Update Week of Sept 21--Apple Week and MORE!

We had a great week. We ate apples, made applesauce, made an apple craft, illustrated an apple poem, worked on our literacy and math stations, and observed snails.  Kindergarten is so much fun!

Poetry Notebook:
Every Monday, we learn and new poem and illustrate it in our poetry notebook.  Eventually we will copy the poem down to build our 1:1 correspondence and to help with our penmanship.

Literacy Stations:

Everyday we practice some type of literacy skill with our literacy stations.

Math Stations:
Everyday we practice our math skills in math stations.

Science Exploration:

We are studying snails: what do they look like, how fast do they move etc.

Apple Craft:

We made "stained glass" apples as our first craft.  The final product is hanging in our windows.

Apple Tasting:

You can't have apple week without tasting apples.  The kids loved red and yellow apples.  Only one kiddo loved the green one.

Tasting Granny Smith apples...a little bitter.

Yellow apples were better.

Graphing which apple we liked the most.

Final results of the graph.

Behavior Discussion:

We learned more about the skill of "listening" using our behavior DVD.  Desi the Dog really likes to listen because that is a good choice.

Desi the Dog is in the video.

Math Game:

Practicing using a die and writing the number down.

Applesauce:

End of the day treat!

 YUM!!!!

I'd like to welcome Laynee to our classroom.  She started on Friday and fit in just right!!

Back to School Night 2015

Thanks for coming to Back to School Night.  My presentation can be found under "useful documents."  You do not need to join DropBox to download it.  You can also just click below this text to get to it.

Back To School Presentation

I will update the blog on Sunday with pictures of all of the apple activities that we have been doing throughout the week.

Day 3--Our First Friday Together

Fridays are always a short day since we get out 1 hour earlier than normal.  I think the kids were pretty happy to go home and rest.  They were pretty tired.  I tried to keep things pretty easy today since I could sense how tired everyone (myself included) was.

Rahel really enjoyed playing with the shapes.

Cora built a beautiful flower.

James enjoyed organizing the buttons.

Clara and Tru enjoyed playing with the bears.

During play time, Devin enjoyed the ceramic tea sets.

Sahasra, Galena, and Cora really like the bingo dabbers.

The kitchen was open for business today!

Collin, the birthday boy, really enjoyed playing with the safari animals.

Cooper really wanted to play with the train set.

Brooklynn enjoyed chatting on the phone.

Day 2--Wow! What a great group of learners!

The kids did a fabulous job today learning some new procedures.  The beginning of the year is all about teaching them procedures and rules along with social skills of course.  We did so many things today.  I had to look at the pictures I took to remember what we actually did.

Here is a summary: we learned how to "turn and talk" with a partner, how to work on the "connect" strategy in reading, how to do literacy stations, how to do a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom craft, how to share our toys during our free choice time, how to use bingo dabbers and how to use playdoh at school. We have been VERY busy!!!

The kids are getting more and more used to me taking pictures of them.  They are so photogenic.  This is them at carpet time in their assigned spots.

"Turn and Talk" is a strategy where I ask the kids to discuss something 

with their "turn and talk" partner.  

Today I asked them to discuss a time when they got hurt 

so they would be prepared for their work later on.

They did a great job turning and talking.  Wow!  It's only day 2 and they did great!!!

 This is some of the work that was done today.  

The letters of the alphabet got hurt climbing on the coconut tree (based on the story).  

The kids were supposed to draw a picture of a time 

when they got hurt as part of the reading connection.

I love Westley's "f" because it has a bandaid on it since it got hurt when it fell down.

I love these pictures that Isabella drew.

Great job Sahasra.  That is a great coconut tree.

Love the colorful pictures Elise drew.

Rahel did some great illustrations.

Literacy Stations are something that I usually don't start on day 2, 

but I felt that these kiddos could handle them in a positive way.  They did great!!!  

They used the Expo markers to practice writing the letters.

More Expo marker practice.

They clipped the matching letter.

 

They matched letter tiles with the letters on the chart.

Look at that focus!

Collin and Josiah did a great job.

Wow!

These girls love to work together.

We had inside recess today since it was pouring.

The kids did great even though they had to stay inside.  

They played with all the activities that I have introduced so far.

  We finally did our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom project.  That was lots of fun!

Today I introduced GoNoodle to the kids.  It is a website with lots of brain breaks for the kids.  We get to dance, do yoga, run etc.  Today we did Koo Koo Kangaroo and the song DinoStomp.  Ask your child about it.  P.S. It's my favorite song to dance to and yes, I was dancing too.  I think I need to buy one of those FitBits to see how many steps I take during the day.

 Free choice has been expanding with more activities.  

The kids are being really patient with me as I slowly introduce more activities that they can play with.  

Josiah loved the finger puppets.

James, Collin and Jacob P. loved playing with the animals.

These kiddos loved the playdoh.

These kiddos loved the bingo dabbers which allowed them to make misc. projects.