Fun Monsters!

I have been wanting to do a fun monster unit for about a year and a half.  I decided, although not the norm for January, I would start the third quarter off with this amazingly fun unit. The kids loved it, and so did I! I didn't get a ton of pictures, but in this post I'd like to give a snapshot of some things we did.  We started off the unit by learning this poem (you can imagine the gusto the kids read with when they got to the "boo" part!):

We read a lot of monster books!  Here were some of our favorites:

I think the kids could have listened to Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley 4,000 times.  They loved it!  :)

We did an awesome activity called a "List Poem."  We made a list of verbs and adjectives that had to do with monsters.  They did AWESOME with this!

Then they had to choose 5 words and make a poem that began and ended with the word "monster."  

Then we drew and painted our own monsters!!

                       

                                                     

Finally, we attached our list poem to our monster!  They turned out soooooo cute!  The finished product:

               

                           

In math we are learning about addition.  We did do some addition centers this week.  Along with addition we practiced measuring by measuring monsters with non-standard units:

 Counted and wrote the number of monsters hiding in closets:

We rolled and wrote words on our monster. We had to decide if the words were real or silly.  It seems like when we roll with these cubes we get way more silly words than real ones! :)

The last thing that I took pictures of was our Blow Paint Monsters!  The kids had a lot of fun blowing paint around their paper to create monsters.... and then gluing eyes on.  I was a *tiny* bit nervous about how messy this activity would be, but surprisingly it was not messy at all!  The kiddos did great!  They turned out super cute!

Until next time!

Star Lab

What a wonderful week we have had so far at school.  We are definitely back in the groove after our winter break!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!  I had a great Christmas and New Years, but am glad to be back as well. :)

Today was a very exciting day...... we went to the Star Lab!  If you don't know, the Star Lab is an inflatable planetarium.  While inside, the lights go out and thousands of stars, mimicking the real ones in the sky, show up and we get to learn fun facts and stories about different constellations that are in our sky.  This is one of the things that the kids absolutely look forward to and LOVE all throughout their elementary years at our school.  It is so precious seeing them in such awe about the stars.  I also want to say a huge thank you to Mrs. Atkinson.  She is in charge of Star Lab and does such a fantastic job instilling excitement and knowledge about the night sky into our little ones. To sum our experience up, I have to share this comment that just made my whole day:  While we were sitting in the Star Lab, with darkness surrounding us and the beautiful stars above, I heard a little boy passionately say, "This is better than my i-pod!"  Yep, the Star Lab is just that good.  ;)

I didn't get any pictures of us inside.... but here are some pics of us listening to the rules and starting to climb in!

Today at recess KWQC TV 6 was here and the kids got to say the "Hello Quad Cities" line!!!  The kids were SO EXCITED!  So, tonight at around 6:28 tune in!

Be looking for a post coming up later this week about our fun monster unit!  Also, I have started a formal unit on addition, and the kids are doing great!

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! :)