Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Everywhere!

When you think of fall, of course pumpkins come to mind! There are SO many things you can do with them! Our students learned about pumpkins all while incorporating reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. Needless to say, it's been a busy week for Sutton's Kindergarten friends!

To begin our pumpkin unit, we started out by discussing the life cycle of a pumpkin. The students even discovered that a pumpkin's life is a lot like a circle, it is neverending. The students then used their knowledge and created their own pumpkin sequences! It turned out to be a very cute pumpkin patch for our hallway!

The next day, we became kindergarten scientists. We wanted to experiment with our pumpkins. Before our experiment, the students predicted whether the pumpkin would sink or float in a bucket of water. We analyzed our data using our new math skills and tallied the results. Then... it was experiment time! Pumpkins float!

 We read lots and lots of stories about pumpkins this week, but our FAVORITE was "Big Pumpkin". It was about a witch who wanted to make pumpkin pie, but couldn't get the pumpkin off the vine. Ask your child about what happened next :) Miss DeWitt let her students transform into actors and perform the story in front of the class. The students talked about what behaviors they would have to change to become the new characters and how they would retell the story to the others. It was tons of fun! The actors even had a little tumble at the end just like the real ending of the story (except our tumble wasn't planned)!

 For our weekly art project, we created a pumpkin glyph. We love glyphs because each pumpkin turned out differently than all the others! Our students also measured themselves using pumpkins instead of rulers (the picture on the glyph is their measurement). After the entire class was measured, the students graphed the data. They did this all on their own! Our goal is student-directed learning and this activity was a perfect opportunity for the students to create their own learning!!

Congrats to Our K's!

Big CONGRATS and THANK YOU to all those who sold discount cards for Sutton! Our school is top notch because of your love and support! Our kiddos sold the most cards of any grade level! They were beyond thrilled to say the least. As a treat, the kindergarteners were given an hour of free time on the playground with... popsicles! 

Mrs. Joska was nice enough to let us borrow some of the gym equipment (soccer balls, wiffle balls, hula hoops, and the giant parachute) and volunteers brought in sidewalk chalk and the popsicles. Thank you! Thank you! The weather was gorgeous, which made it a perfect afternoon here at Sutton.

Take a look at how awesome our afternoon was :)

Tomorrow is our last day before the break and we are going to miss the kids SO MUCH. We hope everyone has a wonderful, but safe break! We can't wait to see everyone when school resumes on October 15th!

Take care,
Miss DeWitt
Mrs. Bratcher
Mrs. Hoffman
Mrs. Williams

Fall Is Here!

Fall Break is almost here! 2 more days, but who's counting? :) Fall is one of our favorite times of the year. We are gearing up for our Fall Break here at Sutton by celebrating the seasons change with some adorable crafts. We like to incorporate sight words, letters and other concepts used in class into our art activities.

(Above) Mrs. Bratcher's class completed a poem about fall using similies. Fall is as red as leaves. Fall is as yellow as candy corn. Fall is as orange as pumpkins. So cute!

(Above) Miss DeWitt's classroom made their own fall trees and included a sight word poem! Their class has been working on the words "the", "it", "is", "in", and "and". What a great way to incorporate classroom learning into something special! The student's used their hands and arms to create the trunk and limbs of the tree. The leaves were constructed from construction paper that the students tore into small pieces.

(Above) Mrs. Hoffman's class created fall riddles! They used their inferencing skills to create poems about objects that can be found/used during this season! The students gave 2 to 3 clues about their objects, then the readers must use their inferencing skills to figure out the riddle! These students did an amazing job!

Raccoon With Balloons

This week we have been working on the "oo" sound; as in raccoon, balloon, boo, school, cool, and so on. We have had a blast! I laminated balloons with our "oo" words on them and placed them around the room. The students then used a Write the Room sheet to record the words that they found! It's amazing how far their handwriting and reading skills have come in just a short time! After the completion of the activity, we gathered on the carpet and read all the words together. We even came up with more words that followed the "oo" pattern!

All the student work was displayed in the hallway- they are SO proud of their hard work and love when everyone is able to see what they're up to in class. Below are a few pictures of the lesson!