Saturday, October 29, 2011

Poetry Books

This week we started our Poetry Books! I am using the sight word poems from the Scholastic Poetry Pages Book. One of my wonderful parent volunteers and a few of our EA's took the time to copy the poems and put them into notebooks for the students. We used the first day to introduce the poetry books and to decorate them. We will be doing about 2-3 poems a week from our Poetry Books :) I love these because they teach rhyming and they are also a great way to review the sight words!



Stellaluna

After reading Stellaluna the boys and girls created bat puppets!! I think their favorite part was the colored googly eyes that they got to glue on the bat! I am glad we did these at the end of the day because they were having a blast flying their bats around!


Scarecrows

The boys and girls had a great time creating scarecrows this week! As an added bonus they are a nice decoration for our door :)



Duck on a bike


We read Duck On A Bike this week. The boys and girls really enjoyed this book!! After reading it, the boys and girls wrote a story about their favorite animal from the story that rode on a bike. We then took it one step further and they got to use construction paper to create their own (Animals) on a Bike crafts! They turned out really cute!




Leaf Rubbings

Thank you to Meredith and Kylee for bringing in leaves from home to share with the class! We used these leaves to create leaf rubbings! They turned out great!!





What a week!!

We had such a busy week this week! It was a lot of fun!! We did many different "Fall" themed activities! We made scarecrows, pumpkins, bats, leaf rubbings and more! We also started our Poetry Books and created a fun craft to go along with the book Duck on a Bike.  I am really proud of how hard the boys and girls work everyday! I bet they are tired when they come home in the afternoon because I know that I am!! I hope that you are all having a relaxing weekend and enjoying the beautiful weather today. My family (in Pennsylvania) got about 6 inches of snow!! I wonder if this is a sign of the upcoming winter!


In Pennsylvania they always do Trick or Treating on the Thursday before Halloween. This year my nieces were a butterfly and a strawberry. Lily (the butterfly) sure does love her sister Daisy :) I hope that you all have a great time taking your little ones Trick or Treating whether it is this weekend or on Monday. Please be safe and I cannot wait to hear all about it!

Monday, October 24, 2011

I am done!

"When you think you are done, you have only just begun" This is my response to the oh so famous "I'm done!" The boys and girls are slowly learning that we are never "done" in our classroom! There is always something more to do! Here are 3 choices the boys and girls have during our Writer's Workshop when they think they are "done"

Star Writing

This is what "Star Writing" looks like in our classroom! Our goal is to get 3 or 4 stars on all of our writings! This display is used as and example in our classroom so the boys and girls can see what 1 star, 2 star, 3 star and 4 star writing looks like! We have been working hard everyday during our Writer's Workshop and I am very happy with how the boys and girls have been progressing! Thank you for working with them at home!

Walden's Farm!

Here is a teaser from our field trip to Walden's Farm. I will be uploading more pictures later this week so check back!! We had such a good time! The weather was perfect and the boys and girls seemed to really enjoy themselves!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Trying This Out

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This is my first attempt at using Smilebox. Since we are officially through the first nine weeks of school, I thought you might enjoy a little video from our first few days of Kindergarten :)

Monday, October 17, 2011

Underwater Day

Here is a picture of the students in our class and 3 Kindergarten teachers (including me!! ) who dressed up today for Underwater day to help promote our Yearbook sales! Thanks to everyone who participated!!

Ms. Mentzer (crab), Mrs. Campbell (snorkeler) and Ms. Burton (crocodile)

Writer's Workshop

Last week we began our Writer's Workshop. I LOVE Writer's Workshop! I love watching students go through thewriting  process and become writers! It is so neat to be there for the moment that it "clicks". One of the tools we use for Writer's Workshop is a worm (or snake depending on which kiddo you ask). This helps us to stretch out the words to help us hear all of the sounds in the word. The boys and girls are doing a great job stretching out words and writing the words on paper. Please remember when working with your child at home, it is not necessary that everything is spelled correctly (unless of course it is a Star Word), right now, I am just looking for students to write the sounds they hear in each word. Below you will see two examples from last week. We created Double Bubble maps and decided if we would rather be a farmer, zookeeper, or both. We then wrote about it.
 The students on the left (blue) would like to work on a farm. The students on the right (red) would like to work in the zoo. The students in the middle (purple) would like to do both.
                                                     I want to be a Zookeeper- Raley
 I would be a farmer. Madison

Our Apple Glyph

This week we created our first glyph! The boys and girls did a great job following directions and completing their glyphs. At first they didnt really understand how a picture was going to tell me something about them and how I could "read" the picture, but after they were done, they were able to tell who liked what and who did what just by looking at each others pictures!! Glyphs are such a good way to represent things!!

 I can see that Reese likes red apples, apple pie and has never been apple picking. Just by looking at his picture!!
I can see that Jammer likes red apples, apple by and has been apple picking just by looking at his picture! 

Name Flip Books

One of my favorite things (and the kids favorite too) that we did last week was create name flip books!! The boys and girls had to think of something that starts with each letter of their name and draw a picture and try to sound out the word. They did such a good job with this!! They really seemed to be enjoying themselves!! AND they got to use markers which is ALWAYS exciting!! :) Here are a few samples! ( I am only showing you one letter from each child, but they came up with words for each letter)

 Layla drew a leaf (lef) for the letter l in her name :)

                                                   Xavier drew an apple (apl) for the letter a :)

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Underwater Creature Day Tomorrow!! Yearbooks On Sale This Week!!

So, I have been trying to figure out what I wanted to dress up as for our Underwater Theme tomorrow for our yearbook sales and then I found this goodie today!! (It is a hat)

 I have now decided to be a crab!! Since it is on a Monday it is only fitting right?? Just kidding, I love Mondays :) I will post pictures tomorrow of my full outfit (along with any students who dress up as well)-- Have you found an outfit yet for your child? Reminder- Yearbooks are on sale this week until Friday for $30!! Don't forget to get yours!!  

Apples and Pumpkins Double Bubble

The past few weeks we have been talking about apples and this week we will be talking about pumpkins! (We are very excited to go to the pumpkin patch on Friday!!)  I love this time of year! There are so many fun things to do! One of the things we will do with apples and pumpkins this week is use a double bubble map to compare them. Click HERE to get your own copy!  I will be uploading some of our double bubble maps later this week after we complete them :)

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Leap And The Net Will Appear

I am going to take a moment to do a plug for my friend Jeremy McComb. His new album Leap and the Net Will Appear is now available on iTunes! My boyfriend is a co-writer on the song Time and I highly recommend you purchasing it along with the rest of the album!! Click here to go to the iTunes page. Thank you for your support! I hope you enjoy it!

Pick a Word

Here is a game we will be learning this week!! The best part about it is that there are only a few materials needed!  (a bag, the word cards, dice, copies of the Pick a Word recording sheet, and something to write with!) You can get the word cards and recording sheet here. I have also provided a blank recording sheet and word cards in case you have different words that you are working on.

Read, Write, Trace

Click here to get this freebie for your use at home or school! Words included are; can, we, the, like

9 Weeks Skills

Click Here to get a copy of our Kindergarten 2011-2012 Nine Weeks Skills. Due to us changing over to the new Common Core Standards, these skills are much different than they have been in past years. Please look at them carefully. Also, please remember that our goal is mastery of all of these skills by the end of Kindergarten :)

New Template :)

I am super excited about my new template from Alicia at Dream Like Magic! If you are looking for a new background head on over and get one from her! She was very helpful and had my new background up and running right away!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Letter Songs

Have you checked out the Letter Songs on http://www.youtube.com/ yet? We usually do one or two letter songs each day. So far we have done; Aa, Mm, Ss and Pp. As you can see the boys and girls really enjoy them!