New Friends

This year has gotten off to a great start! We are getting to know each other and building a community within our classroom. Here is one of the first class books we made together.

Each child sets a name puzzle. Some needed a model. Others did not. 

After setting the puzzle three times, each child glued his or her name

On the page.

Each child completed the page by counting the letters in his or her name 

and completing the sentence by adding the numeral. They also used their

Favorite colors to write the number again in the corner square.

I added decorative duct tape for strength in binding!

50s Day

Today was 50s day. We had a great time.  A parent of a child in my class brought in his 1950s candy apple red truck. The kids loved getting their picture taken with it. They were  also amazed that it didn't have heat, AC or seatbelts. The manual windows were also a hit.

Today's agenda included:

Hoola hoops

Root beer floats

A sock hop

Board games and 

Bubble blowing

What a great time we had!

"Are You My Mummy?"

This year our kindergarten team decided last minute to make masks and trick-or-treat to each of our ten kindergarten classrooms. Each class was to make masks for this purpose. Our class had been working on some cool activities to go with the book "Are You My Mummy?". So we made these masks out of supplies I already had on hand. (Paper plates and white streamers) The kids did a great job with them.

We had a great time. Next week we are going to make a class book where they can guess who is under the mummy mask. Then they can lift it and see if they guessed right.

Apples

A few weeks ago we were up to our elbows in apples.
We made a life size graph with our apples. We graphed
many times after we sorted by several attributes.

Here are their baskets full of sorted apples. Each group sorted by a different attribute.

This group made an apple basket full of apples with stems and leaves and another basket
without.

Open house

It was so fun this evening to meet my new kindergarten kiddos. The are all so full of energy and excitement.  Here is a picture of our "giving tree" that was part of our open house.

Generous parents took many coconuts off the coconut tree to make donations to our classroom. Thank you parents.

Poetry

Here is a really cute idea for a poem/song I want to put in my classroom this year. I love it!

It came from Pinterest. It says its from a blog called "kindergarten corral". I wanted to make a link directly there, but I cannot find it on that blog.

It is the words to Dr Jean's song, "Good-bye" written as a poem.

Here is a Link to a site that has a reader to go along with this poem/song. Even if you do not want to use it as a reader, you can print it with several book pages on each page. That way the pictures will print smaller and you can cut them out for illustrations for the poem.

Fall centers

This was a popular fall center with the kids. I think the original idea came from Deanna Jump. There was a spinner to use. Kiddos spin the spinner and choose an item that matches that part piece to add to their pie pumpkin.  I just used a screw driver to poke holes into the pumpkin where the typical pieces would go. It worked best to store the Pumpkins in the refrigerator overnight added to the life of the pumpkin .

Fall Fun

With fall in the air, we practiced ordering numbers 0 to 5 with fall leaves.  This helped to solidify the visual representations of each number in increasing order.

 This pumpkin center was a real hit. The kids enjoyed this twist on "decorating" pumpkins. After playing the game, they drew the pumpkin they created and described it in a sentence. This center was a favorite!

Scarecrow friends

A few weeks ago we built class scarecrows. We had a great time stuffing the parts with straw and putting our straw stuffed friends together. It gave us the opportunity to discuss and retell the order of steps taken to construct him. It allowed us to use the ordinal numbers in a real and relevant way.  As we were taking pictures of each child with our new friends, the wind turned crazy and threatened to blow our scarecrows off their perches.  We had just completed a week of learning about and discussing scarecrows.

It only cost four dollars to purchase the whole outfit for each scarecrow from Ohio Thrift. Not bad!!

Pete the Cat

Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes

Click on the title to go to the official Pete the Cat site. You can download the song free. There are some awesome resources as well.

My kiddos LOVED the Pete the Cat book I Love My White Shoes.  I made this file folder type retelling prop. to use with them.  I did find that it works much better when I used a large piece of construction paper instead of a file folder. The paper is folded not quite in half to create the folder.  The shoes are cut out before laminating. Then it is laminated open flat. Sides are taped with wide clear tape.  Details are added to shoes at the end. White, red, blue, brown and damp looking white paper is added to the formed pocket. As the story is told, remove each sheet of paper which changes to shoe color.