Where has the time gone??

   Wow, Halloween came and went so fast and it seems like we just wrapped up our Pumpkin unit, and now I am planning Thanksgiving and fun turkey activities. The time is just going way too quickly for me! I feel like I have had zero time to sit down for a few minutes to blog...
 Anyway, here are a few pics of our Pumpkin fun from earlier this month.
 I snagged this super cute and super fun activity from Miss Kindergarten, that I used through Halloween and into early November:

    I had to tweak it a bit for those muchkins who are working on letter identification, so I modified it for my pocket chart that I use with my small groups:

     We worked a little bit on measurement, and used foam (and later wooden) cube blocks to measure the different heights of our classroom pumpkins. They found that stacking foam blocks past ten wasn't working and towers kept toppling over, so we switched to wooden blocks.

They really enjoyed working together to measure our huge pumpkin:

We took a few days to learn about the life cycle of a pumpkin and created a little diagram:

We also learned the poem "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater" and created this very CUTE craft! 

I am in love with it and I don't want to take them off of my wall to send home! 

Now we are just about to wrap up a our Fall fun, even though it is already snowing!

 I am telling you, time is going way TOO fast!!

Ff is for Friendship... and FREEBIE Friday!

   As valentine’s Day approaches, we will be focusing more on Friendship, rather than celebrate the actual holiday of Valentine’s Day.

   This past week, we learned about the Letter F. 

   We created feather art in the shape of the letter F, and we constructed a flower by searching for petals labeled with the letter.

   One of the big skills that I feel my kiddos need to work on is Friendship skills and how to play with other kids. It sounds so simple, but more than a handful of my children really struggle with these social skills.

   As part of our social emotional curriculum, it was time to start learning about how to play fair with friends. The concept focused on 3 different ways to play fair:

1)   Play together

2)  Trade

3)  Take turns

   This week we focused on learning how to play and work together. We read books about friends and had a discussion on the different things that friends like to do together. 

   We paired up the kids and had them paint each other’s hands. Each one placed their hand print on a paper and dictated a sentence to us about what they like to do together.

   This week, we also worked on measurement and that allowed me to create another opportunity for the kiddos to work together. Again, we paired them up and they traced each other’s shoe. (I wanted to have them trace each other’s foot, but some of them were really weird about taking off their socks and shoes!)

Once they traced each other’s foot, they took legos (which we had used earlier in the week as an introduction to measuring) and measured each foot to see who had the shorter foot and who had the longer foot. 

Look! I even got my shoe traced!!

   Other activities that we did this week to develop and foster Friendship skills included book buddy reading during Choice Time, small group relay races and we also made friendship bracelets with beads and pipe cleaners. It was so cute to see them giving each other a little homemade gift. 

(We made sure to kept track of the kids who had bracelets so that a child would not get two and ensured that everyone would receive one at the end of the day.)

   What about you? What kinds of fun things/special activities do you do to promote and encourage Fair Ways to play or work in the classroom?

 I would LOVE to hear your ideas!

   And before I forget, I have linked up with Teaching Blog Addict to share a Freebie with you!

Here is a cute TWO page Roll, Count & Cover Game, 

just in time for Valentine’s Day!

Enjoy!!