More Fall Fun

Whew!  It is the weekend and I am actually busy attending classes and presenting at this:

I asked a while ago for tips and advice and got so many e-mails from all of you amazing teacher friends... THANK YOU!  Lucky for me my super amazing hubby is hanging out with me at the conference all weekend (he is my +1) and my Mom came to town to watch the munchkins... she will be ready to head home on Sunday I am sure.  Hubsters and I thought maybe we need to get her a gift basket with tylenol, calgon, and maybe even a splint...  haha!  Our kids can be a handful.

In school last week we are still enjoying the fun of Fall in our kindergarten classroom.  Here are a few pictures...

We used shaving cream, tempra paint, and liquid watercolor to make these amazing fall leaves at the art center this week.  Then we cut them out and wrote our favorite things about fall before we created our own fall tree (here in the hot desert we are still surrounded by green leaves, so we have to create our own to enjoy the colors of the season!)

 We make this cute book every year.  Our sight word this week was 'see' this cute book is filled with fun Halloween pictures (which we just made big and then ran on colored construction paper) and then my kiddos cut up sentences (which I just copied and cut into strips) to create the text.  We are able to review color words, as well as the sight words: I, see, a, an  

The kiddos love it and were so excited to take them home on Thursday.

Happy Fall!  Next week I am gearing up for that joyous event known as Halloween, whew!  I need to get myself a gift basket of tylenol, calgon, and maybe even a splint... BUT I am dressing up this year and I cannot wait to reveal my costume, it is perfectly me!

These are the 3D Shapes...

We have been studying our 3D shapes this week... and the kiddos have done A.MA.Zing.  Amazing I tell ya at learning the names of these shapes!  I love my little kinder kiddos!

We read this AWESOME book (which actually has no words so read is maybe the wrong verbage... )  I LOVE this book!  It helps my kiddos realize that 3D shapes are all around us!

We watched this cute video, a few times, to help us learn the vocab.

We also did some sorting...  Print off your own sorting mat by clicking HERE.

And learned these rhymes:

http://www.teachertipster.com/3dposters.pdf

We experimented which shapes can stack, roll, or slide and reported our results on a class graph.

Now I get to enjoy 2 days off for FALL BREAK!  I am super excited!  Tomorrow laundry but Friday... we will be off playing hard!  Jealous?!?

H-A-LL-O-W-EE-N {freebie}

I am a huge fan of our friend Mr. Harry!  I don't know how I ever taught without his fun songs to enrich my curriculum.  This is a fun little Halloween tune that would be super fun to sing with your kiddos. 

We had a few extra minutes with my PM class today and I whipped this out to sing while we waited to line up for the bus, they loved it!

I am feeling all Halloween-ish since we had our first two Halloween parties of the season last weekend (an amazing faculty party, and an outrageous house party which I left with all sorts of goodies, coupons, and freebies!  It was my first house party and I am HOOKED) I love all the fun of Halloween (not the spooky part though, that blood, gore, and scare is not for me... I am NOT a haunted house kind of girl) pumpkin patches, hayrides, corn mazes, and kiddos in cute costumes sign me up!

But let's be honest my kiddos really make the season exciting!  They are planning out their costumes, bringing home cute projects from school, and giggling about smelling feet and getting treats!  I love being a mom!  The kidlets and I finally put up a few decorations last weekend as well.  It feels nice to come home and see signs of Halloween in the house... lots more to do though, we are far from finished.  My favorite way to decorate for any holiday is to stick my kiddos crafts and artwork in frames... I am sentimental.  I know.  I keep their holiday artwork for ages... and get all weepy when I pull it out!  Even weepier when it is too old and faded to keep up anymore!  haha.

So my dearies, in honor of the season... I hope you are stirring up some Halloween fun wherever you may be... here is your freebie!  I am all about the think, draw, write for my little kinder kidlets these days so here is a little diddy I whipped up just tonight for my team to use with our kinder kidlets, thought I would share!  Just click on the image to head on over to my google docs and snag your own copy!

Happy Halloween!

Rocks, rocks, rocks, oh rock!

We are studying RoCkS in Kinder and had rock rotations on Friday.  I have to admit it is one of my favorite days all year! Each of the teachers take a topic and the kiddos rotate through.  I get to do Erosion, love it!  We get to use the scientific method to help us complete an erosion experiment.
We begin by learning  the Scientific Method Song:

(to the tune of 10 Little Indians)

Ask a scientific question,

Gather data,

Form a hypothesis,

Plan an experiment,

Try it again,

Draw up a conclusion.

We go through the song a line at a time and complete the scientific method as we sing.

Scientific question:  How do rocks or mountains change?

Gather data: We watch the following videos

Form a Hypothesis: If we put water or wind on our mountain, then it will change shape.
(we have been talking about predictions with our language arts program so we easily tie them together, a prediction is a smart guess using words and pictures from the story, a hypothesis is a smart guess using the data we collected.)

Plan an experiment: We will go outside to the sand tables (I pull all 3 of our sand tables outside, so my room isn't a disaster) and build mountains with the sand.  We will then apply water and wind to see if our mountains change.

I divide the kiddos into groups and they gather around the sand tables.  Once their mountains have been formed I give them straws to blow on their mountains and notice the changes.
Then I pass out water bottles (with pop tops) I purchased refillable ones from the dollar store.  The kiddos take turns pouring water on their mountains and noticing the changes.


Try it Again:  (we try it again)

Draw up a Conclusion: Wash our hands and talk about the results.  What happened?  Is our hypothesis true?

the other rotations are:

Rock Reports (discuss the different types of rocks and how their features)

Magic School Bus Rocks (here is a snippet) I do have to admit this rotation at times makes me jealous, I kinda think it would be easy peasy to show a movie 3 times but I love my rotation, I really do!

Overall we have a great day and our kinder kids go home knowing lots about rocks!  Hopefully some of these ideas can help you as you teach about rocks!