Halloween

We had a wonderful week dressing up to celebrate Saying No to Drugs! I forgot to take a lot of pictures but here is one of a few of us being too bright for drugs. 

Today was Halloween and we voted on, measured, weighed, carved etc. all to Wilber our class pumpkin. We found out that although Wilber was heavy he still floated in a bucket of water. We figured that it is because he is actually hollow. To end the day we had some yummy pumpkin cookies.All in all, Mrs. Ketchum said it was the best Halloween she has ever had in Kindergarten. :) 

Wilber the pumpkin

Our voting on how to carve Wilber.

Digging out seeds

More seeds...

And even more seeds...

Finally Wilber has a face!!!

Fun in Kindergarten

This week we learned all about Fire Safety and how to take care of ourselves and our families  in a fire. We also made fire trucks and charted about fire safety. 

Fire safety week

Kylie posing to support fire safety week

We had Open House and many of our parents came out to tour our classroom, see what all we had been learning, and visit our book fair. Here are a few of our families. 

Abbygail and her family. 

Malakhai and his family. 

We finished Chapter one in our Go Math books and moved onto Chapter two. To begin our chapter we played a game with numbers. Here is Jackson beating his partner Mrs. Ketchum. :)

I won!!!

Practicing our name can happen even on the playground. :)

Our class put on the Hayride during the Fall Festival. We had an amazing time. Thanks to the PTO for doing such a marvelous job setting this even up for the school. Did you know that every dollar we earned at teh Fall Festival will directly back into our classroom? 

Even our school mascot rode the Hayride with us. 

Bree riding the hayride. 

Lilly on the hayride.

Apples and Reading Stamina

Alright, I am two weeks behind but they have been two wonderful but very busy  weeks. We met our reading stamina goal and grew our brains by leaps and bounds. This means that the entire class was able to read for 15 minutes. Reading at the beginning of the year in Kindergarten does not always mean reading the words. We begin by reading the pictures and predicting what we think the book is about. We also look for our letters of the week and punctuation marks. We also began our literacy Daily Five block. This is also the time that Ms. Ferguson and myself will pull reading groups. 

Yellow Day picture

Using our classroom tablets during Daily 5

Using our laptops during Daily 5

TAG Readers in use during Daily 5

Going Home :)

Last week we had fun learning all about apples and Johnny Appleseed. On Friday to finish all of our learning we made applesauce and tasted several different kinds of apples to see which one our class liked the best. 

Cutting apples to make apple sauce

Ms. Ferguson leading the apple cutting

More apple cutting

We like the Gala "pink" apples the best!

Our apple sauce was delicious. Here is how we made it. We cut Gala apples into tiny pieces and put them in the crock pot with "real" apple juice and cinnamon (you could use water and sugar instead). We cooked them from 9:00 am until 2:00 pm on low in the crock pot. They smelled so delicious!

Building our stamina

We began building our stamina to reading this week. We discussed how when we build our stamina we build our brains. We learned how to read the pictures of a book along with the words.  

Reading

We also learned all about the African penguin and how they are endangered from over fishing, oil spills and garbage that we throw in the water. We decided we would earn money to adopt a penguin from Africa. The way we will adopt one is to work for our parents for spare change and to donate some of our Fall Festival money that we earn. We also had a group of 4th graders come and teach us about other endangered animals around the world. 

Keeping track of how much money we are earning. 

Our class did so wonderful in enrichment classes earning eagle feathers that we filled up our warm fuzzy jar. Because we filled up our jar we got an afternoon on free time.

Fun times building

Art time

Dress up fun

School Bus Safety

This week we did not come to school on Monday due to Labor Day. :) The rest of the week we reviewed our classroom rules that we made and sealed them with our signature and hand print. 

We learned what "Ubuntu"means and that it is like our class family and how we should treat each other as family. Mrs. Ketchum learned this in South Africa and thought it was a wonderful thing to share. 

Ubuntu means class family. We made ourselves and learned
 how we can be a class family. 

We learned all about school bus safety and how we are lucky to have the opportunity to ride the school bus to school if we want to. The students at Emafini Primary in South Africa do not have the opportunity to ride the school bus. They have to walk to school a long way for their education and education is very important to them. 

We also on Friday went on our own safari and brainstormed what we think we would see if we went on a real safari. We also discussed how the animals in South Africa are different than our animals we have here in the North Carolina.

First Week

Our staggered days were wonderful. We chased Pete the Cat and his rocking school shoes all around the school while learning where the Art room, PE room, Music room, Library, Office, Cafeteria and most importantly the playground was. We then decorated our rockin' school shoes with where we went this summer. Mrs. Ketchum talked with us all about South Africa and we found where we visited on the map.
After meeting our new friends in our classroom and having fun, we made a Pete the Cat cookie to eat for snack. 

Rockin with our school shoes

Rockin with our school shoes

Making our rockin school shoe

Icing our Pete the Cat cookie

Icing our Pete the Cat cookie

Pete the Cat cookie

Pete the Cat cookie

On Thursday, we had our whole class join us. We learned all about each other including where our names came from. Mrs. Ketchum's name is French. We also went to our first music and library classes. When we got to school on Friday we learned we had an early release day and go to leave school at 1:00. We went to Computer Lab and loved it. We also read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and compared our classroom with Emafini Primary School which is the school Mrs. Ketchum worked at in South Africa. We had such an awesome week for our very first one. 

Working hard

Working hard

Look at that concentration

Working hard