Christmas Program

There is nothing like coming to school and seeing all the little sweeties dressed in their finery with HUGE smiles on their faces.  The Christmas Program day is one of my FAVORITES of the year.  The kids are just so happy and excited.  One of my very very favorite things is when they see YOU, their loved ones, in the audience..... their little bodies just burst with pride and joy.  It reminds you just how little they are, and how much they need and love you.... <3 

If, for some reason, you missed the Christmas Program I would like to share it with you.  It was SO CUTE!!!!

Monkey Joe's!

We had so much fun at Monkey Joe's last week!  Monkey Joe's was a special reward for all of the good behavior that we see at Colona School.  It was a total blast; the kids just loved it!  Here are some pictures I snapped amidst all of the fun!

Nocturnal Animals

What a busy couple of weeks!  This week we are doing a thematic unit of study on the gingerbread man and last week we did an awesome unit on nocturnal animals.  Prompt your child with, "On a moonlight night when the stars come out...." and see if they can sing our nocturnal animal song! :)  

I have been very, very pleased with all of the growth I am seeing during kindergarten report card assessments.  One of the things I love most about teaching kindergarten is the second semester.  It seems by then they have found their groove and the amount of learning that takes place always astounds me.  Honestly, I cannot believe we are already almost to that point.  This year has absolutely flown so far!  I would like to share with you some pictures of activities that we did last week.  

Making an owl in our Nocturnal Animal Book.

ABC Pattern in our math journal

Sewing our Nocturnal Animal Mitten, adapted from "The Mitten" by Jan Brett.

Working on our nocturnal animals for our Nocturnal Animal Mitten

Syllable sorting!  We sorted nocturnal animals by the number of syllables their name had.

Practicing writing our letters with Number Factory.  The kids LOVE doing this!  (Anything with dry-erase boards is always a hit!) :)

Reading our Night Animal Weekly Reader

Look how cute our Nocturnal Animal Book turned out.  The kiddos did a GREAT job with this!!!!

Monkey Joes today was AWESOME!  Be on the look-out for a Monkey Joes post to be coming your way soon! :)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  I love this time of year; taking the time to reflect upon all that I am thankful for.  One of the things I am most thankful for is being given the honor and privilege of being your child's teacher.  What joy they bring me!  How lucky I am to be able to fill their little minds with things that will hopefully help them grow socially, emotionally, and academically.  I am passionate about my work and am so thankful that I am able to do something I love everyday.  Thank you for entrusting your babies into my care everyday!

The past week and a half we have been learning about Native Americans, Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving.  What fun we have had!  In math we are working on learning about symmetry, halves, equal parts, and numbers 1-10.  This week we learned about the silent/bossy e on the end of words, and about how the letter y at the end of a short little word without a vowel says the long i sound and how it if the y is at the end of a long word with a vowel it says the long e sound.  We have been reading, reading, reading, and really are working hard on blending short words together.  We continue to focus on our sight words; and the kids are really getting much better at identifying them in text!  Please continue to work with your child at home- it really makes a huge difference! :)

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the moments of learning that I forget to take pictures.  So, here is just a snapshot of what we have done the past week and a half.  Enjoy!

Look at how cute our disguised turkeys turned out!  The kiddos really enjoyed this project and were very proud to show the class their turkey! :)))))

Let's READ, READ, READ! 

We learned about how to take a survey to collect data.  Then we graphed our data.  The kids had SO MUCH fun with this!  What is your favorite color?

The kids do an AMAZING job reading this Mayflower book. When it comes home, have your child try to read it to you!  It taught us so much information about Thanksgiving the pilgrims.

 

Working on the Mayflower book.

We made "Turkey Tens" counting book.  They had to stamp 10 turkeys on the first page, 20 turkeys on the second page, and so on all the way to 100!  They are getting really good at counting by 10's!

Listening to a Thanksgiving story in the Listening Center. :)

Working on sight words at the reading table.

Our ABC Turkey Spinner :)

Watch for this class book to be coming home!  Sooooo cute!!!!  They are thankful for many things!

We learned A LOT about the Mayflower and the Pilgrim's voyage in 1620.  We got a lot of our facts by reading this book: 

Then we made a fun map of WHY the pilgrims sailed, WHO sailed, and WHAT it was like.  It was a great interactive writing session and the kids did GREAT!!!

The kids made their own Mayflower.... and cut this sentence apart, mix it up, and had to put it back together! :)

 Making pumpkin pie in a bag!  Yummy!!

Crushing our crust.  (Graham Crackers)

Can you find the ingredients in this picture?

Yay for pumpkin pie!  Also, notice our symmetrical turkeys hanging from the ceiling?  

Lastly, we have a new shoe tying expert!!!!!!!!!!  Yay!!!!!!!  GREAT JOB!!!!!!! :)))))

I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday!  Until next time,