V is for...

Last week we learned about the letter V. Our week started out with our Valentine's Dance!

This was our second Tea Party for the year. We collected pennies at the door for our charity, Pennies for Peace. We brought one container back to our class and counted almost $22.00! Way to go guys! I can't wait to hear how much was in the other container! I told the children that we could by 2200 pencils with that and they said "WOW, that is enough for a whole school!" In fact, this enough to pay a teacher's salary for 2 weeks or to buy one child's supplies for a whole year! It is amazing how we can do so much with what, to us, is so little!

We had a ball at the dance!

There was dancing..

Food...

And even a dress-up photo booth!

And even a fun dress-up photo booth! Our second tea party signifies us all becoming friends. I could tell that we all are! Children from different classes were playing and dancing together!

Many thanks to all of the parents who put all of this together. It was a WONDERFUL time for everyone!

Even the teachers...

Our Week

This past week we spent some time enjoying the book, Cookie's Week. This book is hilarious! Cookie, a silly kitty, gets into trouble on each day of the week. As we read we discussed calendar concepts like yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The children loved seeing all of Cookie's crazy adventures.

We read Cookie's Week each day and then the children made their own "week" book. We talked about the things that we had done in class each day and the children were asked to draw a picture of something that they did that day either in class or at home and also write a sentence about it. I encouraged them to try and spell things on their own and I was really impressed! We are awesome writers!

Each day we spend time with our calendar. We discuss different upcoming events and important dates to remember. The children often will tell me that they have dance on Tuesdays and will always remind me that we have ice cream on Fridays. It is important for them to understand what the calendar means and why it is important. I always tell them how important it is in case they have somewhere to go or something to do. By working on our "week" books, they were thinking about their days and what each one means to them.

Be sure to check these out when they bring them home! They did a fantastic job!!

Happy 100th Day of School!

Yesterday was our 100th day of school. We did lots of 100 activities to celebrate this fun day! We read one of my very favorite 100 day books, Jake's 100th Day of School by Lester Laminack. Lester was my professor at WCU and is an amazing writer and teacher. No surprise this is one of my favorites! We read the story and we talked about the things that we did that were similar to the things that Jake's class did to celebrate the 100th day.

One thing that we did that Jake's class did was make a 100th day snack. Here is the recipe in case you want to make your own!

10 Marshmallows, 10 Goldfish, 10 pretzels, 10 chocolate chips, 10 raisins, 10 white chocolate chips, 10 chex , 10 cheerios, 10 piece of caramel corn, 10 m&m's

Add them together and you get 100 yummy things to eat!

We counted all the way to 100 this morning by 1's and by 10's. We had been building up to this all year! We also made a 100 chain of 100 links. Each day we would take our links and estimate and measure something in our classroom. Today we put all 100 links together and we went out into our school to measure. We found that the bookshelf in the hall was 100 links, the lunchtables were less than 100 links, and BIG RED (our inside slide) was also shorter than 100 links. Our line was also shorter!

Then the students shared their 100th day projects. Each student was supposed to bring in 100 of anything that they chose, however they chose to share with our class. We had ALL kinds of creative projects to share!

We had a book filled with 100 things we have learned in Kindergarten

We had things made out of 100 legos!

We had 100 seashells collected at grandma's house.

We had collections of 100 pieces of popcorn, 100 stickers, and 100 buttons.

And then we had 100 YUMMY treats... actually 200! Boy they loved eating those!


We also had a great picture of a man fishing made out of snacks!

The Mitten

This week we spent some time getting familiar with the book, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. This is one of my favorite books for winter! I love how silly it is and how true to life parts of it are... how many of you have single mittens at home missing their match?!If you haven't read The Mitten you should definitely check it out!

We read the book together on Monday and then each day a group of students read it as their listening center for the week. After reading, they filled out a sheet with their favorite part. Most of them liked the bear the best!

We also made our own retelling mitten. The children colored and cut out all of the animals and a mitten and then we put them together with a ziploc bag so that the children can retell the story to their friends and families. Be sure to ask them to do this!

On Thursday we did some "Mitten Math". Each table group had a mitten and we estimated how long the mitten was and how many cubes it would hold. Then we actualyl measured using cubes and filled them to the brim. Afterwards , we talked a little bit about what estimating means and how to decide if our estimate was a good one based on how close it was to the real number. This also went along with what we've been learning about more and less because the students had to decide if their estimate was more or less than the real number. We had a lot of fun... who knew you could have fun doing math!?

To end our unit on the mitten, we acted out the story as a class. This gave my students who are more kinesthetic or movement oriented learners a chance to shine!

The kids had a great time cramming into our homemade mitten! I think they will all remember this classic story for a long time to come!

Martin's Dream

This week was spent learning about Martin Luther King Jr. We learned about his life, his death, and his dream for all people. We read lots of great books about Martin Luther King Jr. and were even able to watch his famous "I have a dream" speech on youtube. The children were amazed at all of the people that they saw there. They said "That must be like 50 people!" I explained to them that it was actually 250,000 people. I guess we need to keep practicing estimation ;)

They recognized this scene in several of the books that we read and we talked over and over again about how Martin wanted people not to be "judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." We spent a lot of time discussing what these big words really mean and the children decided that no, it doesn't matter what someone looks like, but it matters whether or not they are nice, fun to play with, and friendly. I totally agree!

We had a big discussion about what our classroom would have been like if we lived in Martin's time. The children looked around and noticed who wouldn't be here with us and they were very upset to think that we wouldn't have those good friends and playmates. They all agreed that they are happy that Martin helped to change these things.

We also made a lift the flap book that talked about Martin Luther King Jr's dream. The children enjoyed working on this throughout the week and enjoyed reading it. I hope this will give them a memory of this important time in history.

I was very proud of the children and the things that they were saying about how life would be different and that they all are happy that we are all together.

I really think that the children don't notice the things about each other that sometimes adults do. They just see their friends, playmates, and buddies. I wish we could all think like that!

Winter Weather

I hope everyone enjoyed the second winter break that we got this week!

Before we left school last week we did some "weather" centers. They sure got us prepared for the big snow storm that was to come! We split into 3 groups and took turns rotating through 4 centers.

At one center, we did weather mats. Each child had a mat that showed a certain kind of weather. Then the children had to choose what kinds of activities went with that weather. For example, flying a kite goes with windy weather and building a snowman goes with snowy weather.

The next center that the children went to was making a weather graph. I gave the children a calendar with weather from the past two weeks. Then they used weather tags to make a graph showing the weather. After they were finished I asked them several questions about the graph including "Which weather was the most?" and "Which weather was the least" and my favorite "How do you know?". We have been working on this together as a class each morning and I was excited to see how they were able to do it themselves!

The next center was an activity on the smartboard. There were two children in their undies and the children had to look at the background and use clues (like snow or sand) to decide what season it was and then they had to use clothes to dress up the children like the should dress for that season. This is something important because I want the children to learn what types of clothes are appropriate for what weather. I have some who never want to wear a coat and I want them to understand when and why this is necessary!

The last center was called Weather Sort. I brought in a huge bag of clothes and asked the children to sort them and then tell me how they sorted them. Most of the groups sorted them into winter clothes and summer clothes. After they sorted, I asked them to explain and asked why those types of clothes were appropriate for that center. One group decided to dress up so I asked them what season they were dressed for and then I asked them to show me how they would dress for winter or summer. It was a really fun center!

These weather centers helped the children to think about the kinds of weather that we have and I was actually glad the winter storm came through because a lot of times this is weather that the children may not understand because they are not exposed to it!

Christmas BUSYness~

I apologize for not updating sooner. I was at NCCAT for a seminar and then we had a snow day and then all of a sudden we were out of school for Christmas break! It is amazing how quickly that hits each year! It seems like only yesterday I was getting my new little ones for the year and we were just getting to know each other. Now our journey through Kindergarten is halfway over!!

This time of year is my very favorite because there are SO many great books that we can read for the holidays. One that we read, Christmas Magic was really fun. We read about the little girl and her holiday traditions and then we took class time to talk about our own holiday traditions. I really enjoyed sharing and learning the special things that we each do around Christmastime. I learned that many of us have Christmas trees up, some of us have advent calendars, some of us watch Christmas movies, and some of us go visit relatives. I loved hearing all of the stories and really letting the children learn what a "tradition" was and how now matter what you do, it is your family tradition and it is very special. We also learned how people all over the world celebrate Christmas. Would you believe that in Australia Santa surfs up to picnics?!

We learned about the holiday of Kwanzaa and how it involves lots of famly and community. What a great way for us to talk about values and what is important to us and to our families. We learned that people who celebrate Kwanzaa also light a type of candleabra called a Kinara. The children immediately were able to connect and compare this to the Menorah and it helped us to see how holidays can be the same and different all at once!

We also learned about Las Posadas and Mary and Joseph's journey looking for a place to stay so that they could have their baby. To celebrate this holiday, we made our own drama where we dressed up and reenacted this story. In Mexico, children go from house to house for 8 nights where they are turned away. We didn't have 8 nights, so we went from classroom to classroom on the last day of school. They each turned us away, but we were welcomed finally at our Winter Holidays Celebration, our ninth stop!

Our Winter Holidays Celebration was absolutely wonderful! I have to give a huge thank you to all of the parents who made this possible! We were able to experience a little bit from each of the holidays we had been learning so much about. We started out by hearing the story, Jingle Bells and learning about how we all celebrate. Then children got to go to different centers for each holiday. At the Hanukkah centers children were able to play the driedel game and taste latkes and applesauce. At the Kwanzaa center children made mkeke mats and tasted different kinds of fruit. At the Christmas Center children got to make their very own jingle bells and decorate a reindeer cupcake. And finally at the Las Posadas center the children got to make a poinsetta craft and also their very own mini pinata, which is an important symbol of this holiday.

I hope everyone has a very wonderful break and a great time celebrating whatever holiday you celebrate with your friends and family.

Looking forward to seeing the kids in 2011 :)