Mrs. Schwall's Blog

Back around Veteran's Day, we completed a Boot Camp Room Transformation to help us review skills for progress reports! Mrs. Schwall had fun being "drill sergeant" to the cutest little soldiers in town!

We had a great week learning all about Pumpkins! We read some great non fiction books about Pumpkins and reviewed labels when we labeled the parts of a pumpkin. We also used the book “Pumpkin Jack” as our mentor text all week as we walked through the life cycle of a pumpkin and learned some new vocabulary: decompose, withered, fierce! On Friday, we explored our own pumpkin- and then carved a jack o lantern! The class voted on what kind of face our pumpkin should have, and then the process began! Everyone got a chance to help scoop out all the parts and feel the texture if they wanted to! Lastly, they voted to name him Jack just like from our story! It was a fun day!

We had a great trip to Old Baker Farm this past week! Thanks to everyone who was able to go with us. Enjoy the pictures below!

During our study of farm, we have learned why animals are important to us and ways animals help people. On the day we studied cows, we made home made butter! Students were amazed and had great discussions of all the reasons we need cows!! I mean, what would life be without ICE CREAM!!!!

When we reached the letter Zz a couple of weeks ago in our letter introductions, the kids were so excited!!! They suggested we have an ABC party, so that's exactly what we did! We had fun playing ABC bingo with ABC cookies as our game pieces, and we even had ABC cupcakes and party hats! It was a great day!!

We had a busy September learning all about Apples! We learned all about the parts of an apple, the apple life cycle, how apples get from farm to table, and all about Johnny Applessed! On Johnny's birthday, we had a fun apple tasting party! Yum

Here a few pictures from the last couple of weeks! Hope you enjoy! 🙂

We had a great week this past week. We are continuing to settle into our daily routines and procedures- they are really doing a great job and each special area teacher is always complimentary of how well they are doing! I am so proud of them! This week, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom was our mentor text as we continued ABC explorations and focusing on the letters in our name! A big thank you to the Owen family who sent in a coconut for us to also explore in Science. The kids were amazed at seeing and holding a real coconut! We had to call in help from Mr. Jonathan (one of our custodians) to crack it open for us... it was a stubborn thing! But-- they loved watching that and getting to see the coconut water inside!! It was a fun week!! Here are a few pictures from just a few things we did!!

What a fun week! We wrapped up our 2 week focus on colors and Nursery Rhymes and ended the week with the color Brown and our Annual Teddy Bear Picnic Day. All students brought a Teddy Bear to school. Upon returning from PE, they discovered their bears were all missing!!! We had started our day reading the book based on the old song "The Teddy Bears Picnic" where a community of Teddy Bears sneak away to the woods for a picnic. We wondered if our bears, having heard the book, got a wild idea and the hunt began! We found clues posted around the school leading us to commonly visited areas and heard stories of some mischief the bears had caused during their big adventure! Ultimately, we found our bears out front of the school where they had set up a bear themed snack and even saved us some yummy treats!!! It was such a fun day!! In fact in listening to some conversation after among the kids I heard one sweet little boy exclaim, "This was the best day ever!!"

We had an amazing first full week of Kindergarten! Your children have been such a joy getting to know, and I am already so proud of them! We are going to do great things this year!! This week we started learning all about colors and Nursery Rhymes. The students all loved the excitement of finding out what the nursery rhyme of the day would be, and everyone loves our "class pet" Leo the Lion who LOVES singing his rhyming words. 🙂 They worked very hard as illustrators of their own Nursery Rhyme book, I can't wait for you to see them!! In math, we had fun exploring many different math manipulatives, as well as writing our numbers 1-10. In writing, we focused on illustrations and how we can use shapes we know to make pictures/people! We will expand on this next week when making a class book called "Meet My Friends."

To end the week with a bang, we gathered with another Kinder class to conduct an experiment with colors! First we made guesses about what we thought would happen when adding drops of food coloring to water. Then, we learned about how we can mix primary colors to make secondary colors. I think they had a lot of fun, and I did too! I can't wait to see everyone back on Monday!!

Next week's color days:

Monday-Purple

Tuesday- Pink

Wednesday- Black

Thursday- White

Friday- Brown