Ms. J's Kindergarten Class: Trick or Treat?!

This week was filled with fun Halloween activities.

We made ourselves popping out of a pumpkin.

Hard at work on our pumpkins. They worked so hard on creating a scary/happy/sad face for their jack-o-lantern. It was hard for some of them to cut it in half at the end! They didn't want to "ruin" their pumpkin.

A more spooky activity that we did this week was create Monster Glyphs. Just a refresher: Glyphs are a way to represent information about yourself. Each child's monster is unique because the glyph represents who they are. If you haven't noticed already, I LOVE having my students create glyphs. They're fun to make, but are also educational in the sense that it's a more creative way to show data beyond just a graph or chart.

Our Class Monster Glyphs
Shape of monster = my favorite shape
Color of monster =my favorite color
3 eyes = circle body
1 eye = rectangle or triangle body
Triangle teeth = I like monsters.
Square teeth = I do not like monsters.

To add some more math concepts to our monsters, I had my students give their monster a cookie tray and gave them "cookies" in different shapes to sort. They turned out super scary/cute!

We had our annual Spooky Read with our third grade buddies. We brought flashlights and books up to their classrooms and read together in the dark. It truly is so fun to watch the older ones interact with my younger ones. They've formed such a bond already with one another.

Our Fall Harvest Party was a success! The kindergartners were intermingled with one another from the 3 different classes and they rotated from room to room to participate in different fall activities. My room was Mini Pumpkin Painting. A bit messy, but what fun is it if you don't get a little dirty?! I had a LOT of helping hands so thank you moms for helping me out!

The paint is ready...

...and so are the mini pumpkins.

Time to dry!

A "ghost pumpkin"

When we finished painting, kids played Pin the Face on the Pumpkin

In Mrs. Blakeborough's room, we played Harvest Bingo.

Before our Harvest Party, we made our own Bingo boards.

In Mrs. Seidensticker's room, there were 3 games going on: Pumpkin Bowling, Drop a Pin in the Pumpkin, and Roll a Dice Pumpkin Game.

The kids had a fantastic Halloween day together. And we got through the day with NO CANDY. Yay for no sugar highs!!! I can't say that next week will be the same...haha they're going to be in a sugar coma from all the candy they got from trick-or-treating last night. Oh boy!

One big component in kindergarten is learning to develop as writers and become confident in coming up with ideas on our own and sharing them. One topic that I thought would be fun to write, illustrate, and share about is what we were going to be for Halloween. Of course, the kids LOVED it and produced phenomenal results!

Cheetah fairy

Zombie

Witch

Captain America

Cheerleader

Power Ranger

Storm Trooper

Princess

Skeleton

The Hulk

Sharing our drawings with one another

Look at how nicely they are listening! Love it.

Next week, I plan on starting writing journals with the class.

Other NEWS of the week:
We took our first Unit Math Test. Students were assessed on their number writing, counting, and following directions.

The last question on the test was open ended and just an extension. I wanted to see what the kids could come up with. They had to make a drawing using 1 circle, 2 triangles, 3 squares, and 4 lines. Looking back at how I was as a kindergartener such-and-such years ago, that kind of question would've stumped me. But a lot of my students got it and drew such creative drawings! Even if they didn't fully answer the question, all of my students were able to draw some of the shapes. (The pics uploaded sideways---sorry!)