Friday, February 21, 2014

Vacation is coming to an end :(

Well, it's Friday of vacation week and I am sad it's over :(  We had a nice relaxing week at home.  We went to Build A Bear for the first time...geez!!!  I did some scrapbooking with a fellow teacher at my school and did some major cleaning I have been meaning to get to :)  I feel very accomplished this vacation!  Here are some pictures of what we have been up to the past couple of weeks. (before vacation!)


 We have had MANY indoor recess days due to the freezing cold weather :(  But the kids are making the most of it!!

 We talked about Dental Health month for a week and made this very cute dental health craft from Robin Sellers.  I added a string so they could hang it up as a reminder of how to properly take care of their teeth. :)

 We decorated these red pockets to stuff our valentines in!!  I hope I can find more of these, they were perfect size and so easy!!!  I think a parent donated them, so, thank you!!!

 In Investigations, we are still working on measuring.  This activity was measuring with sticks.  They learned how to measuring using whole sticks and how to write if only 1/2 of the stick was on the tape.  They did a great job!!

We finally had our 100th Day of school!!!  We had it delayed by a snow day, but it was so much fun!!!

 I made a cake to celebrate and this is my Day 100 cape!  This was my most favorite idea for the kids to bring in 100 things.  EVERY single student made a cape with their family!!!!  Thank you so much to the parents for participating in this activity!!!  The kids were so proud of their accomplishment!





 These are some of the activities we had going on during the 100th Day!  We colored a Day 100 picture. We made booklets with 100 stamps, we strung 100 pieces of cereal to pipe cleaner necklaces and we made 100 day masks to go with our Zero the Hero capes!!!


 These are the AWESOME capes the kids made with their families!!!  We zoomed through the other two kindergarten classrooms and the preschool class as well.  Then we ventured down the hall to show our principal that if he every needed a hero, just come down to our class and he would find 20!!  The kids had a blast and I can't wait to do it again next year!!

Next week, we finish off February with the Presidents!  I have some very fun activities planned!!

Now this stuff, I am getting a little tired of!  This was taken on a day that the weather report said "light rain".  This looks more like HEAVY snow to me!! (With a little enhancement from Google +!!)  And it dumped another 2 inches on us!!  Well, the rain is coming and my basement is not happy!!

Enjoy the rest of your vacation, or enjoy the start of your vacation if it is next week!!
Thank you for reading and feel free to comment below!!
Aimee

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Snow Day Post!

Well, here we are with another snow day :(  It was very productive, though!  I got a lot done, including this blog :)  I can't believe another month has passed us by!  Here are some photos to show you what we have been up to the second half of the month!

I got this recipe to make snow from Kindergarten Lifestyle!  The kids absolutely LOVED it!!  Here are some of their snowman creations that they made!  It is a very simple recipe- I used 2 boxes of baking soda and almost a whole can of shaving cream.  It kept pretty well and I would just add a little shaving cream each day to moisten it up a bit!



We studied Arctic and Antarctic animals for a week.  We made a two column notes chart with our facts from this book we read about North and South Pole animals.  We also read this little story made by Brandy K.  We decided we really like where live!  Even though it's been cold, at least it isn't 128 degrees BELOW zero!! 

Here is some of their beautiful printing my students are doing!!!  I love how hard they are trying to write neatly!  Unfortunately, it is not counted on any assessment. (but they don't need to know that!!)

We read "Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats and did this cute writing activity afterwards.  The kids wrote about something they like to do on a snowy day :)


I got this cute Polar Bear book from Teachers Helper.  It worked on positional words.  The kids had to place the polar bear where the sentence told them to!  Using the pictures as a clue, they are able to read the book themselves!



We have been doing a lot of measuring lately.  We measured how long our friends' names were in comparison to our own.  We also played "Grab and Record" and had to put our sticks of cubes in order from smallest to biggest on a sheet of paper.


The kids have been using these special "pointing lasers" to point to the words in their books during reading group time.  They love using them!!

We celebrated Chinese New Year last Friday.  The kids had so much fun making these dragon masks and dancing dragons.



Mrs. Dunn made us dumplings and rice.  The kids got to practice picking up their food using chopsticks!!  17 of the kids managed to eat some of their food with chopsticks!  I was very impressed.  2 had a hard time and 1 refused to try any of the yummy food we were eating.  We finished our Chinese meal with some tasty oranges!




Here are all the kids with the dragon masks and danging dragons!

The aides got involved too and made this beautiful dancing dragon and lead the parade around the school!  It was very cool!!!




This week started off with some bad news that we would have 6 more weeks of winter :(  We read a small reader about groundhogs and filled out a top down web about what groundhogs are, what they have, and what they can do.  They filled out what they liked best about groundhogs on the last page.


Yesterday, we did a little more with measurement.  We had a friend trace our shoes, then we measured how many cubes long three of our friends' shoes were.  They did a great job measuring!!

I am so excited to get into our February activities!!  We have a lot to do in a very short month!!

**PARENTS**
I will be sending a note home as well, but I wanted to let you know that for Valentine's Day, DO NOT have your child write all their friends names on their cards.  It takes way too long to hand them out when they have to find certain pockets to put them in.  They ONLY have to write their OWN name on each card so their friends know who the card is from.  You may send them in any time next week.
We will be having a Friendship Fruit Salad.  I am going to be asking parents to send in a fruit to share in our salad.  If you send in something like bananas, apples, oranges, pears, etc., please only send in 1 or 2.  (Extras will probably be sent home because of vacation the following day.)  If you send in something like grapes, strawberries, blueberries or raspberries, please only send in a small bunch.

A Clarification:  When your child takes books home, sometimes there will be 3 books in their folder, sometimes only 2.  On the weekends, I only send home 2 books in everyone's folder because we do not have reading groups on Fridays.  There are 2 groups I take on  Mondays and Wednesdays and 2 other groups I take on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The Tuesday groups will only take 2 books home on Mondays, as well, because I have not met with them yet after the weekend.  PLEASE PLEASE sign your child's reading log every night after you read with them and make sure to return their folder every day so they can bring new books home.  I will send home their "reading group book" 2 nights in a row for them to practice.  Please make sure they are pointing to the words when they read and have them find sight words throughout the book to make sure they know the words they are reading, not just memorizing the pattern in the book.  Also, it is okay to read other books from home.  It is just important to ask your child which book they got from me in reading group and make sure they at least read that book. Thank you for all of your help in this reading journey with your child!! :)

Feel free to comment below!!
Aimee