Daily 5

Well we have now begun our Daily 5! The kids have started out great and I am so proud of them! We have introduced the first daily which is Read to Self. We learned about the 3 ways to Read a Book, so even if we don't know how to read all the words, we can still be reading. We also completed our Read to Self I-chart that shows the desirable behaviors for Read to Self time. Each student has their own book box filled with books that they use during this time. We have already built our stamina up to 13 minutes of reading time after only 6 days!! Very impressive!

We also did an art lesson on Warm and Cool colors. We talked about the colors that remind us of the warm sun and the colors that  remind us of the cool water. They each got to sponge paint a page for warm and cool, and then we put a picture frame around it. They turned out great!

Community Helpers

This week we dove into our Community Helpers Unit. We read books and made lists of Community Helpers. We looked at the many hats some Community Helpers wear, as well as some that don't wear hats. I had to be gone Wednesday for a DIBELS training, and they got to discuss Construction workers and make tool belts while I was gone! On Friday, we even got to make ourselves into a Community Helper by choosing 1 of 5 hats to put on our heads! They turned out awesome! I can't wait to put them in the hallway!

First 9 Days!

Well the first 9 days has flown by!! Boy life is crazy between my 3 month old, teaching Kindergarten, and going to grad school! My goal was to get up a post up last Friday, but that didn't happen so I will show you what we have been doing in the first 2 weeks! Our first week we had a lot of fun getting to know each other and learning routines. We did lots of fun activities with the book "Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom."

 

We made a big bulletin board in the hallway with the other Kindergarten class.

 We played spin-a-coconut and found the letter coconut that matched the letter we spun.

We also played roll-a-number coconut tree and covered up the number we rolled with our dice!

The second week of school was "Apple Week." We read books about apples, sang songs about apples, graphed with apples, investigated apples, learned the parts of apples....is there anything with apples we didn't do?? On Friday we even got a special treat of homemade applesauce made with our apples we brought to school. (Well the ones that weren't bruised up from being dropped over and over! ;) I had a few extra of my own just in case!)

We read Dr. Seuss' book, "Ten Apples Up on Top" and we made out own version of the book. It turned out so cute!

We have had a great first 9 days! The kiddos are getting better at routines everyday. We started the quick overview of the letters Aa-Ee. Next week we will be continuing with our letter overview and we will start our unit of Community Helpers! Until next week!

First Day

Well we made it!! The first day of school has come and gone and we all made it in one piece! I am excited about my new little group of kiddos! The first days of school are always a shock because you forget that those new Kindergartners just haven't been in school before!! Routine, routine, routine! I definitely know my name by the end of the day! We will keep working on our routines and I can't wait to see what this year holds for us!

Classroom update

Well things are starting to look better! After many, many hours spent at the school and many sleepless nights thinking of all the things that need to get done, I think the classroom is finally ready! I have one more day to get myself ready now!! We had an open house on Friday and we had a great turnout! It is always good for the little kiddos to come see the room before school starts so that they can prepare themselves. School here we come!