It's Pumpkin Time!

"It's Pumpkin Time" by Zoe Hall

If you're looking for a realistic fiction book that discusses the life cycle of a pumpkin, look no further.  It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall is fabulous for any kindergarten or advanced pre-k class.  I like the colorful illustrations and the way the author makes dry facts seem really interesting and cool.  At this time of year your students are seeing pumpkins everywhere, so why not take a closer look at pumpkins by cutting them open, letting them feel inside, pulling out the seeds, and comparing the weight and size of pumpkins to a variety of fruits and vegetables.  My class also made a Venn diagram comparing a pumpkin to an apple, and they really learned a lot.

I'd like to share with you some really great pumpkin fingerplays and songs that you can use for math, reading or science.  These also fit in wonderfully with the Common Core curriculum.  The first song is by Sharon Macdonald, and it's called "Five Round Pumpkins."  I print the numeral pages of the file below on orange paper and cut them out.  Then I print the remaining pages of the file on white paper, cut them out, and attach them to the back side of the pumpkins to match the song lyrics.  Here is the download:
Five Round Pumpkins

Sharon Macdonald also has another great song called "Pumpkin Seeds."  It talks about the life cycle of pumpkins and what they need to grow - a super connection for science!

A fingerplay that I've used in pre-k and kindergarten is "Five Little Pumpkins".  Singlish performs two versions of this song, one with lyrics and one instrumental.  I like to use the instrumental version and change the second lyric from "There are witches in the air" to "There's a chill in the air."  I have plastic pumpkins that I bought at an arts and crafts store to go along with the song.  My kids just love them because they look so realistic and they're 3D.  I also place them in Math Center so the kids can do the rhyme independently, taking away one pumpkin each time they do it.  Here are the complete lyrics that I use:

Five Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate,
The first one said;
"Oh my it's getting late!"
The second one said;
"There's a chill in the air."
The third one said;
"Well I don't care."
The fourth one said,
"Let's run and run and run!"
The fifth one said,
"I'm ready for some FUN!"
WHooooooosh went the wind
and OUT went the light,
and one little pumpkin,
rolled out of sight.

Then I start the song over from the beginning, and take another pumpkin away, and so on.

A nice circle time pumpkin song is "Pumpkins" by Newbridge Songs for Learning.  This dance has the children forming a circle around five pumpkins in the center, and as the song counts backwards pumpkins are taken away from the center group one at a time.  This song is good for teaching the concepts of subtraction or "one less."

I made the following paper to help my students identify color words as well as classify pumpkins by size:

Pumpkin Color by Size

My students kept commenting about how everything matched on this day, and wondering how that happened.

Please leave a comment below and tell me what type of pumpkin activities you do in your classroom.  I'd love to hear from you!

Autumn Activities

I can't believe it's October 1st!  Fall is my favorite season, and I think it's really important to celebrate the change of the seasons with my students.  So I read all of the books in the carousel above, plus Fall, Leaves, Fall which is a great large-size book, but Amazon did not have a picture of it.  I want to share what I did for Leaf Man, because some of my children who normally don't like to do seat work were really motivated by this activity.  We read Leaf Man, of course.  Then I had little pieces of paper cut out in red, yellow, orange, green and brown so that the students could make their own leaf man pictures.  I hung the originals in the hallway, but I also wanted to make a class book so that students could practice reading the sentence frame "My leaf man is a ______," and so that they could see their own writing.  If you're interested, take a peek:
Our Leaf Man Book

I've been working a lot on math plans lately, to match the Common Core standards.  I came up with this idea to have the children count leaves, identify numerals, and then color the squares on the ten frames.  Since Common Core wants us to recognize up to 20, I made twenty different Velcro spots for leaves, and 20 different numeral cards.  There are also two ten-frames on the tree so that children can color the appropriate amount of squares up to 20.

This week, we started working on number lines, so I designed a leaf number line paper to keep with the theme:

Number Fill in the Gap Leaves

I feel that my posts are never complete unless I share some of the songs that I've been using.  There's a fabulous song by Jack Hartmann called "Follow Me to the Apple Tree," which has the kids actively hopping, paddling, skipping, walking, etc. to an apple tree and then picking the apples.  After they pick the apples, they hurry back through the same motions, sort of like the song "Goin' on a Bear Hunt."  I also really like the song "Seasons" by Dr. Jean, because the kids can easily picture different activities for each of the four seasons.  Both of these songs go really nicely if you're discussing and making connections between the books and the real world.

I also recently put up Four Seasons Writing Folders on TPT, and I think they could be really useful in any writing center throughout the year, especially when you're focusing on seasons.

Quick and Easy Math Idea

"6 Sticks" by Molly Coxe

Things have been pretty hectic lately, but I wanted to share with all of you a very easy activity that my students really got into.  We were focusing on the number 6 today (part of the new Common Core curriculum that really digs deeper into numbers).  We wrote the number 6, made 6 tally marks, drew a picture of 6 things, sang Dr. Jean's song "Chant and Write", and read a great book called 6 Sticks by Molly Coxe.  The book basically shows 6 sticks arranged in many different configurations to produce a variety of designs.  I was going to have the children glue popsicle sticks onto a sheet of paper, but I decided to just let them manipulate the sticks on their tables to make whatever designs they wanted.  This worked really well, because the children got to make their design, break it apart, and make another design.  I was able to walk around and talk to each student about what they made.  How many times do we get to do that?  By the way, I have 25 students, and some of them don't speak any English.

Since our county's math test (which will be given in about a week and a half) has the children writing numerals, I made this book to help the children understand quantity and how to draw the number:

My Number Writing Book

If you like this book, please leave me a comment below!  It's always wonderful to hear from you.

Super Science and Social Studies

"What's Alive" by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

I really enjoy writing posts about science and social studies, because it's so necessary for logical thinking and problem solving, which are big parts of the core curriculum.  The book What's Alive by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld is beautiful for kindergarten.  It's appealing and factual at the same time.  It talks about similarities and differences between us (people) and plants and animals.  It very clearly states what living things need to stay alive.  I also like how the girl in the story has a wall display of living and non-living things at the end of the story, and how she talks about things that were once alive but not anymore (such as a plant that has wilted, or a bird that has fallen from a nest).

A fabulous song to use with this book is Dr. Jean's "Basic Needs".  It's sung to the tune of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", but it talks about different animals (including people) and what we need to stay alive.  I don't know about you, but I love matching books to songs.

Here is a graphic organizer that I will use as an assessment for my students after I do some sorting of magazine pictures.

Living Nonliving Graphic Organizer

Please let me know what you think of this graphic organizer, and if you'd like me to make more for units dealing with needs and wants of living things.  If you'd like to look at other graphic organizers in my TPT shop, check out my Animal Graphic Organizers or Motion and Matter Graphic Organizers.

I just remembered two other really great songs for a living things unit: "Growing" by Hap Palmer and "I am a Flower" by Jack Hartmann.

Perfect Position Books

As my children would say, these books are all "awesome"!  They completely match common core standard K.G.1: Describe objects in the environment using names and shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to.  They're also loads of fun!  My children never get tired of them, and especially in the beginning of the school year, when they don't have the stamina to sit for a long time, these books really keep their attention.  I also have them show the position words; it keeps the read very exciting.  They also know that when the story is done, we will most likely do a song that matches the book.  The songs I have found to match these books are:

"Cool Bear Hunt" by Dr. Jean
"Going on a Picnic" by Dr. Jean
"Lion Hunt" by Melinda Caroll
"Goin' on a Treasure Hunt" by Jack Hartmann
"Going on a Turkey Hunt" by Mister Q

I recently found a very cool web site called TLSBOOKS.com that does a great job of asking the children to identify position words.  In fact, there are lots more than just papers for position words.  There are games, printables, and worksheets for a wide variety of subjects including alphabet, math, science, nursery rhymes, geography, hand writing, and more!

My last two weeks at school have definitely presented some challenges, but one simple activity that I tried worked remarkably well.  I placed a tape square on the floor and gave a child a Beanie Baby bear.  I told the child to stand inside the square and outside the square, then had them do it in different ways (slower, faster, crawling, standing, etc.).  Every child wanted to do it, and they waited patiently for each other to take turns; I couldn't believe it!  I also had 23 kids that day (2 were absent).  So, I guess it goes to show that sometimes simple is best.

I also used my Superhero Bingo game that I talked about in an earlier post, and it really is helping my kids to identify more letters.  On Friday, they asked me to make an Animal Bingo game, so of course I did and it's now available on TPT and TN.

I found myself eating chocolate a lot last week.  I'm just wondering, do any of you have tips for lessening the stress of these first weeks of school?

First Week Back in Kindergarten

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes

Hello bloggy friends!  I'm sorry that I haven't done a post for a week.  I've just been exhausted every day!  My class is really wonderful; I actually had 14 of them in pre-k last year.  So the funny thing is, whenever they tell me they don't know something, I say "I know your teacher taught you that, and you do know it."  And they say "Wait a minute... You were my teacher!"  And then I just smile.

So, to the heart of the matter: things that really worked this week.  Over the summer, I discovered the Pete the Cat books (thanks to my good friend, Lauren, who is also on my team).  We read I Love My White Shoes, Rocking In My School Shoes, and His Four Groovy Buttons.  My kids sat SO wonderfully for all three of these stories.  They were actively listening, they were engaged, and they were able to answer comprehension questions about them (and this is a feat, because I have some children who don't speak any English).  I made this paper to go along with the White Shoes book, and my students did such a great job that their papers are now hanging on my Thinking Board.

Pete the Cat Worksheet

We did some shape collages that worked really well.  My family helped me cut out many different circles, triangles, squares and rectangles out of a variety of scrapbooking paper.  Then the children had to find one particular shape each day and glue examples of it inside one large corresponding shape.

One thing that was challenging for me this year but did work nicely was the opening of math time.  In previous years I had made calendar CD's that focused on the day of the week, the month, spelling the days of the week, etc.  Since time has been taken out of the core curriculum, I felt that I really needed to change my focus for the beginning of math.  So we very briefly work with the calendar, simply focusing on today's date and singing "Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow" by Jack Hartmann.  Then we say the numbers up to that date (if it's August 24th, we count up to 24).  Next we do a number line activity (I purchased a number line from Lakeshore).  At this point, I'm just asking various students to find particular numbers.  Later in the year we'll jump ahead 2, go back 1, etc.  There's a fabulous song by Dr. Jean called "Country Countdown 1-20" that I use right after the number line to have the children bend their legs to each number as we count forwards to and backwards from 20.

I'd love to hear what things worked for you this week!  Please write me a comment below.

Literacy Centers and Freebies

ABC Word Wall

I just made a new ABC Word Wall, and I wanted to share what it looks like with my bloggy friends!  Here is a Scribd version if you would like to download it:
ABC Word Wall Headings 2

I use a song by Barbara Milne called "Letter Sounds (apple, apple)" which matches the pictures on my word wall.  The song is available from her web site, and also on iTunes.  I really like this alphabet song when the children are using the pointer to follow along with the ABC's.  It's a slower song and gives the children plenty of time to find and point to each letter.  Here's a really cool YouTube video for it:


I place mini word walls in the children's chair pockets, with sight words on them.  That way, they don't have to get up and go over to the ABC wall.  They can simply grab it from their chair pocket.  You could also leave them in a bucket on the table.  I'm selling a variety of these on Teacher's Notebook and TPT.

Here's a picture of my writing center:

Writing Center

I struggled with writing center in the past, and what has really helped me is placing the theme words in a pocket chart.  That way, the kids can take them out, use them, and put them back themselves.  Plus, they can see all of the words from the theme at one time.  I downloaded the vocabulary cards from Eduplace.  The lapboard supply center, tracing letters, and magic boards are all from Lakeshore.

The final picture for today is of my library center:

Library Center

It's not quite done.  I'm going in to school tomorrow to finish before the kids show up on Monday.  I did add a basket of Beanie Babies so the kids can read books to them.  I also found some Viewmasters online that I think will be a beautiful addition to this center.  The children will be able to tell the story as they're viewing illustrations.  This toy was really popular when I was little.

I'd love to hear what all of you are doing for your literacy centers.