboard app on our iPads, and shape memory matching.

Thursday was the 40th day of school. The Monkeys love when Zero the Hero visits, but we had a different visitor this week. Mrs. Hall informed us that Zero could not make it, but sent us a note! This is what it said:

I am sorry I could not visit you,
It turns out I have the flu,
I was not sure what to do,
So I sent this book, and Oreos too!
Happy 40th day of School!
Love,
Zero the Hero

We LOVED the treats and book, Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane. It went perfectly with our 40th day math activity! We talked about how 40 is 4 groups of 10, and demonstrated this with a Halloween math project. We used Dot Art markers to create 10 black, 10 orange, 10 green, and 10 purple dots. We then decorated our dots to make them look like spiders, pumpkins, monsters, and bats! Lots of us said it was our favorite part of the day :)

During writing, we decided to write a response to Zero. This is what it said:

We missed you Zero! The Monkeys are counting down to the 50th day and can't wait to see you :)

Pumpkin Perfect

We had a messy morning carving our class pumpkin from Cox Farms! The Monkeys first decided how they would like their jack-o-lantern to look. Remembering what we learned from our All About me and Five Senses units in September, students decided the jack-o-lantern face would need eyes, a nose, and a mouth. We then came up with shapes we could use for the different parts of the face. The class then voted on their favorites, and decided on a triangle nose and eyes, with a "scary" zig-zag mouth. After drawing a sketch of what our pumpkin would look like, we were ready to see what was inside!

Students scooped the inside of the pumpkin (which they dubbed "guts"!) using their hands and spoons, and saved the seeds in a separate container. We then estimated how many seeds were inside our pumpkin. 100 was a popular guess! After checking the internet to see how many seeds pumpkins usually have, we discovered most have about 500! We think our pumpkin might have had less, because it was small.

After A LOT of work, our pumpkin was finally ready to carve. We traced the face first with a marker, then teachers cut the shapes out:

We think our pumpkin turned out pretty great! :)

Now he just needs a name! We're still deciding, but the Monkeys agree it should be something spooky!

Fun on the Farm

Kindergarten had their first field trip of the school year today! It was a beautiful autumn day - perfect for a hayride and picking pumpkins. Last week, we began learning about pumpkins in our classrooms using books and PebbleGo, as well as at science lab with Mrs. McKinney. We have discussed how pumpkins grow and their shapes, sizes, and colors. (Did you know the biggest pumpkin ever weighed as much as a cow?!) Well, we didn't see any cow-sized pumpkins at Cox Farms, but we did see a few cows and LOTS of pumpkins :) Here are a few highlights from our trip:

First bus ride!

Enjoying a picnic snack

Hoppin' on the hayride!

The slides were a BIG hit

Picking our very own pumpkins

Here we are with all of our pumpkins!

On our way home, exhausted from all the fun

Pumpkins went home today, but tomorrow, we will carve our class pumpkin! Stay tuned for the finished product :)

Go Huskies!

This past week, even the littlest Huskies showed their homecoming spirit! From Spirit Week, to Inspiration, all the way up to the pep rally on Friday, excitement was in the air. Here are just a few snapshots from our week:

All decked out on Red, White, and Blue Day!

Wacky Wednesday

Kindergarten's Potato-On-A-Spoon Relay at the Pep Rally!

Our 4th grade buddies leading cheers at the Pep Rally

A surprise appearance by Klondike :)

We had so much fun! If your family participated in the festivities over the weekend as well, we'd love to hear about it during sharing this week. GO HUSKIES!!!

Global Day of Play

On Friday, we participated in the Global Day of Play. After being inspired by Caine's Arcade, students spent the morning building games out of recycled materials brought from home. Our buddies helped us imagine, design, and create our games. Then, the whole Lower School came together for an exciting afternoon of play! Here are a few pictures from this fun-filled experience:

Designing one of our games

Constructing our games with our 4th grade buddies

Some of our completed games

Playing and running the games with our 4th grade buddies

The recycled materials we used to build our games were recycled {again!} after we played