Got to love the full moon!!

WOW!  What a week!  We had our Academic Night and I think I had one of the best turnouts in the whole school!  15 out of 20 parents were able to attend!  It is great to see how excited the parents are about their child's education :)  Thank you all for coming!  

We also worked VERY hard this week!  On our way to lunch one day, I overheard a couple of kids talking and one of them said, "Man!  We did a lot of work this morning!"  A teacher's dream :)  I love these children, they are the best!!!  Here are some photos of the things we did this week!  I found myself so involved in what we were doing that I forgot to take pictures some days :)

 In Fundations, we have done the letters t, b,and f.  The children are putting together an alphabet book of all the letters with an object that starts with that letter.  We made T with toothpicks and B with band-aids.  I have to find some feathers at a craft store so we can make F with feathers :)  The children are working very hard at forming the letters correctly too.  I will take some pictures of our letter formation next week!

Making a train :)

Sorting by size and shape

 In Investigations, we are still exploring with different materials.  I made these button sorting mats because we started talking about the different attributes of buttons.  The children LOVED them!!  The sorting going on that day was amazing!  Ask your child what an attribute is!!  We talked about how you can sort things by size, shape, color, texture and thickness!

 We have also been working on Nursery Rhymes!  They love to hear them on the Dr. Jean CD when we finish our project that we will make into a book when we are done.  We have actually attempted to do these as a whole group and the children are listening SOOOO well!!  I thought I would have to do them all in a small group, but that takes a lot of time with 20 little ones. :)  We have a few more to do then they will be sent home to keep!  I love how different the same paper comes out with 20 different minds :)

 Salisbury, MA turns 375 years old!!!  We were all asked to color different pictures for them to display during the celebration!

This is some Rainbow Writing practice.  I wrote the childrens' names with a highlighter.  Then they had to make 5 dots with different colors at the top of their paper.  When they completed their whole name with one color, they crossed off that dot at the top, then moved onto the next color and so on!  They are all displayed in the hallway under our bulletin board.

**PARENTS**

Like I said, we were busy, busy, busy!!  Next week, I will be at Teaching Strategies GOLD Training in our building.  We have Ms. Mac coming in to substitute!  She was a teacher at SES for many years and came in this week to introduce herself to the children and get to know our routine.  I am very excited she will be joining us!!  The children were very eager to impress her!  The children will be completing lots of different apple activities while I am out!  They will have a lot of fun!

Also, a reminder that Friday, October 4th is a Half Day Professional Day.  I will be at a dentist appointment for my son that day, so I will be out in the morning.  Half Days end at 11:40am.

Have a great weekend!!  Leave a comment below! :)

Week 2 with Daily 5 pictures!

Week 2 is off to a great start!  I have been trying to take a lot of pictures that I can use for Teaching Strategies GOLD, but they also double as pictures for everyone else to see!  I will show you some of the work we have been doing, some adorable pictures taken during Daily 5 and some pictures taken during Math Investigations. 

 We had our first Star of the week!  This green background is Tac-On.  It is sticky on both sides, so I didn't have to put any staples in the wall and I won't have to everytime I change the Star of the week!!  LOVE IT!!!

Every day, I choose a different child that we will Get To Know!  They really enjoy it.  I love their answers for what they like to do and what they like to eat.

We are learning about a new color monster every day!  I found new and improved ones on TN created by Kinderone Kids.  I will be using those next year, I had already copied these :)

DAILY 5!!!  I am sooo excited about starting this right away!  The kids are doing great!  They love to find out where their Book Nook will be that day.  Read more about that here.  Thanks, Sprinkles to Kindergarten!!!  Her blog has really gotten me started on D5 implementation in Kindergarten! These are some of the special spots they get to sit at during Read to Self.  

My rocking chair

On the floor, laying down or sitting up

By the closet

At their table

We are up to 3-4 minutes of Reading To Self.  We had a hard time during the last minute of our 4 minutes today, but we stopped and we will try again tomorrow :)  More pictures of D5 in a minute :)

We had our first cutting activity yesterday!  We will do this for each letter we learn in Fundations.  I got this in May and I am not sure who I got it from.  As we were completing this, I realized we hadn't cut anything yet!  They did a very good job listening to directions and cut very nicely!

Back to Daily 5!!  I am soooo excited about my finds to make Reading to Self more fun!  I got some sunglasses from Oriental Trading and popped out the lenses to make "Smarty Glasses"!!  Also, I got googly eyes to find letters and words that they know!!  We had a very long talk about the proper use of these things and they are doing well so far!

More Book Nook spots- Housekeeping Table

They look sooo cute!!!

We made Play doh for everyone last Friday.  I keep some for each child in these Glad containers.  They each get just enough to make some letters on the Play Doh mats I got from Kindergarten Lifestyle on TPT. 

Lastly, the kids got to explore with some new things today during Investigations!  We used buttons, color tiles and Attribute Blocks.  I like exploration, but they will definitely need some guidance tomorrow ;)

**PARENTS**

Our picture day will be next Tuesday, September 17th. An envelope to order prints should be coming home soon!  Book Orders are due on the 20th.  Please be sure to send a check with your order or you can order online and use a credit card.  For every order online, I get a free book for our classroom!!  Thank you in advance!  Also, Open house (Academic Night) is also next Tuesday, September 17th at 5:30.  I hope to see you then!

Have a great rest of the week!

Aimee 

What have we been up to, what's coming up?

We had a fabulous first week in kindergarten!  We talked a lot about the rules in our classroom and throughout the school.  We are particularly working on keeping your hands, feet and objects to yourself.  We are trying to help the children understand what personal space is.  I can't wait to read "Personal Space Camp" by Julia Cook.  It is a great book to help the children understand what it means to give others their space.
We also started building our stamina during Read To Self (RTS), part of the Daily 5.  The children listened to a story called "Dex: The Heart of a Hero" by Caralyn Buehner.  This dog wanted to be a superhero in the worst way.  He practiced and practiced and became stronger and stronger.  He eventually became a "Super Dog" because he built his stamina and worked hard.  We are going to build our stamina each day, being able to read for a long period of time without stopping.  We have only done 1 minute so far, but to a 5 year old, that is a LONG time!  On Monday we will begin adding 1 minute a day.  The children love to see where their "Book Nook" will be for RTS!  They will get to RTS in a different spot in the room each day.  This spot is chosen by me for now, but will eventually be their responsibility to choose.
In Investigations, we are exploring with the different materials we will be using throughout the year.  They have been exploring with the Pattern Blocks, Linking Cubes and Geoblocks.  This week, we will add new materials!  We will also be working on numbers 0-2.  We will be practicing writing these numbers and matching quantities to the numbers.
In Fundations, we met Baby Echo!  He will be helping us echo sounds, letters and words that the children need to repeat.  The children also received their white board, marker and eraser that they get to keep in the pocket behind their chair.  They were very excited and can't wait to start using them!

This week, we will begin discussing and learning Nursery Rhymes.  I will be using the Nursery Rhymes Poster Set from Alessia Albanese.  She has great pages to go with each Nursery Rhyme to help find rhyming word and questions for the children to think about after we read the Nursery Rhyme.

**PARENTS**
If your child hasn't brought in rest time stuff, please send it in this week so they can lay comfortably on their mat to rest their body each day.  Also if you have not sent back all the paperwork given to you at Orientation, please return that as soon as possible.
Our Star of the Week wall is finally set up!!  I have only received one baggie of pictures and information.  Make sure you send that back so your child can have a turn as the Star of the Week!

I am excited to begin week 2!!  We have so much to do :)
Aimee Farrell

First Day Fun!!

Very fun first day of school!  I actually had NO crying!!  Well, at least the kids weren't crying, I'm not sure about the parents sitting at home without their favorite Kindergartener :)  We started our day heading to Specials.  I brought them to the Library, right on time.  They sat on the rug so quietly and were very excited to be in "the BIG Library"!!  About 20 minutes into special, I find out it is not Tuesday today and I sent them to the wrong special!!!  Luckily where they were supposed to be was right next door!  Bonus- my kids got 2 specials today :)  Then I proceeded to pick them up 10 minutes earlier than I was supposed to!  GEEZ what a great start to my first day back in Kindergarten!  Luckily the rest of the day went much smoother!  Here are a few photos to show what we did today!

The kids loved the Pete the Cat tour of the school.  It is a FREEBIE from Michelle at inspiredbykindergarten.blogspot.com It was so much more fun to find the letters from Pete than to just walk around to each room in the building.  They were very engaged!!  Thank you, Michelle!!

We, of course, had to have snack after our Morning Meeting.  I think you could hear a pin drop in the room :)

We did the Handprint Poem that I got from Jeannie Partin at akindergartenlifestyle.com  They came out AWESOME!!!  I hope the parents liked them!!

 After lunch we explored with some math materials.  They built very tall towers with the Unifix cubes and made some nice patterns with them too.  I didn't take a picture of them using the Pattern Blocks, but the designs were beautiful!  I am still getting used to taking pictures while they are working!

We had some rest time in the afternoon, which went smoother than I expected.    They FINALLY got to have some free choice at the end of the day!  They thought everything would be open for business...ummm, no!  A couple of things at a time, kiddos :)

I am looking forward to another fun day tomorrow!  Hopefully I can start off at the right special in the morning!!  

Let the fun begin!!

First day of school tomorrow!!  Well, for an hour at least!  Our new kindergarten kiddos come in with their parents and get to check out their new classroom and meet the teachers!!  They will do a scavenger hunt through the classroom, then go outside and play with their new friends for a bit, then take a short bus ride!  I will get to speak to all the parents while the kids are playing outside and let them know about all the paperwork they have to fill out tomorrow night!  I can't wait to meet everyone!  Hopefully I will have some new followers :)  Now I will be able to start posting some fun pictures of all the activities we are doing on a daily basis!!! YAH!  Let the fun begin!!!!