Gingerbread and More

Our class has had a busy month during December. Jingle, the elf, visited our class and everyday would watch us from a different place in the room. Every night, he would report to Santa and tell him if we were naughty or nice. A child was chosen each day to write in Jingle's journal to tell where he was in the room.

We did a unit on the gingerbread man and read many different versions of the story. We made a TLC Gingerbread Man book and we finished the unit by making gingerbread houses. We had lots of parent help and that made a big difference. Thanks to all our wonderful parents. Here are photos of all the fun in progress.

And the finished products ...

The children made candy cane ornaments using beads and a pipe cleaner. They had red, green and white beads and had to make a pattern on their candy canes. I also made snowman ornaments using the children's hand prints decorated with paint pens to look like snowmen.


The children did several art projects making elves, reindeer, and Santas. They wrote wish lists for Santa.






Our class participated in a Christmas card exchange with 24 other elementary classes from across the country. We put all our cards up on the bulletin board and connected them with yarn and push pins to the states they were from.


December was a great month. Now we are looking forward to the new year with studies on snow, Arctic and Antarctic animals.

Happy New Year!

Happy Thanksgiving

The children enjoyed learning about the first Thanksgiving this week. They did two TLC projects: Pilgrim portraits and an Indian. They have also been illustrating copies of a book, The First Thanksgiving.
Their independent work for center time was a sight word turkey. I explained the project to the class and showed them an example. The children had four days during workstation/center time to complete the work. These turkeys were so cute, we hung them in our windows.


The children made paper plate Pilgrim boys and girls with Mrs. B to sail on the Mayflower on our bulletin board.


I was very proud of the class for all the food items they brought in for the school food drive. The girls brought 50 items and boys brought 40. The boys gave the girls a trucker cheer for their efforts and the girls gave the boys a cowboy cheer for their efforts. I gave all of them a round of applause!

Next week we will watch "Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving" and then share the same feast that Charlie Brown served to his guests.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Spiders Are Not Insects!

That is what we learned in class this week. The children listened to many nonfiction and a few fiction books about spiders. They made TLC spiders and wrote Spider Facts. These spiders are hanging in their webs in our classroom windows.


We sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "There's a Spider on the Floor". The children made TLC illustrations for the nursery rhyme "Little Miss Muffet."


The children did marble paintings to make spider webs and then glued die cut spiders in the webs.


In addition to spider facts and fun, the children listened to The Art Lesson by Tomie de Paola. I showed them how I used sticky notes to leave tracks of my thinking as I was reading. Then they had a chance to record their own thinking on a sticky note and add it to our chart. We talked about the difference between fake reading and real reading. With fake reading, you just say the words without thinking about them. With real reading, you think about what the words mean as you are reading. Right now most of the books that the children read on their own are easy and don't require too much thinking so we practice our thinking strategies with books that I read to them. We have some terrific thinkers in our class!

The children continue to practice reading to themselves and to a partner. They seem to especially enjoy reading with a friend.

Happy Veteran's Day

I know Veteran's Day is not until Thursday, but the children worked so hard on their soldiers and they look so great up in the hallway that I wanted show them off. We listened to Veteran's Day and Hero Dad then made a circle map to share what we knew about soldiers. The soldiers were a two day TLC project. The children also completed the sentence "Soldiers can ___________." It all looks great and our class is proud to honor our military.

Bats! Bats! Bats!

The children really enjoyed learning about bats this week. We read lots of nonfiction. The children shared their knowledge of bats by making a bat tree map. Then the children made a TLC bat picture and dictated bat facts for the pictures. These are displayed in the hallway. They made bat wrist puppets and wrote a sentence about their bats.

Bat Facts

The children listened to Stellaluna and then made paper bag Stellaluna puppets. They completed sentences telling about Stellaluna and glued these on the back of the puppets. We read about owls one day and made a diagram comparing owls and bats, telling how they were alike and different.



Since school began, the children have been reading to themselves (Read to Self time) every day for longer periods each day. They are up to 12 minutes of reading time now. This week they learned the procedures for reading to a friend (Read to Someone time). Partners sit EEKK, elbow to elbow and knee to knee. They take turns reading to each other, either from the same book or different books. Mrs. B and I move around the room listening to different pairs read. The children did a great job for their first Read to Someone time. From now on, we will alternate between Read to Self and Read to Someone.

Fall and Scarecrows

Although the weather is still warm and it doesn't feel too much like fall, our theme for the week was the season. We read and talked about the signs of fall and sang our song about the four seasons. The children made fall trees to illustrate the poem "Fall Leaves".

We made the funniest class book, Scarecrow, Scarecrow. The children drew pictures of scarecrows. I took pictures of the children looking like they were scared and paired the pictures with the rhyme: Scarecrow, scarecrow, how scary can you be? You scared Sofia (each child's name went here) but you didn't scare me! The photos/rhymes went in the book opposite the scarecrows each child drew. It has become a favorite class book.

The children made really cute TLC scarecrows and we hung those in the hall. Next week's theme is bats. We are looking forward to that and to Family Reading Night on Tuesday. We have some fun nursery rhyme activities planned for that night.

Fire Safety

We had fun learning about fire safety this week. The children colored and cut out Fire Safety Sam and then wrote fire safety rules for Sam to hold. They made TLC firemen and firetrucks. All of this made a great display in the hallway. We sang "I'm A Firefighter" and added the song/poem to our poetry books. Every week we add a poem or song to the books. We read them and highlight letters, letter chunks, punctuation and words. We read many nonfiction books about fire safety and watched "Play Safe, Be Safe" with Fireman Dan. We used toilet paper tubes to make firefighter puppets.

The children finished their body parts scarecrows by adding movable arms and legs after talking about our muscles and how they help us move.
In math, we worked on positional words - above, below, between, beside, near, far. The children began reading patterns and copying them.

Next week we will begin our Fall theme which we will work on over the next few weeks.

Apples APeel to Us!

The theme this week was apples. The children read and sang "Apple" and made a TLC apple core to illustrate this poem. We made a chart listing our schema or background knowledge about apples. We read many books about apples so that we could add to our schema. Apples and The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons were two favorites. We are also leaning about the four seasons. With this in mind, Mrs. B made season wheel showing the seasons of an apple tree.


Each child brought in an apple and we talked about the ways our apples were alike and how they were different. We had an apple tasting day with apples for snack and then we made construction paper apples to show which we liked best. Tart, green Granny Smith apples were the favorite with red close behind.



We began learning about body parts and talked first about external parts like our skin, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Then we began learning about some of our internal parts like the heart, lungs, and stomach. We are making scarecrows with all these body parts. We will continue to work on these next week. We will also continue the apple theme.

Going on a Bear Hunt

The letter of the week was Bb, so it seemed like a good time to have bears as our theme. We actually work on all the letters and sounds in morning message, reading time, and writer's workshop, but we choose one letter to focus on each week. Each child is making an alphabet book and we draw and label two things that begin with the letter and then practice writing the letter. We will compile all these pages at the end of the year. We read so many bear stories this week, but a favorite was Going On A Bear Hunt. We also have two different versions of "Going on a Bear Hunt" song. The children love swimming the peanut butter river and eating their way through the candy factory in Dr. Jean's version.

We went back to another favorite book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? We illustrated our own version of the book. The children were amazing artists! We did the pages together as a directed drawing lesson. I gave directions and drew on the Smartboard and the children drew in their books. Their illustrations were so much cuter than mine! We will read the books together one more time next week and then the children will take them home. The children also made a smaller version of the Brown Bear book and that one will go into their book boxes. The book boxes are used during Read to Self time. Each child practices reading from his/her box while Mrs. B and I move around and listen to them read. We practiced using our fingers to point to the first letter of each word by reading some E books on the Smartboard. The children are able to read on their own for about ten minutes now.

We made TLC pictures for the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep". They are hanging in the hall outside our room. A child from another class asked one of my students if they were black dogs. The student replied very indignantly, "No, those are our baa baa black sheep." I had to smile because those sheep are a bit strange looking. We have a really rocking version of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" on a Jack Hartman CD that everyone enjoyed.

Next week we will finish up with bears and start on an apple theme. We will be doing the letter Ss.

Colors and More Colors

The theme for the week was colors. The children made traffic lights to go with a poem. They read "Rainbow Song" and made a balloon picture to go with the poem. Both projects were TLC projects. TLC stands for Teaching Little Children. They are lessons where the children take pre-cut shapes and follow the directions to make a picture. Squares are cut to make circles and rectangles are cut to make triangles. Children learn shape names, position words and work on following oral directions.

We began a science unit on the five senses. We had fun smelling different things and trying to guess what each thing was. We also shook packages and tried to guess what was inside each one. We tallied our guessing for the packages on a chart.


We began to write in our Drawing and Writing journals. The children drew pictures and added labels and sentences to their drawings.

Next week the letter of the week will be Mm and the theme will be Mice. We work on all the letters and sounds as we read and write but we will focus on one letter each week.

Limeades for Learning!

Friends and Parents,

Sonic and DonorsChoose.org have an exciting partnership called Limeades For Learning. With your help, I can get the funding I need to inspire my students to learn.

Your part is simple. Just go to LimeadesForLearning.com to vote for my project. SONIC is donating more than half a million dollars to the projects that receive the most votes. But I need your help to make sure one’s mine!

Please vote for my project daily, so I can help my students get the materials that they need to learn basic skills in a fun and engaging way! Click on the picture below to be taken to the voting page for my project and thank you so much for your support!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Look Who's In Mrs Miller's Room! If you check the hall outside our door, you will see the children's coconut trees complete with their names spelled out in foam letters. They made these with Mrs. B during workstation/center time. I spent workstation time doing beginning assessments to learn who needs to be working on what when I begin small group instruction.

We started writer's workshop, but have not done any actual writing yet. We learned there are four things we can do during writer's workshop: think, draw, write, read. We spent writing time sharing things about ourselves like our favorite foods and what we like to do after school. This helps us get to know one another and will help us later when we have to think of things to write about.

During reading we listened to lots of ABC books including a riddle book that everyone enjoyed called It Begins With A. We added the emergent reader School to our book boxes and built up to four minutes of read to self time. We also took several sentences, read them together, cut the words apart, and reassembled the words.

In math, we worked on sorting objects by size, shape, and color.

Next week's theme is colors.

Beginning of a "Toadily" Awesome Year

We made it through the first three days. We spent lots of time learning procedures and routines.
We are learning all the PBIS procedures that everyone in the school will follow and our classroom procedures, too. Hallways, group bathrooms, and the first ten minutes of lunch are Zone 0. Zone 0 means no talking. That no talking thing is really tough on kinders, but they did an amazing job. Especially at lunch. We encourage them to eat first and then have quiet conversation. We are trying to use the group bathrooms several times a day. With 27 students, just getting a drink from the water fountain seems to take forever and bathroom breaks take even longer, but both are necessary!

This class seems to really like music and movement activities. "The Cowboy Song" and "Party in the Jungle" are already two favorites. We read lots of stories about Chester the raccoon. We learned that our schema is our background knowledge, everything that is in our brains. Our schema helps us understand what we read. We shared our schema for raccoons. We also learned our first reading strategy - Eagle Eye. We know to look at the pictures to help us figure out the words. We used this strategy during Read to Self time. During Read to Self time, each student reads by himself from his book box. Right now we are reading for three minutes, but we will be able to read longer as we build our stamina.

The children enjoyed calendar and games on the Smartboard. The Smartboard is a new thing for me, so we are learning about it together. The children also really liked center or workstation time. Housekeeping, moon sand, computers and drawing were favorite workstations.

I am looking forward to reading alphabet books next week. Hope everyone gets a good night's sleep and is ready for a full week! Smiles!

Work in Progress

I thought I would post some photos of our classroom. It is a "work in progress" right now. The above photo shows the home work station. That is one of several work stations where the children will work/play every day. We will have 6 tables or Learning Clubs for students. I didn't have enough plants for my tables, so I need to do some shopping. The turtle and the fish have not arrived at school yet. The trash cans are full from unpacking and I need to do some tidying, too.

You can see the big book work station in this photo and some of the tables (more trash, too!). The blue top boxes under the Smartboard are the children's individual book boxes that they will read from everyday during Read to Self or Read to Someone time.


This shows our reading work station, the pocket chart work station, part of our whole group meeting area, and the bulletin board that highlights the theme we are working on. The board is not finished yet. We will be learning about friendship at the beginning of the year.

That is all for now. Can't wait for school to start!
Smiles.....................Mrs. Miller

Mrs. Bumgarner and I want to welcome all of our new students and their parents to our classroom. We are very excited to be joining the LMES family and are looking forward to getting to know our students and their families. We will be posting news from our classroom on this blog.

Right now I would like to introduce myself. My name is Terri Miller and I have been teaching kindergarten for 35 wonderful years. It never gets old because every year I have new students and new challenges. Kindergarten is absolutely the best place to be. I am married and my husband, Phil, works for Goody2Shoes. We live in Columbia with our dog, Eddie, and three cats. Our children are grown. Our son, Matt, and his wife, Katherine, live in Atlanta and our daughter, Caitlin, lives in Mt. Pleasant.

I have never tried blogging before so this will be a learning experience for me. I have also written a grant at donorschoose.org. You can find a link for this on the top right side of this page. Maybe you know someone who would like to fund all or part of this grant. Spread the word.

Until next time.........smiles,
Mrs. Miller :-)