Today we performed Vowel Sound Hound Dogs from Jack Hartman for the school's talent show. My cuties were AWESOME! If you don't know this song, check it out. It's on his Rockin' Reading CD. We have loved it all year and have used Kim Adsit's book from her TPT shop to help us with it.
Hi peeps! There has been sooooooo much going on and I have been the most horrible blog buddy this week. I am so sorry. We are officially on summer break at 12:00 on Thursday. I will MISS this group of cuties for sure. They were my first class of kinders and they made the year AMAZING for me.
I was pinning last night while my {wonderful} hubby was at rehearsal for his upcoming show and found some goodies I wanted to share with you that I will implement next year. Click on the pic to visit the blog they originated from.
Guess My Number Game
Money Posters
100 Club
Visit my Pinterest board by clicking the button below or the button on the side of my blog.
I know we are all kindred spirits in our desire to make and create in the summer months and I CAN'T WAIT to be crafty and make so many goodies for next year!
Here's is my newest little friend in Kindergarten:
Her name is Penelope and she is THE sweetest little hedgie ever. All of my kinders were able to pet her on the first day I brought her to school. They even started writing books about her during Daily 5 and Writer's Workshop. (Please know, though, that hedgies are a lot of work and not all of them are so friendly. Even Penelope has her moments. I did a lot of research before getting her.)
This week we also enjoyed our Kinder Splash Day. What a blast!
Yay for fun in the sun!
I am not sure how all of you are feeling, but I am so tired and stressed - yet I can't sleep...sigh... Our last day is May 31 and THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO! On top of all the end of the year to-do's, I am also being recorded this coming Tuesday by our Central Administration for a video they are putting together for a PD course this fall. Wowzer. Cross your fingers that my kinder cuties can hold it together for thirty minutes. We'll see how it goes.
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. I hope your day is special with your little ones. I am not a mommy, yet, but I do have wonderful mom that I love and will see in a few hours.
In my classroom this week, we enjoyed Muffins with Mom. I invited all the moms and other special "mom" figures in my cutie's lives for a muffin breakfast. It was so much fun! Here are a few pics of my room before the kiddos and their moms arrived:
My table with all the food
One of the kid's tables - they decorated them the day before, right before the school day was over
We also worked on writing books for our moms the day before using my Mom's are Awesome unit from TPT. They read these books together while enjoying breakfast.
We also gave our mom's these little pot holder gifts that we made earlier this week.
Here are a few pics of our moms and their kiddos:
After breakfast was over, my cuties cleaned up for their moms and then we sang five songs we had been working on for the special day, including I Think You're Wonderful by Debbie Clement. (By the way, I go to meet her in 2005 when she visited the small Head Start agency I worked for in Athens, Ohio!) I don't have pics of us singing because I was leading the songs, but they did awesome!
I just posted a little freebie in my Teacher's Pay Teachers store! It's a tree map about moms to help your cuties write a book about their mom. Click the pick below to get it for FREE!
We have started poetry and I must say - WOW! We start each day in writer's workshop with a poem. My cuties are loving Jack Prelutsky right now. They are begging for another poem by him each day.
We started our poetry unit by reading this book
and recording what learned about different poems on our poetree (inspired by Cara Carroll). We recorded what we learned about poems on the little birds.
In the book, Nancy talks about an acrostic poem. We read the acrostic in the book and I explained that an acrostic poem helps us learn about the person or object the acrostic is about.
Then we wrote an acrostic poem about the Earth.
We also created acrostics about us using these precious Rainbow Namebows!
My cuties' names are on the clouds and they have enough rainbow strips to equal the letters in their name. Then they wrote adjectives that described themselves on each of the strips.
Happy Monday! Here are some of our Earth Day activities from last week. I would've posted them sooner, but my sweet hubby just opened his latest show (her is an actor and director) and needs the camera and my little lap top for the shows. So here is Earth Day fun from my little buzzing room!
We started out with a schema chart.
We started out the week by learning that the Earth is sick and we can help it. We read this book to help us understand more about Earth and what's happening to it.
After reading we learned more about reduce, reuse, and recycle. I taught them a Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle song.
The next day we started putting our knowledge of the three r's to use by making art work from reusable trash. I had sent home a note the weekend before for families to send reusable trash to school. We pulled out some of the trash materials and decided what pieces we could use to make trees. It was completely up to them to pick what they wanted to use. I got this idea from Michelle at Apples and ABC's.
We also reused a lot of the materials to create monsters, robots, puppets, etc.
We also learned to recycle. I found this random "recycle machine" at Walmart on clearnace several years ago and use it every year for Earth Day. My cuties had to tear or cut old paper and then we placed it in the machine. We took turns spinning it.
After we finished spinning, we pushed the gooey paper into a mold to shape it like a star. While it was drying, we did some interactive writing about the steps to make the recycled paper.
We also learned to reduce. We read this book
which talks about 10 things we can do to help the Earth. Then we drew and wrote we could do to reduce the amount of energy we use.
We also read this book
and created this chart
which helped us make these
We also turned our plant pots into The Lorax.
On a side note, I just had to share that I met Natalie Grant last Friday! If you don't know who she is, check out the video below. She is a contemporary Christian music singer and is my FAVORITE! I was blessed to meet her because she was in town for a conference called Dare to Be. I was asked to be at the conference as a volunteer for World Vision. (My hubby and I sponsor a child so I was asked to volunteer and try to get more kiddos sponsored - anything for the cuties!) After the AMAZING conference was complete, she came out to say "thank you" to the World Vision volunteers! Here she is singing one of my favorites:
...and we got 34 kiddos sponsored! Sprinkles to Jesus!
