Mrs. Dyer's Kindergarten: Halloween and Worms, Worms, Worms!

Hi All,

I hope you had a lovely weekend and enjoyed the extra hour of sleep! We have been busy as always in the world of K! The children filled their buzzy jar on the Friday before Halloween and voted to have a Halloween Party. Here are some pictures of the fun we had:

In Fundations, the children continue to learn about basic sentence structure (uppercase/lowercase letters, ending punctuation, words versus sentences versus letters, etc.) This is also a time where we really zone in on one or two consonants a week and explore with and practice using those letter sounds. Last week, we worked on the letters l and k. This week, we will be focusing in on j and w. The children love to spy these letters around the room and sort toys and trinkets based off of their beginning consonant sounds.

In Writers' Workshop, we have started writing true stories about ourselves. The children love to share the happenings of their lives with their writing partners and seem to have lots of exciting anecdotes about times where they struggled or lost something. They have great ideas about how stories work and seem to inherently know that stories need problems or obstacles to overcome. The further we get into the year, the more wonderful letters and words I am seeing on paper to accompany their illustrations.

In Math, we have introduced our new tool...the counting racks! The children are getting used to the beads being broken into separate groups of 5 and learning about how numbers from 5-10 can be thought of as 5 and some more. We are continuing to play math games together at stations and the children do a really nice job of using math language ("greater than/less than", "more/fewer", "most/least") and cooperating alongside one another.

In Readers' Workshop, the children have been enjoying pointing to the words as they read with our "creepy fingers" from Reader Man. If you haven't heard of him, he is a superhero that gives us pointer power. Today, we broke out some leveled books and practiced pointing as a partner read the words. Read Alouds are one of my favorite times with this group. They genuinely enjoy stories and are very reactive and engaged when the plot twists! They love to practice character voices and always make each other smile and laugh.

During Forest Friday, we set out to the Storybook Trail. We read a non-fiction text about our wiggly friends, the worms. It was perfect timing to do so, as Recycle Rhonda had joined us on Halloween Monday to build a worm habitat with us. We learned so much about these little creatures! Here is what the kiddos had to say:

Worms slip away if something is trying to eat them. KP

Worms eat soil, collect rocks to chew up their food. SD

Worms slip deeper into the ground when it rains. MW

I know that they need water to breathe. EO

They are slimy and they get scared and they spray a special thing when they are scared. EP

They are slimy. They have 5 hearts. RK

They have rain on them for a couple of days and then it dries off. They need dirt and rain. KP

They go under and eat the rocks in the dirt and it goes into a special thing. (Gizzard) EG

They hibernate in the winter. They hibernate under the soil. ES

That they’re slimy because they need to be wet, they will die if they are not slimy. They need to be wet to live and they breathe through their skin. AK

They look for a house in dirt. SH

They are brown and sometimes red. NW

Some worms can drown if they get too wet. EFP

They slide. EA

Worms eat red grapes and green grapes. CC

Building a Worm Habitat and Meeting Our Friends