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,

Let's Celebrate America and Veterans!

Last week a big, enormous, and monumental event occurred and stopped everyone in their tracks to celebrate.  What was this event, you ask?  Learning all of our letters? No.  Everyone staying on green?  No.  Everyone tying their own shoes?  No.  The event that occurred was even bigger!  THE FIRST SNOWFLAKES!!!!!  The little sweeties got sooooo excited I just had to take my camera and snap a couple of pictures.  The joy in the room was contagious.  :)

                                

                                

Last week we learned about our country.  We learned what the stars and stripes stand for on our flag, and how many there are of each.  We learned about important people and symbols of our country; such as the Bald Eagle, Statue of Liberty, George Washington, the White House, and the Liberty Bell.  We made an AMAZING lapbook containing little books that have to do with many of the symbols I just stated.   We learned about what a Veteran is; and why it is important to respect them and thank them for their sacrifices and bravery.  I would like to share some pictures of some things we did this week with you.  Enjoy!

Painting the flag!

Painting fireworks in our lapbook (for 4th of July, of course!) :)

Working in our writing journal.  The kids had to choose the correct sight words from the word bank and write it to make the sentence make sense.

MEASURING THE STATUE OF LIBERTY'S FOOT!!!!!!  Did you know that it is 25 feet long?  

We could lay SIX kids end to end!

The finished foot.

Drawing the Statue of Liberty.

Some of our Lady Liberty drawings. :)

Working at the ABC center.  He is searching for the letters of the alphabet!

Our Math Problem Solving Journal entry this week.  The kids did GREAT with this! :)

Putting our lapbook together.

The finished masterpieces!

We made a bubble map about soldiers.  I was so proud of some of the adjectives the kids came up with:  brave, protective, loyal, helpful, strong.... <3  It was also great practice with letter writing!

Working on our bubble map.

The finished product. AMAZING! :)

Our hallway display with the flag we painted and our soldier bubble maps!

Food and Nutrition

I would like to share with you a document that you can download and print off.  I have created a list of first and second quarter sight words, "Popcorn Words," that I would like you to practice with your child.  Print them off in cardstock, have them cut on the lines.... and away you go!  We do many activities throughout the day with sight words.  Some sight words are decodable, however, many are not.  Knowledge of high frequency words is critical to reading fluency.... so practice, practice, practice. :)

We spent all of last week learning about the different food groups, as well as healthy food vs. junk food. We made "Kindergarten Chow" to represent the different food groups:  dairy, vegetables, grains, protein  and fruit.  We sorted our chow, counted how many of each, wrote the numbers, and then graphed our data.  The kids really loved the activity....and just so everyone knows.... the yogurt covered raisins were by far their favorite part of the chow. :)

Dairy= yogurt covered raisins, Vegetables=Veggie Chips, Fruit=dried cherries, Protein=nuts, and Grains=cereal 

We are really starting to write!  We did more interactive writing this week; it was awesome!  Together we wrote about pizza.  Normally I teach to use two finger spaces between words, but to make thing more fun I made these adorable little "SPACEMEN" to use instead!  They worked wonderfully.... and I thought it was adorable the few times I caught the kiddos pretending to fly their little spacemen around!

SPACEMEN!

Working so hard on our writing!

Correct letter formation was really stressed during this activity. :)

We also made illustrated a book about where pizza comes from.  I loved this book because it hit on every food group we were learning about!   The kids really did a great job illustrating this and I loved seeing their drawings and listening to them read this!  I sent this home on Friday.... so have your child read it to you and help them along as they go. :)

Isn't that pig adorable?!

We read the book "Pinkalicious" by Victoria Kann.  It is an adorable story about a little girl who eats so many pink cupcakes she turns pink!  Of course, to counteract the pink she must eat a bunch of green things to turn back to normal. :)  I thought it would be sooooo fun to do an activity this week around this book so, using my photoshop prowess ;),  I turned all the kids' pictures into a coloring page and then THEY had to write what they ate and what color it turned them.  We are really working on identifying sounds in words and this activity was an incredible way for them to really work on segmenting sounds in words and letter formation.  SOOO fun!!!!  We turned their pages into a book that I named "Kinderlicious"..... so look for it to be coming home soon!

Here is a sneak peak of what you will find in the book!

Lastly, we did a ton of math activities this week around junk food!  We finished patterns, counted tallies, practiced ordinal numbers, and counted objects.  Overall, the kiddos did great! :)

There are some very special Veterans in my life, so next week we will be doing a unit on America!  I can't wait to share with you all of the amazing things we will be doing!  Stay tuned...... :)))))

Fall Party Fun!

I want to begin this post by saying a BIG, HUGE, THANK YOU, to all of the room parents who helped to make our first holiday party of the year such a success!!  You all totally rock!  The kids had sooooo much fun at our party..... and it was all because of you!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Next, if you didn't go to the PTA Carnival on Friday I highly recommend that you put it on your calendar to come next year.  It was AMAZING.  I saw many of you there; which is always so much fun!  My own kids I could hardly get to leave!  If you are already a part of the PTA at our school, thank you so much.  If you aren't, you really should look into being involved.  They do SO much for our school and our teachers..... and most importantly, our kiddos. ;)

Here is a slideshow of our Fall Party!  What a blast!!!!

This free slideshow customized with Smilebox

This week we have been busy learning about food and nutrition. I will be doing another post later this week of all sorts of fun things we have been doing!

Lastly, I would like to leave you with a picture of my crew on Halloween.  :)  If you can't tell, I have a Power Ranger, an Angel, and a Ladybug on my hands. (Why is it impossible to get all of the kids to look into the camera at the same time?!)  :))))