Gingerbread Houses!

I LOVE this activity!  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few.

Create your own digital ecard To all the parents who helped ...............  THANK YOU!

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

Only one more week until Winter Break.  We have been busy with reindeer, candy canes, gingerbread, big Santas and lots more preparing for the holidays.  We started the month off by reading and learning about reindeer.  The children made factual books with reindeer faces for the covers and also made deer to decorate our hallway.  We did a guided drawing of a reindeer and used that to decorate the bags that our snowman ornaments will go home in.

Here are some of the big Santas that we have started making.

Our class is participating in a holiday card exchange with other classes from across our country and Canada.  As cards arrive, we post them on our bulletin board.  Here is what our board looks like so far.  We are expecting about 15 more cards.

Next week we will be making our gingerbread houses and TLC elves and having a pajama day. 

Merry Christmas

Soldiers, Pilgrims, and Indians

It has been awhile since the last post.  We celebrated Veteran's Day by making TLC soldiers.  They decorated our hallway for the week before Veteran's Day.  Thank you to all the military who keep us safe and guard our freedom!

We are in the process of completing a two week unit on Thanksgiving.  We have spent a lot of time reading and talking about how things are "now" compared to how they were "long ago".  We made TLC Pilgrim portraits and also Indians.  We read many books about the Thanksgiving story and even acted out a sound story of the first Thanksgiving.

The children made paper plate Pilgrims that are sailing on the Mayflower on our bulletin board.

The children wrote and illustrated stories about what they are thankful for.  They also colored and cut out turkeys and made signs for the turkeys to hold recommending that we eat something besides turkey.  Those Chick-fil-A cows have some competition now!

Our class is going to be participating in a Christmas card exchange with 30 other classes from across the USA and Canada.  We had a fun time trying to get a good class photo for our card.  Of course when you take a serious photo, the children always want to make a silly one.  Here is one of our silly ones!

We will let you know how the Christmas card exchange goes.  We will be posting our cards on the bulletin board with a map.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

Spooktacular Fall Fun

We had the best time this week!  After reading Go Away Big Green Monster, we made our own green monsters.  Everyone who has seen them hanging out in the hall has said that they are the best.  The children were amazingly creative.  So here is a slide show of them all.

This free slideshow made with Smilebox We read many monster stories but we also read about fall and how the leaves change colors.  The children made cute scarecrows to add to our fall bulletin board display. With Mrs. B's help, the children also made fall crowns.  Here are the kings and queens of fall.

Customize a slideshow design Next week things are going to be a little batty in Kindergarten as Spooktacular Fall fun continues.

Fire Safety and Funny Feet

We were busy learning all about fire safety this week.  The children colored and cut out Fire Safety Sam.  These are out in the hallway.  Each Sam is holding a fire safety rule written by the children with their best guess spelling and some help from Mrs. B.  The children also made TLC firemen and fire trucks.  These are the cutest things, especially the firemen.  I love their different facial expressions.

Fire Safety Sam

Part of our impressive hallway display

The children have been practicing their reading skills since the beginning of the year during Read to Self time every day.  This week they began to learn how Read to Someone works.  Partners sit EEKK or elbow to elbow and knee to knee.  They share a book between them and take turns reading.   

Kadyn and Aubrie practice reading to each other.

 On Friday we celebrated Funny Feet Day to help us remember the letter Ff.

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Apples Apeel to Us!

We finished up our apple theme this past week.  We had a taste test where everyone tasted red, green, and yellow apples and then drew and colored an apple to match their favorite.  We sorted our choices to see which was the favorite in our class.  More children liked red apples! 

We made paper plate apple cores.  We had to roll the dice and count the dots to see how many seeds our apple cores would have.

We finished up our science unit on living and nonliving things by observing worms with magnifiers.  That was a wild and crazy afternoon.  We also read about fish and drew a fish and labeled its' parts in our Math and Science Journals.

In art, Mrs. Jones helped the children make beautiful sunset landscape pictures.  They are on display outside the cafeteria.

The children are always making interesting things during center time.  Check this out.

We will be moving on to fire safety and monsters in the weeks ahead.

Quick Photos

Traffic Signal TLC project

Pete the Cat

Baa Baa Black Sheep

 The children actually worked for three days on these sheep to go with the Baa Baa Black Sheep rhyme.  They don't look much like sheep but they will make you smile. 

Line Art done with Mrs. Jones in art class

Pete the Cat

I absolutely love, love, love Pete the Cat.  My husband and other adult family members think I am slightly crazy when I walk around singing "I love my red shoes, I love my red shoes."  My Kinders get it!  We made Pete this week.  He was a TLC project and the children can now make circles from squares, ovals from rectangles and triangles from squares - that would require the have slightly more difficult diagonal cut.  We are also learning about holding our papers horizontally or vertically to make certain cuts.  Our Petes are wearing red shoes and are decorating the hall outside our classroom.  I can't believe I forgot to make pictures.  I will next week.  We have one Pete book in our book boxes already and will start working on another one next week.  The children are up to 6 minutes in reading stamina with almost everyone staying on task.   

We practiced drills today for lockdown, fire, tornado, and earthquake.  Just unofficial drills that involved our class.  Next week we will have real, whole school practices.  It will not any problem for my Smarties!!

Look Out World.........Here We Come!

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We've finished the second full week of school.  One of the things we started working on this week was reading color words.  The children completed two TLC projects: a traffic light and a bunch of balloons.  TLC stands for Teaching Little Children.  These are projects where the children take precut pieces and follow directions on cutting and placement to create a picture.  The children now know how to make circles from squares!  You can find out more about TLC lessons at www.tlclessons.com. A colorful bunch of balloons! The children also made a mural of Living Things.  They were very creative.  Their living things ranged from lobsters to trees to zebras. In math, we continued to do some sorting and also some measurement.  We measured using terms like heavier and lighter, shorter and longer. The teddy bear counters were sorted during Learning Centers time. Another thing that the children worked hard on was "Read To Self " time.  Every day the children read by themselves from their book boxes.  They sit in one spot and read quietly for the whole time.  Each day they build their reading stamina and they are already up to five minutes.  Mrs B and I are able to read with individual students during this time. Here are some students showing us how to do Read to Self the right way! Mya is reading at her table seat. Lane finds a quiet spot on the floor. Will reads from his book box. Kirsten tracks the print as she reads.

Photos

Here are some photos of things we did last week.

Kadyn's picture of herself

Bryn's interview

Some of our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees

The First Full Week

Well, the first full week has come and gone.  It flew by!  I am amazed by how well everyone is doing learning rules and routines.  This is a very well-behaved class.  When the whole class does a good job at any activity, they have a chance to earn a link (paper strip that is used to make a chain).  I cannot give my own class a link but they can earn links from other teachers.  They earned three links this past week!  Way to go guys!  Give yourselves a trucker cheer!  One of those links was earned for great behavior in the lunchroom.  Very impressive for the first week.  When a certain number of links are earned, the whole class receives a reward.

The theme was ABC's and we read many alphabet books including Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  The children made the cutest coconut trees with their names in foam letters with Mrs. B.  We displayed these on the cabinets over the sinks.  I wrote the children's names and then cut apart the letters and had the children reassemble them in the correct order, glue them in place and then draw themselves.  They also had to count how many letters they had in their names.  We hung these out in the hallway.

Bad news for the week is that my camera died so we have no photos of those projects but the good news is that my new camera arrived in the mail today.  So hopefully we will soon have some pictures to accompany this blog.  

Thanks parents for all the extra supplies you have generously sent.  Germ X, Kleenex, paper plates, baggies - they will all come in handy.  Especially those Kleenex.  I am already noticing some drippy noses.  

Looking forward to next week!  Smiles!

Welcome to our Room

This past summer, I was fortunate enough to get to visit the school/daycare where my precious granddaughter spends her days while mom and dad are at work.  I got to meet her teachers, see where her crib is and check out all the colorful, bright things and  adorable little classmates that make up a big part of her day.  So it occurred to me that maybe the families of my students would like to visit in our classroom.  Of course you are always welcome to actually come to the classroom, but I know many of you can't physically come in, so I am going to post some pictures of the room now and pictures of our work and activities during the year.  So, come on in and check us out!

Turtle and fish tanks, puzzles, games, manipulatives

 

Student tables, smart board, some of our cubbies

Housekeeping area

Meeting area, listening/reading center

Outside our windows, we have a bird feeder and it is wonderful to watch the birds all year long.  We have a great view.   There is a place just outside our hall door where each child's work is displayed during the year.  We have a back door that goes out into a small fenced in yard that is good for games or a quick bit of exercise. More to come later!

Pete the Cat

I just discovered a book, Pete the Cat, that I love.  I can't wait for school to start so I can use it with my kinders.  I am putting the video of the author reading the book on my blog.  I think it is especially cool that both the author and illustrator are from Atlanta.  I find myself singing Pete's song at odd times during the day.  Like Pete says.........it's all good!

End of the Year Smiles

The 2010-2011 school year has officially come to an end. The Kindergarten musical production, Field Day, and Awards Day have all come and gone. I find myself packing up, ordering supplies for next year and even getting parent packets ready for next year. I am missing my "babies" who aren't really babies anymore. They are big first graders now ready to move on down the hall. I hope they don't forget to come back and give their old K teacher a hug now and then. I also hope they don't forget to read, read, read, read, and read some more over the summer. We had lots of fun over the last few half-days. The children cleaned all the tables for me using shaving cream and had a blast doing it. You just spread it out all over the table, then draw and write in it. It also makes the room smell great. We played with bubbles on two different days. Not everyone was able to come on the last few days but I wanted to include some last pictures of the children. Have a terrific summer everyone! Mrs. Miller loves you BEST!

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