Alphabet Party! (and other awesomeness)

I think this may be the first class picture we have.  Thanks to my favorite preschool teacher for popping over and snapping it.

This morning Miss Keili from the AZ Farm Bureau came and read to us about apples and then showed us how to make a Fall and Spring apple tree.  

Today was our alphabet party day!  That means we did lots and lots of literacy activities, like reading alphabet books, singing "Who let the A out?", writing letters, and doing fun alphabet pages (dot to dot, letter matching, missing letters...), and alphabetizing letters.

 It's amazing how much more fun it is to put cards in order if they are first thrown into the air.

  We ate alphabet snacks (and rocked out to the ABC disco)

 We played more games like, alphabet cover-up

 and matching upper and lower case letters

 and put together a really long alphabet puzzle.

 At the end of the day we went outside and made fruit prints with our buddies.  (We used to do apple prints, but after 6 years I was getting a little tired of apple prints, and we saw this really cute idea here so it was time to try something new.  Not sure if we'll add faces though)

 And a little dress-up during centers to end the day.

Happy Friday!

water, paint, glitter, glue, sand, apples

Apple day started with apple math.  We graphed our apples by colors and by whether or not they had a stem.  Then we measured our apple's height,

and weight

 and tested if it would float or sink

 Some apple centers: making patterns,

 making apple fingerprints to match numbers

We did non-fiction writing

 apples are good. they help us grow.

 apples are yummy

In science class we made a diagram of an apple and labeled the different parts.

and at 2:00 we finally got to eat the applesauce that we had smelled all day long.  About half of the class liked it (some could not get past the fact that it was chunky and warm).  Everyone at this table had seconds or thirds despite one of them telling me ahead of time that they didn't like that kind of applesauce.

 No pictures of our awesome apple seasons art - we were too busy with glue, paint, sand and glitter... but since we already had the mess out, we had a messy art option at center time.  

 

See this creation?  It features glue, sand, glitter, crayon, and dot markers as the media.

 And since the water table was filled from the morning, that center was also open later.

Update: here's an apple seasons picture:
 

It was a very messy, very fun day!

Ss is for super-awesome day (and really long post)

Ss is for sidewalk chalk. We went outside to attempt to write the lowercase alphabet. And of course we could draw afterward. It is so interesting to watch children work and to see the variety of ways they approach things. The other part of our writing today was called "Alphabet Measles". I don't know where I got this page, but it was a fun way to practice uppercase letters. Just connect the dots! I think at least one child snickered almost the entire time - they just thought it was so funny to be connecting measles to make letters. Some children tried to write the alphabet in order (that is what the paper said to do, but we took it as a suggestion), some decided to write it backwards, others wrote names, words, or random letters.
Ss is for science experiment. Here is the banana goo. It's pretty much broken down now and looks like mud. Fait accompli!
Ss is for sticky notes on things around the room that start with S (like snowy and Saturday and shelf, and scissors and someone who starts with S and...)
Ss is for shadow tag (our apologies to the junior high classes who may have heard happy shrieking this afternoon)
Ss is for sponges and stamps and seasons. (this is the apple picture I mentioned yesterday. I don't know why it is sideways - I uploaded it correctly twice. Tilt your head or computer.)
We are reading many color books and doing colorful experiments. I stole this idea from Mrs. Karen. We had a lot of fun trying to melt crayons (we initially tried it outside with just the sun, but it just isn't hot enough anymore, so we brainstormed other things that could heat them up - oven, microwave, fire, lava, hairdryer). Ms. VP lent donated her extra hair dryer. You should have heard the exclamations when it first started to melt. "OOOH" "Wow!" "It looks like fireworks!" It was a bit noisy but everyone had at least 3 turns to melt crayons. (Be forewarned: if you try this at home, prepare for multi-dimensional splatter... the side of our sink is more colorful than it used to be, as are the cleaning supplies. Also, Crayola crayons melt significantly better than Roseart crayons do). This was process, more than product, art.
Here is the final product:

Apple Day (and a few other things)

Today everyone was excited about apple day and sharing. This was the first time we had everyone bring something for sharing, so that was a lot of listening they had to do while waiting for their turn, and I was really, really impressed with how well they did. Great job, Kindergarten!

When we focus on a letter for an entire week, we saturate the days with as many activities as possible that start with that letter. For example, we ssssang the ssssssilly pirate ssssssong and we sssssnuck out to the playground for a little extra recess and we ssssssslithered across the room. Yesterday we thought of 29 words that started with Ss!

And now, on to Apple Day!

We have very few pictures of our apple day adventures because we were too busy to take pictures. Hopefully your child showed your their apple page so you know what they did. After we graphed our apples (by color and by stem/no stem), we had some scientific explorations to learn more about them. We measured how tall our apples were and how much they weighed. We predicted if they would sink or float and then tested it. We cut them and tried to get the seeds out of the core, using fingers and/or teeth.

We made beautiful pictures showing the seasons of an apple tree. (Sorry, again no picture. We were too busy with glue and glitter and paint... you can see one tomorrow)

Then came the best part: we made applesauce. Our room smelled so good. Finally, after the last recess, it was ready:
First we observed how it looked and felt, then we smelled it and tasted it. 6 children and 1 teacher really liked it. The other 5 children were less impressed (though a few of those may have really just disliked because their neighbor did). For most children, it was the first time they had eaten warm, chunky applesauce.

Recipe for applesauce: slice a bunch of apples. Invite someone over to peel and cut them. Put them in a crockpot with a dash of nutmeg and some cinnamon. Cook for a few hours, lifting the lid occasionally to mash and smell. Add a little sugar (optional. I added about a tablespoon). Eat!

Your little scientists also made a diagram of an apple, labeling its parts.
Then we did some non-fiction apple writing. Look at that great kid writing! This child is starting to write down the sounds they hear and remembered to use spaces. (I bought a apple. Regular apple.)
We did a little extra patterning practice. Children who finished had the choice of coloring (fine motor skills :) or labeling (math challenge! :)

Apple Glyph

Glyphs are fairly new to me, so perhaps they are new to you too. A glyph, as far as I understand it, is a visual representation of data (or an art project that tells you stuff). Each part of the project means something, so you can analyze your data by looking at the project.

For our apple glyph the color of your apple indicates gender, the number of leaves shows how many people are in your family, a stem means you like to climb trees and a worm means you like to eat apples.

So next we will analyze the data and, just by looking at the apples, figure out if there are more boys or girls, or count how many people like to climb trees or eat apples.

I might change it a little for next year; it really does look better if everyone starts with a white apple because then the colors show up better