Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Learning is Fun!

And so begins the busy season!

This week we have been busy having fun while we are learning.
We made Ice Cream for "I" week!  (cue the shaking music!) Boy, were our arms tired from shaking those bags!


 It was worth all the work and cold hands though.  We made the most delicious ice cream and decorated it with sprinkles!  Yummy!!


 We began our Thanksgiving crafts and learning last week too.  These are our pattern turkeys!  They really did a great job and it was a terrific way for me to assess who still needs some work with patterning.












Today we did our directed drawing of turkeys!  Aren't they amazing!  They absolutely loved designing their own turkey feathers.






One of our small group math activities is to roll and color. You can find this one on TPT from Growing Kinders.


Another math small group was making turkeys and counting the feathers.  Great cutting, gluing, counting and following directions practice.


My last small group for math today was working on taller/shorter with partners.  This game is from Kim Adsit's "Which is Taller?" unit



Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Hello again!

I'm going to apologize in advance for the long post and all the pics!  In my dream world, I would like to sit down a few minutes each day and write something on our blog and post a few pictures.  Hahaha!  Like I said---my dream world.  Reality is I can't ever find that few minutes and then it all piles up and I have to post everything in one day--like today.  Here are a few things that we have been working on in our class.

First of all, let me say after 9 weeks, we are finally getting into routine and becoming more independent.  So now we can do lots more fun and learning in our room and not as much redirecting.

Let me take you back a few weeks....

During "A" week (yep! We do the letters in  order) we talked about Alligators.  We are from Louisiana after all.  Our poem for the week was called "Alligator."  We read it, sang it, colored it in our poetry folder, hunted for all the "A's" in the poem and we did a rewrite of it and made it our own.  This is what became of the rewrite.  I love it when art and writing come together to make it more meaningful.





 During "D" week, we invited our Dad's to come and eat donuts with us.  They came and ate and saw our classroom and all the things we have been working on.  We love our Dads!






One of our favorite cooking activities is Green Eggs and Ham.  It's messy and fun and delicious!


Some of us love green eggs and ham Sam I Am!................Some of us do not!


Now on to "F" week.  One of my favorite weeks!  This week we continued our lesson on oviparous animals and talked about Frogs.  We made this cute little guy and after we learned the life cycle of the frog, we put it inside our frog's mouth.



Of course our poem this week was called "Frogs".   Here's how we use our poems in the classroom:

We read and sing the poem on the first day all together.  I wrote the poems to familiar tunes so they make it easier to "read" for my PreK.  We talk about the lesson that is in the poem.  This one was about subtraction.

The next day, we get our our poetry folders and color the picture.  Then we circle the focus letter throughout the poem and we read it all together.

The third day they get their poetry folders out and find a friend to read to.  They read this week's poem and they can go back and reread our previous poems to friends.  I love hearing them sing all the poems they know to their friends.

The fourth day we "rewrite" the poem and tie it into an art activity.  This gives them a chance to make it their own and make some connections.





Our number was "7" this week.  For math, we made a giant frog with a super long tongue and put 7 flies on it in number order.





Ok!!  How much do you love dollar store items?? I love finding a good deal and trying to figure out how I'm going to use it in my classroom. I found these cute frog shaped eggs at Easter and I finally figured out what to do with them.  I put a colored dot on the bottom and put a different number of bugs in each one.  They had to color the frog the same color as the dot, count the number of bugs in his tummy and write the number.  They loved this!  They like when there is something new to do math with.



This week is "G" week and we are doing one of their favorite stories---The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  We read the story and sing the song --over and over and over-- by Jack Hartmann.  It gets stuck in your head and we end up singing it all day long.

We made story props so they can retell the story.  They had so much fun making the bridge and coloring the goats and troll.  Some wanted to tell the story to their friends and some wanted to retell it by themselves.  Lots of great learning going on---story recall, communication, sequencing, drama, art, listening and confidence building.








Whew!  Thanks for hanging with me through all of these super fun activities!  Hopefully my next post won't be so long in coming!

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Welcome Back!

Whew!  With these new little ones, it's hard to sit down at my computer for even a couple of minutes!  And when I get home it's worse!  I have two teenagers (who don't drive yet) that need to be taken to all their activities.  And somewhere in there I have to cook supper, say "hi" to my husband and play with my poor dog who has been alone most of the day.

I am looking forward to having my students in a routine soon and things will go so much smoother.  I forget how long it takes at the beginning to get those routines and procedures down.

Here are some pictures of my room for this year.  It looks very much like last years with a few minor adjustments.

We are still the Monster room!





First of all, I am a little OCD about organization.  Otherwise I'm crazy looking for things and my room feels chaotic.  It also helps my wee ones be  more independent if everything is organized.



Our Art center is always open for my little creators!  They love going here all year.  I change it out each week and have different materials for them to explore.  They are excited to go see what I put out each week!

I have all my books organized by theme so that I can reach them quickly!  (and file them away quickly)

I have 3 table in my room and they each have a color.  Each table has their own color coded trays, buckets and monster.   The students at the tables share fat markers and skinny markers and the trash tub.



Each child has their own art tub that holds their crayons, glue and scissors.


There is table leader each day that is responsible for putting away their table's markers and emptying the trash tubs.  They also make sure the chairs are push in each time we leave the room.  It takes a while to train them with these responsibilities, but the independence later is sooooo worth it!


These are our alphabet boxes.  Each week we bring in an item that starts with the letter we are studying.  We match the items up with our alphabet cards.  This is great independent activity that we do daily. Our mailboxes are on top.  This is a fantastic(organized) way to keep up with their papers--and you guessed it--they can do it themselves.  I love fostering independence!  Can you tell?








Here is a picture our letter focus wall.  All things that have to do with our letter this week go here and we can review at a moments notice.






This is our writing center and our pocket chart wall.  We haven't gotten to do these yet because we are still learning procedures for each center.



In the mornings when they first come in, they can can pick "Monster Tubs".  These usually have games, or activities they can do with a small group.  The activities and games are repetitive and predictable so I am not having to explain directions everyday.  They put their tag on one of the monsters and then go get that tub.  At the end of the day we mark out the monster they went to so that the next day they have to choose a different color "monster tub".  This ensures that they go to 5 different tubs each week.  At the end of the week we erase all the marks and start over on Mondays.
I got this idea from another teacher(I can't remember who) and I made my own that was easier for my littles to do.




Our Promethean board is a time saver and a life saver sometimes.  We can do our shared writing, play games at center time, practice writing, read poems and show examples of how to do certain pages right here.  It is also great for looking on the computer for interesting facts about our topics for the week.





We have been learning about alligators and the number 1.  We did our alligator art in combination with our Alligator Poem Rewrite.    Click here to get the poem.











This week we are learning about Bears and the number 2.  Our math this week was "Bears in Pairs".  We matched up our bears, practiced sequencing the numbers and then tracing them.



Monday, May 4, 2015

Totally Terrific Teacher Appreciation Week

Teachers are wonderful, remarkable people!  As teachers we do so much more than teach.  We encourage, nurture, create, inspire and love our children.  I am so thankful for the amazing teachers that my two girls have had over the years.  They have learned so much, but they have also been encouraged to do more and do better.  They have been inspired to be creative and take chances.  They have been allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.  Most of all they have had loving teachers that care about them as much as they care about their learning.  We are so blessed!

As the year ends, I am sad to see the children leave my room for kindergarten.  But I am so happy and so proud of all they have accomplished this year and  I know they are going to do incredible things in the future!

It's Teacher Appreciation week!  It's a chance to let all the teachers in your life know how grateful you are for them.  It's also a chance to let your co-worker know how much you appreciate them.  I can honestly say that I wouldn't want to teach without mine!  We are such a team!!

TPT is having a teacher appreciation sale May 5-6

Everything in my store is 20% for those 2 days!!!

Plus, you can get another 10% off from TPT by typing in the code ThankYou

Get some things to finish this year and stock up for next year!!


Click on the picture below to go directly to TPT!