I'm a bad blogger!

My goal was to post at least once a week to document a year in my kindergarten classroom.  Well, so far that has not worked out.  So I guess my New Year's resolution is to be a more consistent blogger, so here it goes!

It's amazing we have only been back from Winter break for one week and we have hit the road running.  We began my favorite unit learning about penguins.  I introduced my class to our adopted penguin, who I named Tacky several years ago after my favorite make-believe penguin! Here is a photo of where he lives!

We completed an experiment to help us understand how penguins live in such cold places.  We used Vaseline to mimic the oil the penguins have on their feathers.  We saw the water just bead right up and drip off from our finger.  We also used a blubber glove (Thank you Deanna Jump) to test how a penguin's blubber helps them stay warm.  It is such a fun experiment and the children were really able to grasp the concept.

Blubber Glove!

I'll have to post about how our Writer's Workshop is going next time.  The kids are doing so great with sounding out words.  It is amazing how far they have come in such a short time!

And I promise to be a better blogger from now on...

Assemble the Minions!

Wow it has been a crazy time in my life.  My dad was rushed to the hospital with pancreatitis and will eventually need to have his gall bladder out.  Going back and forth to the hospital every day was exhausting and I'm so glad to have a long weekend to try to get myself back to normal.

While all of this happened, my students earned their first party by filling up the jar with Mr. Wiggle counters.  I decided to give the party a minion theme and it was a hit.  They had so much fun...and so did I!

First I decorated and yes I may have went a little overboard blowing up 20 balloons and drawing faces on them with a sharpie, but the kids loved it.  And then there were the cupcakes I made with little Twinkie minions. Delicious!

 The look on the children's faces when they came in were priceless.  They were so excited, but of course we had to still have some learning time so I created these minion practice activities.  They had a great time counting the minions and reading the book.

Then we did my favorite activity of the day.  I found this video on Youtube where someone was going step by step on how to draw a minion.  He had 2 kids drawing next to him which was great.  My kids (and their teachers) really listened and followed his directions and we all drew our own. What a fun way to practice our listening skills and following multi-step directions. Here are a few I managed to snap a picture of... too cute!

Then we made a minion visor and chose whether we wanted a one-eyed minion or a two-eyed one.  Most chose one-eyed.  Here's my sample.

It was a fabulously fun day.  I seriously don't now how I am going to top it!

In other notes we also completed our Veteran's Day projects thanks to Deanna Jump for this adorable project in her Veteran's Day packet.

Lastly, here's a look at who will meet next week...

The fur was flying today!

Today we did one of my favorite activities! Now I am very much a girlie girl and I don't like gross things, but this activity is way cool!

We began by reading about owls using a non-fiction book by Gail Gibbons called Owls.  While reading this book, we discussed what we were hearing and cleared up any questions the children had.  I paid special attention to the page about how an owl eats.  An owl will often times swallow it's prey whole. It can't digest all of it, so it "spits" it out in the form of a pellet.  In these pellets you can find the bones and fur of that unfortunate animal.

I love to watch the looks on the faces of my students as they go from uncertainty to excitement.  I couldn't even count how many times I heard how cool this project was.  They learned so much and were so intrigued by what they could find in that little pellet.  I always buy my pellets from Genesis, Inc.  The pellets always are cleaned and full of bones including skulls.  Below is a photo of the bones found in one pellet by one of my kiddos.  So very cool!

And just for fun we made Frankenstein in preparation for Halloween.  I love all the "boo-boos" on these two.  Too cute!

A quick update

Things have been so busy with preparing for a performance with the dance company I am in and trying to keep up with planning for school, I've barely turned on my laptop much less had time to blog. So here's a quick update to the goings on in my classroom.

We are moving right along with our Reader's and Writer's Workshop.  The children are doing great in both.  We have even started writing our own personal narrative books. I can't believe how far they have come in just a the first couple of months of school.

October brings Fire Safety Week and Christopher Columbus, so here are a few of the projects we created.  Credit to Kim Adsit's Columbus Unit for the craft activity.

And just for some letter sound fun, here is "M is for Moose!"

It's been too long...

but boy are we having a good time in kindergarten!

Routines are becoming just that, routines finally and we are getting wrapped up in learning.  Pretty soon, my minions will come off my door to make room for mummies.  I'll post a picture of the door when it's done.

Anyway, we are really building our writing stamina in Writer's Workshop and are beginning working on our reading stamina.  My students are really doing great with the writing. I have never had a class that will just go for it and write.  I am more used to being asked over and over about how to spell words.  These kids are just going for it- some are writing the actual sounds and others are just writing a jumble of letter at this point, but they are trying which is awesome.  I used Deanna Jump and Deedee Wills Writing unit and I am happy to say it has made a huge difference.  The children's drawings are becoming so detailed and I think it is really helping them understand what a setting is in a story. We have backgrounds in our stories/pictures, not just a character! Awesome!

The children really enjoyed shopping for "Good Fit" books like Kim Adsit's Reader's Workshop unit suggests.  The had a ball choosing their books and then going deeper in their books and making substitutions.  Lean and Tell and Turn and Talk have also been introduced and they are starting to understand the difference.  I love listening to their conversations with each other.

Both of these workshops occur daily, but we are still able to fit in creative time with some fun projects.  We started our study of letters with the letter A and made ourselves into astronauts.  They turned out so cute as you can see.

We also got introduced to Nelly Noun thanks to Kreative in Kinder for her ELA Super Heros pack.  I created a project to go along with her and the kids loved her.  I think it is going to make such a difference in getting them to remember what a noun is.

Finally, we also celebrated the coming of the fall season with some scarecrows and the seasons of an apple tree.

We are off to a great start in kindergarten and I can't wait to see what comes next!

I can't stand how cute!

Here are all my students' paintings from last week.  Those rectangles are covering their names. How sweet they all look! This is why I love this project!

So much fun in kindergarten!!!

First two days!

Wow, I'd forgotten how exhausting the first days of school can be.  Just getting up at 5:15AM was a shock to the system, but the constant energy needed to keep myself moving was C-R-A-Z-Y!

Anyway, it was a great start to the year.  My kiddos are adorable and seem so eager to get learning.  Just what I like! The first day was a half day and we got to know each other and dived right in with some projects- decorating a picture frame for their first day photos and I traced each child for a painting project the next day.  Here is how 2 of the frames turned out! We are experts with glue bottles already!

The next day we really got in to the routines of Kindergarten. We began our math series with a unit on Position and Location. The kids really enjoyed the memory game that comes with this one.

Then it was time to paint.  I love this project! I have to love it to do it every year.  It can get insane with all of my students painting at once and needing different colors and spilling the paint and trying not to get it on their uniforms... You get the idea.  However, it is awesome to see how much they enjoy it.  They really love to recreate themselves, as you can see by these two that I took a picture of- I love the ears on the first one and all the hair on the second one.  Too cute!

 After lunch, we spent the afternoon working in our Poems, Songs, and Anchor Charts notebooks.  We started by putting in the 5 Little Monsters poem (credit Deanna Jump) that we read and then put in our first anchor chart for Reader's Workshop (credit Kim Adsit).  This chart reminds us what being ready to learn looks like.  After they glued the chart in, they drew a picture to go with it.

We ended the day with a visit from our 5th grade buddies where I think we got out every bucket from the toy shelf.  I'm pretty sure the 5th graders wanted that playtime more than my kiddos! Thankfully there was a surprise waiting for me at home... delicious!

Thanks Dad!!!