Mrs. Payton's Precious Kindergarteners: November 2011

I was super excited when Food Lion donated large pumpkins to our class, because I wanted to get a few parents to come in and carve pumpkins with us. Last year, Mrs. Edwards and I carved 6 pumpkins by ourselves and I told myself I would ~~never do that again~~ ask for parents to help from now on. Several parents volunteered to help, so when they came after our Music class, I put a few students with each parent to carve a pumpkin. Lowe's had donated carving kits and the students picked out a design to carve on the front. (Funny how they wanted to choose the hardest designs in the book - these parents were serious troopers!) Several of the students weren't interested in touching the insides of the pumpkin, but everyone participated and enjoyed. As they finished up, we had several decorations sitting out on my reading table for them to choose from to decorate their small pumpkins. The parents and myself hot glued their decor on to the pumpkins - they turned out SO cute! Finally, we had a snack. Each student made a sugar cookie with icing and sprinkles and then they had Cheese Puffcorn and Orange Jello Bites to go along with them. This is the first time I have ever devoted an entire day to Halloween activities (between this and the Rotations) but the kids were wonderful and really enjoyed all of the activities. I will definitely revisit a day like this! Thanks again to my WONDERFUL parents - we could not have done this without you!! Here are some pictures from the afternoon:

Hannah enjoying a snack.

Brooke enjoying her decorated sugar cookie.

Yummy snack!

Kameryn and her little pumpkin.

Katelyn and her little pumpkin.

Brooke and her little pumpkin.

Cute pumpkin!

Hannah's precious pumpkin!

Kevin's sweet pumpkin.

Isaac's tiny pumpkin!

Ray'shawn is proud of his pumpkin!

One of my awesome parents with Jyrah, Brooke, Hannah, and Kevin!

Miss Z (my fabulous intern) choosing a pattern with Nick, I'Dereis, and Karma.

Another awesome parent carving ghosts with Kameryn, Eli, and Joshua!

Nick didn't like the insides, but Karma didn't mind!

Another fabulous parent helping her group clean out the inside of their pumpkin.

Everyone in this group gave cleaning the inside out a try!

Kevin taking out some of the insides!

Emily cleaning out the inside of her group's pumpkin.

I think the best part of this activity was watching my kids work together while being led by the parents. I am so blessed to have wonderful students and parents!

I realize I am a little behind, but it has been a crazy few weeks with assessments and report cards :) Our school is crazy big (11 Kindergarten Classrooms) so when we do things, we usually split our grade level down the middle. We decided to do Halloween Rotations this year for the 1st time to give the students the opportunity to do different fun activities pertaining to Halloween. For rotations, each teacher stays in her room and teaches the same lesson 6 times and the students rotate from room to room with the Teacher Assistant. In my room, we talked about sorting on the SMART Board and then sorted a few Halloween shapes by kind. I printed and laminated some basic sorting mats (by color) and the students sorted Halloween Rings. Thank goodness for my wonderful parents - they sent in at least 1000 rings!! Each student had a bag and had to sort them by color. When they finished I asked them to sort another way. At the end each student got to keep a ring for themselves, which they loved. The other activities they participated in were: Halloween Bingo, Making a Jack-o-Lantern with bulletin board paper, musical chairs with Halloween Music (courtesy of Pandora!), Making a Spookley out of a graham cracker and orange icing and 5 Little Pumpkins in Spanish! They enjoyed themselves and it was nice to work with other children for 20 minutes and send them on their way. Thanksgiving Rotations are up next - I'll be making an edible turkey! Here are some pictures from the rotations: