Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan

I have put some Gingerbread Man activities up on TpT. My favorite is the Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan. This is a booklet that the students make, taking the Gingerbread Man apart so that he cannot run away. (Yes, we eat him.)

Our Gingerbread Man hunt starts after we read the book The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray. We chase him into the library, the office, the cafeteria, the 1st grade, and then back to our classroom where he is "sleeping." After we find him students go out to recess and when they come back the Gingerbread Man has been taken to the office to talk with the principal who is "watching him."

 When we get back into class we talk about how we could have stopped the Gingerbread Man from running away. We then begin our Escape Prevention Plan. We all get 5 little paper gingerbread men. We color and cut them out. Then we glue them into our book one step at a time, like this:

As we make our book we also have little gingerbread men cookies. For each step we take the same bite in our cookie. I like the Keebler Gingerbread Men, but there are the Peppridge Farm one and the ones at Trader Joe's. This is probably the best part of the book! Yum!

If you would like to try out the Escape Prevention Plan in your class so that your Gingerbread Man doesn't run away you can get it at my TpT store.  This mini unit also includes some writing activities so that your little ones can write about the Gingerbread Man or can dictate what you write down. (The recipe activity in my unit always turns up some pretty funny kid answers!)

Enjoy!

The Pumpkin Project

So my school is literally across the street from a pumpkin patch. We could walk there in 2 minutes. But, I don't take my students for one reason: money. I don't have enough money to take my entire class to get a pumpkin. So, instead we have pumpkin day! I had an amazing grandmother buy each child in my class a small pumpkin so that we could experiment with what a pumpkin was and what it can do. We called it The Pumpkin Project.Usually, when I do not have a generous grandmother I get one pumpkin per table and students investigate in small groups.

This is a picture of one of my students investigating her pumpkin.
1. Observe the pumpkin (we drew pictures).
2. Decide if the pumpkin is big, medium or small.
3. Count how many lines the pumpkin has (I drew a black line so students knew where to start and stop counting).
4. Put the pumpkin in water and see if it sinks or floats.
5. Measure the pumpkin with unifix cubes.
6. Draw what kind of face they wanted on their pumpkin.

I have another version of this where they cut the pumpkin open and count the seeds. That seemed like too much for my TKs.

This picture is of Version 2 of the Pumpkin Project. Version 1 has the seed counting option.

Grab Version 1 and Version 2. Enjoy!

Bats and Pumpkins!

Halloween is in full swing in Kindergarten. We have been working, creating and learning new and silly songs. One of the first crafts we made was our bat hat. It is too cute.

When the kids finish and put it on we all walk around saying, "So and so....you have a bat on your head!" They crack up all day long. Here is the template for the hat. I recommend poster board or card stock for the wings so they stand out.

What else are we doing? Pumpkins! We have been learning about pumpkins all week. We have even entered the PTA Pumpkin Decorating Contest. I have yet to think of a good idea, but when I do I will post it.

Here is our bulletin board outside my classroom. Cute huh?

This is a page in our daily journals. We are working on capital letters, spacing and punctuation. Students have cut apart sentences (GRAB here!!) and they have to glue the sentence in their journal. Then they write the sentence, following all the rules, and then they draw a picture.

 

We learn the poem 5 Little Pumpkins and act out the poem with puppets. My students have it memorized in about 3 tries. I got these puppets at Michaels.

We make a 5 Little Pumpkins craft with popsicle sticks. I have them glue the poem on it so they can read it at home with their families. Grab the 5 Little Pumpkin craft here.

And of course, the paper plate pumpkin. We painted the plate and added a face to it, then did the life cycle on the back. To get the life cycle pieces go to my Pinterest Fall Activities Board.


We have a lot more Halloween fun to go !

It's October!

It is finally Fall. I always look forward to Fall and then realize how much I have to do with report cards, parent conferences, the Fall Festival and Halloween. Plus, I have to teach!
We kicked off our October with Stellaluna. We made a bat out of construction paper and wrote our own little sight word story retell on the back.

Grab the simple story here.

Another activity we did to go along with the bats theme was Nocturnal vs. Diurnal.
We read the story Where are the Night Animals? by Mary Ann Fraser and do a little sorting of our own.

Students will cut apart the animals and decide if they come out in the day or the night. Get the sorting sheets here.

We also had some fun with our math this week by putting our Spider Web numbers in order. I teach a Transitional Kindergarten class and do one number a week. We have only learned up to 7 so I only asked that my class order to 7. However, my numbers go to 9. If you would like to try some creepy, webby numbers grab them here.

Pumpkin Reader

Here is a quick freebie!

My Big Orange Pumpkin reader is a cute activity to go along with your pumpkin unit. We are learning how to follow along with our "reading finger" and reading the sight words. Grab it here.

Apple Week!

I always do an apple theme in September. Who doesn't? This year I tried a few new ideas, including some of my common core training. We had a pretty successful week, so I thought I would share some of these activities:

Apple Sequencing

Vowel Match

The lowercase vowels are already on the tree. Students have to match the capital vowels. 

 The Apple Star

I begin the lesson with How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maestro. Once the story is done I cut an apple open sideways so students can see the star inside the apple. They are always amazed. We talk about how a seed can grow into a big tree.

Seasons of an Apple Tree

We begin by reading The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons.This activity is done by tearing construction paper to make the leaves, flowers and apples on the tree. They don't get any scissors until it is time to label the picture.

Apple Mobile

I don't have a digital copy of this, but will try to get one soon. Students get to pick the color of their apple. We cut the pieces apart and I help them glue the pieces on the string. The funny part of this activity, and it never fails, is that the students don't understand what we are making until it's done. Then they LOVE it! We take turns going around the room asking each other "Did YOU eat my apple?" It results in lots of giggling. 

Apple Tasting Graphing

 Apple tasting! Yum! We try a slice of a yellow, green and red apple and graph which ones we liked the best!

Common Core Apple Math

 This is an activity from one of my supplement math books. We do counting, number identification, addition and subtraction with this activity. It is a great activity to differentiate for small groups.

Other activities that we do for apple week is reading 10 Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss. I give each child a photograph of themselves and we glue apples (the cut apart ones from Apple Tasting Graphing) on top of our heads! They get the same number of apples as letters in their names. Then we write the letters of their names on their apples. It's very cute.

We do an Apple Investigation Day also. We measure and weigh our apples. We stamp it and write the color word. 

The kids love apple week because EVERYONE LOVES APPLES!

Hexagons!

I have been teaching Kindergarten for 8 years now. (Holy cow!!! 8 years!!) Anyway, the Common Core standards are having me teach a brand new shape this year. And, while I don't mind, it is not easy finding resources for this particular shape. I am talking about.......the HEXAGON! Yes, the shape that looks like an octagon, but isn't. Sure, the kids all know the octagon. They love the octagon. And here I am with the hexagon. And I have 40 little eyeballs looking at me like, "hey, lady, that's an octagon....not whatever you said." So we count the sides. We count the corners. We compare to an octagon. Then they get it.....finally. And we do a tasty craft. And once they do this craft, they LOVE the hexagon. It's called the Honeycomb Hexagon and another K teacher at my school came up with it.

We used Honeycombs cereal and it was yummy! Honeycombs go on all 6 corners and one in the middle (for the bumble bees, my students told me). Grab the activity sheet here.