Week of October 9-12

Both Kindergarten classes enjoyed the field trip to Aloun Farms on Wednesday.  Our visit included an educational talk about the farm (did you know pumpkin pie is made from the smaller pumpkins?), a hayride, and pumpkin picking!  We loved being able to pick our own pumpkins. 


One of the writing activities we did this week was drawing a picture for each letter of the alphabet.  There were 26 sheets of paper, each with a letter.  We randomly chose a sheet and drew a corresponding illustration.  For example, we drew "Hh for hammock" and "Oo for ox."  Then we gathered on the rug and put them in alphabetical order, like putting together a 19' long puzzle.  Later, we were excited to see that the teachers had hung them up on the wall.  We love to see our work decorating the classroom.

One activity that we did in math was to first get sixteen unifix cubes out of a big pile and put them on our counting mat.  Then we looked at different people's counting mats and recognized several ways of displaying sixteen.  For example, several students stacked all their unifix cubes like a stick.  RB lay all the unifix cubes out one by one on her mat in a row.  KF made four groups of four.  Other students had them grouped in two's.  Another had two sticks of eight unifix cubes each.  At first we weren't sure that all these ways equaled sixteen.  After we counted each student's cubes, however, we realized that there were many ways of showing sixteen!


On Friday, October 12, we had the privilege of attending a koto and shakuhachi concert at the University of Hawaii's East West Center.  The people who played were master musicians from Japan.  We were intrigued by the shakuhachi, a flute made of bamboo.  Its music made us feel like meditating.  The koto, a thirteen-stringed instrument, could make many different kinds of sounds, depending how the musician played it.  A lively song about a train made us want to dance in our seats.  Some of the adults knew the words to a traditional favorite, "Sakura."   We enjoyed walking to UH with our 5th grade buddies, who took good care of us.

Posted on October 18, 2007 1:35 PM | Permalink