Wow, with all of the things we have been doing in kindergarten, I have definitely been falling behind! We are doing so much in K-3, and we are going to continue until the last bell rings on the last day! I wanted to start the post with the fun and exciting learning we have been doing in math! Can you believe that we are finished with the kindergarten manual and are on the 1st grade things?! We have been talking about measuring, and while we are starting to look at the standard units of measurements this week (centimeter, inch, etc.), we took a little bit of time to study non-standard units. We took cubes and paper clips for this fun one! I found an AWESOME template on Pinterest. (P.S. If you don't have a Pinterest account, GET ONE! It's amazing!) We took mustaches, glasses, and lips off all different kinds and we measured them with cubes and paper clips! The kindergarteners loved it, and it was a great way to practice measuring things! We have also been focusing a lot on the elements of art. During the Smarter Balanced Testing, we had LOTS of time to fill during our non-existent computer lab time. We did an art project that focused on crayon resist and water colors. I talked to the kids how the wax in the crayons is special, which is what makes the color when we draw things. The water color is just a dye, so when we go over the crayon, the wax will push the paint in a different direction! The thought this was the coolest thing ever. I then talked to them about how we mix certain colors together to paint a mood. this mood was more for showing cooler colors, to show the rain that occurs in the spring. After I modeled it to the kids, they took off with it and painted a scene ore beautiful than I could have imagined! Such a cute project. Now, on to the fun stuff! For the last 21 days, we have been playing "Mommies" and "Daddies" to little chick eggs in our room! We have been discussing everything that an egg needs to have in order to hatch: warmth, moisture, and quiet! They have been asking all day to see the beauties that have hatched just this morning! I'm sure you have heard all about it, but I have a couple of pictures for you to see! We have 3 so far, and there are a few more that are poking through the shell. Thank you for all your support with everything! As this year comes to an end, I feel like my first year of teaching was the most memorable and fun year that anyone could have! I have not only you to thank, but also the silly, loving, wonderful children I call my students. I will remember this year forever!!! YOU ROCK!
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I must admit, I am rather disappointed in myself for letting my updates get so far in between. All of a sudden, I look at my last blog post, and I see that my last update was in February! I apologize for being so late in my posting! I have definitely hit that time of year where my first year of teaching has gotten the best of me! Last month, I was a maid of honor in my best friend's wedding. Between work, personal, and planning for a wedding, I had become so exhausted at the end of the day, I usually fell asleep once my head hit the pillow! I am slowly learning what it takes to balance my personal and professional life. So, this is me, trying to fix things by adding a hodge-podge of activities we have done in the past couple months in K-3. Thank you for your patience! We just ended our science unit on Wood and Paper. We learned that wood comes from trees, and in turn, we get things from wood. One experiment we had was seeing the properties of wood. We put water in wood to see the transformations. One of the students asked, "What happens if we put wood in water?" Naturally, we had to experiment to see what would happen! I put a little twist on it though. We found that wood floats in water. So my question: How can we make it sink? Here are our results: I gave the kindergartens two things they HAD to use: paper clips and rubber bands. From there, I observed the kids figure our how to sink the wood. First, the plan was to create an anchor of paper clips to drag the wood down to the bottom. The students soon realized that the anchor did not create enough weight to bring the block down. Then, (pictured on bottom) is the new creation: sticking paper clips on all sides of the wood to make it sink. It was so much fun to see the kindergarteners reactions to sinking the wood! And most of all, it was amazing for me to stand on the sidelines and provide encouragement as their only form of support. They did it on their own! In math, we are busy learning addition and subtraction. Not only with our fluency and recognizing of facts, but by showing the relationship between different numbers! I have used many manipulatives in math to show that there is a correlation between numbers and objects - when children see numbers as concrete objects, they are able to find meaning and understanding with math even better!As an introduction into story problems, I gave kids barnyard cards with farm animals. I modeled to them how I told an addition story with my animals. I have two animals in the fence, and three animals out of the fence. How many animals do I have all together? My partner told me the answer, and then told me the addition equation that matched my setting. I cannot tell you how much fun I have in kindergarten. The amount of growth I see from these children on a daily basis is something that you have to see to believe! I know that all of you appreciate the updates and posts. I know that I love it because I am able to look back and reflect on this past year. With the third quarter ending this week, and our last quarter beginning, it's starting to sink in that I won't have these children for much longer. I want to make this last part of the year not only memorable, but one that is full of growth and success. As a closing, I would like to show a couple of pictures from our egg hunt before our Spring Break. We took the eggs that you filled and put sight words on, and spread them across the entire front lawn of the school. We gave the kindergarteners little checklists, and sent them to read and find sight word eggs! They had so much fun!!! Thank you for all that you do as parents to support your children. I could not do what I do without you. Your dedication and commitment to your children's education will not be forgotten! Happy Easter!!!
For the month of February, Meadowlark is challenged to create a chain of kindness. Here is our chain, and it is growing every day! Here is one act of kindness that you will enjoy. One student was passing out napkins for a student's birthday, and I noticed he was being random with his napkin passing. I told him that it would be easier (and quicker) to pass them all out at a table before moving to the next table. He says to me, "I know, I'm just serving the ladies first." My heart melted! Please read further to learn more about K-3's challenge. :) Happy reading! I think we have all heard a thing or two about random acts of kindness. In fact, there have been several times where I have been running late, and rushing to Starbucks to grab that quick coffee because I had no time for breakfast that morning. The funny thing? As I was grumbling, I had no idea that the person in front of me at the drive-thru had already paid for my drink that morning. Coincidence? I think not! I feel that sometimes we too often focus on the negatives, that we forget about the positive impact that we can have on people! Since I spend much of my time working with kids, I started reflecting on how I could use a positive attitude to portray to my kindergarteners. Yes, much of my job is teaching reading, writing, and math, but my job is to also teach these young minds how to be successful and active participants in society. We regularly sit down and talk about ways to make friends, how to play with friends, how to apologize, and much more. At the beginning of the year, we participated in the Think Kindness Campaign, where the entire school was challenged to do acts of kindness throughout the week. I wanted to go further, though, seeing how happy these acts of kindness made the kids feel. A friend and former co-worker of mine tried a year long kindness challenge. I decided that we would try it, too, as it is important to teach kindness early. I bought a wire wreath from Jo-Anne's, and asked for parents to donate any kind and type of ribbon they had. I was not disappointed when I started receiving colorful, patterned ribbon of all shapes and sizes! I was ready to get started with our class challenge! We sat down for our weekly class meeting, and I asked the question, "What does it mean to be kind?" I received many responses including: asking friends to play, shaking hands and greeting others, saying nice things, etc. I then asked what it meant to commit a random act of kindness. I didn't receive as many responses, so I talked about how sometimes we do kind things not to get noticed, but because we know it is the right thing to do. Our brains tells us what is right and wrong, and when we do something kind, we are happy! The kids then spurted out wonderful things we could do to be kind. I introduced the kindness wreath challenge. Our challenge? To fill the ENTIRE wire wreath with ribbons, which symbolizes our kind acts in and out of the classroom. The catcher was that each act HAD to be random. If a student does something kind, they cannot come up to me and say what they did. They had to have been seen by someone else, who would then come to me and ask if they can put a ribbon on. It was tricky at first, but now, I have kids coming to me telling me things that others did for kids in different classrooms! So here we are, halfway through the year. I wanted to show the progress we have made. Everyone supports each other, cheers each other on, and compliments each other on the things that are done well. I could not be happier with this challenge! We have not only become friends with each other, but we have also become a small family who supports each other. I hear small compliments daily. I see everyone treating each other kind. I see love. Everyday.
I can't wait to show you our finished wreath! I have a feeling that it will be full before the end of the year! Oh my goodness, I can't believe it is the new year! Yesterday was officially my year anniversary of teaching! Wahoo! It is also a start of having to teach a full year, versus the had year I taught before. I feel so exhausted after a day of teaching anymore! Winter break must have been too relaxing! ;) I feel like I have been lacking in my blog posts, but my goal is to pick back up and continue with posts every other week. Before the break, we created projects that were related to the holiday season. We read many books; including one of my new favorites, "Santa's Stuck." The story is about Santa and his inability to resist treats that are left for him on Christmas Eve. We all know Santa loves his cookies and milk! Well, as the story goes on Santa eats too many of his treats, and gets stuck in a chimney! With the help of his reindeer, Santa safely gets out and continues on delivering presents to the little boys and girls of the world. The writing assignment for the kindergartners was to write about what they would do if Santa was stuck in their chimney. We talked about the things we could do, and I wrote the examples down. After writing, I modeled how to make a chimney with Santa sticking out! These turned out so cute! We also read a book about Santa not being able to fly his sleigh because his reindeer were sick. The kids made a prediction before the end of the story about who would fly. The predictions included:
In math, we reviewed making addition sentences with pictures. We talked whole group about using circles to create the number sentence 2 + 3. After we drew circles, we used the circles to make our sentence match. I then talked about how we sometimes put marshmallows in hot chocolate. kids love hot chocolate, so it was a fun activity for them! The kindergarteners decorated their mugs the way they liked. They then cut up paper marshmallows and glued how every many they decided. The only requirement was that they make a true number sentence that matched. Judging by the pictures, I say that it was a success! The holiday season has become my favorite season to teach, because we do so much, and have so much fun! I am so thankful for all the support each of you put in to making your kids successful. i also want to thank for the time and volunteering you put in to centers, parties, and celebrations. YOU ARE ALL AWESOME! Tune in next week to see our learning about winter and snow related things!
After a great Thanksgiving break, K3 is gearing up for the December month by studying gingerbread men! This has to be one of my favorite units to teach, because there is so much learning that goes on in all the content areas. We started the week off by reading the traditional folktale, The Gingerbread Man. The book that I had did not have an author listed, so we talked about why we think the author isn't on the cover. In a folktale, a story is told orally and can sometimes be changed to teach a specific lesson. After reading, we recorded information on our Gingerbread Comparison chart. Throughout the week, we read and discussed characters, setting, problems, and solutions in the stories we read. It was AWESOME to see the kindergarteners find similarities and differences in the books, and to apply the lessons in real life situations! On Friday, we reviewed all the stories one last time. The kindergarteners wrote in their journals about their favorite gingerbread story that was read, and why it was their favorite. We talked about how this kind of writing is our own opinion, so it is okay to write what you want! In math, we completed many fun tasks! We started with going deeper into addition problems. We just completed our learning of the "+1" method, so we went further, and used higher numbers (1-6). The kids partnered up, and rolled a die. The first partner wrote one number and drew buttons on the cookie, while the second partner did the same with the second number. Here are a few pictures of the fun and learning that happened with addition! The following day we talk about units of measurement. We talked about measuring how tall objects are, how long objects are, and how big objects can be. We also talked about estimation, and how it helps us determine where to start when measuring objects. I took a gingerbread cut out, and modeled to the kindergarteners how to find the perimeter (the outside measurements) and the area (the inside measurements. We talked about making reasonable estimations, and to my surprise, many of the kids were incredibly close to their estimations! We recorded both estimations and measurements and discussed when and where we could find the perimeter and area. During centers, I held a "Gingerbread Store," to support the kindergarteners with addition using pennies. I modeled to the kids how we needed to buy items to make real gingerbread men, including the the cookie, frosting, and treats that can be used for the eyes, nose, mouth and buttons. Each student got a bag of paper pennies, and bought their items. Some were only $0.01, while other were $0.02 or $0.03. They had to find how much it cost if they were to buy more than one of a treat. We even talked about going to store and buying things. If we didn't have enough, we would put it back. We get money from jobs and the bank, which helps us buy things from the store. It was so powerful!!! At home, I baked gingerbread cookies, made frosting, and bought supplies for the decorating. On Friday, we celebrated our learning by decorating our gingerbread men with the things bought from Gingerbread Store! The kids had so much fun, and LOVED eating their creations.
I was honored to be able to teach my kindergarteners more about the brave men and women who risk their lives for us and our wonderful country. Today, we took the time to read a "Let's Find Out" magazine on Veteran's Day. We first looked at a picture of a boy and his mother hugging. I asked, "Why do you think the mother is hugging her son?" Many responded with, "They love each other because the mom was probably at work, and the boy missed her!" That was a great opportunity for me to talk about how some moms and dads have to go far away for their job. I then pointed to the military uniform that the mother was wearing. We noticed that is was a military outfit. I mentioned how today was Veteran's Day; a day where we honor the people who go overseas to fight and protect our country. We have a few students with parents who are active duty military, so it was great to make the personal connections to this important day! We talked about how during our reading, we look for words that help us understand better. We wanted to find ways to thank our veterans for serving our country. Today, we looked for adjectives that described veterans so we could write letters. It was so awesome to see the kinders reading and sounding out the words! We found the words "brave," "fast," "strong" in our reading, so we put that to our list. We also talked about how soldiers risk their lives to keep us safe and free. It was amazing to discuss with kindergarteners about this, because they all understood how important these men and women are to our country! One student asked if we could write a letter to send to a veteran. I modeled to students how to write a letter. We then thought of several sentence stems to use to put into our letter thanking a vet for their service. I wrote out the sentence stems on the board to support students with writing their letters. It was so much fun capturing the writing that K-3 did for the veterans! We finished our pieces by creating our own soldiers to attach our letters. We talked about the different uniforms that all armed forces wear, and that men of all races and gender are able to join and fight for our country. It was a fun project for us to do together! We are going to hang our letters up for a little bit, and then send them to our local veterans at Malmstrom Air Force Base to share with each other. What a great way to support our community!
During our short week, we focused our theme around Fire Safety. Our kindergarteners had already been to a Fire Prevention Assembly, so we had brought a lot of schema (prior knowledge) to our week. We read a lot of text featured on fire and fire safety! One of our texts was titled, "Fire Truck." We read the book, and discussed the items that we could find in a fire truck. We talked about how fire trucks have wheels, ladders, drivers, and many tools used to help people who are in danger. We used our knowledge to create our own fire trucks out paper shapes. After we created out firetrucks, I modeled to students the components of a sentence. We have been writing sentences, so the kindergarteners knew that sentences started with a capital letter and ended with a period. We also worked on using finger spaces to make sure all words are separated. We wrote an opinion piece: "I like fire trucks." The kids used their word wall for their sight words, and then segmented the sounds in "fire truck" in order to spell. The kindergarteners were also given the option to write their own sentence as well. We also had a fun time in math with fire dogs! We have had math talks talking about numbers and groups that are "more" and "less." I took counters and placed them for all the kids to see. I asked them what they noticed, and was told that the counters were all the same! We found that "equal" means the same. I practiced using counters with "more," "less," and "equal," and then had students practice on their own. Students worked in partners and one person rolled a die. That person then created the number by writing on the dog's hat, and placing dots on the dog's body to represent the number. The other student created an equal group with the other dog, and then switched each time. The kids had a blast making them! We ended our short, but fabulous week with a field trip! We walked down to the fire station, and learned about what the fireman do to help our community! The kindergarteners were fascinated about how the station was like a small home for the firemen. They were also in love with the firetrucks, and how many tools could fit inside them!
One of the firemen demonstrated how he put his gear on. Here are a few pictures for your viewing! Thank you to all the parents who could make it to walk with us! The kindergarteners had such a fun time! Last week, we focused our Reading and Math on the theme of spiders. We read fiction and nonfiction books on the topic, and then decided which books gave us true information, or facts. We learned many things about spiders. Spiders can:
I was so impressed by the amount of work that the kindergarteners and their parents did on the spiders! We asked students to create a spider from common household objects, so we could hang them in our kindergarten showcase for the month of October! I encourage you to come and look at these beautiful creations! We also did a math activity with spiders and their legs. We had spiders with legs of different lengths, and handed them to students. I asked, "What do you notice about the legs?" Students quickly found that the legs were different lengths, but that there will still eight of them! I modeled to students how to find the length using cubes. We then got into partners and measured the spiders legs. Each leg was different, so the number of cubes changed. Students counted the cubes one by one, and verbally explained to their partners the numbers counted. We then gathered and talked about which group was the most, and which group was the least. I had so much fun with this counting activity, as it strengthened 1-1 correspondence with students, and introduced the concept of measuring and gathering data! I am always impressed by the knowledge and growth that comes from my kindergarteners each week. They are so AWESOME! Tune in next week to see our learning on leaves! In light of Johnny Appleseed's birthday, our kindergarten class centered our week around apples. We learned about how apples grow, what colors and tastes apples come in, and what we can make with apples! K-3 may just be experts in the apple field! In our science unit, we are covering trees, and apples are a perfect way to find out how trees provide us food to eat. As a group, we read a non-fiction book titled, "Amazing Apples." We talked about how non-fiction books include real information (facts) along with real pictures. After reading facts about apples, the kids got with their "knee partners" and discussed what facts we could include in our "Can/Have/Are" anchor chart on apples. After discussing, we came up with a final chart. Later in the week, we focused on literary, or fiction, pieces on apples as well. We discussed the differences between fiction and non-fiction, and how we can use both to learn. We use non-fiction to gain information with facts, while we use fiction to learn elements of a story (characters, setting, plot). We read the book, "Apples Apples Everywhere," which is a story about two children's trip to an apple orchard. The children picked apples, tasted them, and learned about apple harvesting at the farm. After the book, we used our new learning from both fiction and non-fiction books, and wrote an opinion piece about apples. Students wrote their names, colored what apple was their favorite, and drew a portrait of themselves eating their favorite apple. We then used red, yellow, and green to create our own colorful apples as the cover to our apple opinion book. The pieces are currently hanging up in K-3, and it is a joy to see and read the writing our kindergarteners are doing! Friday was the fan favorite for apples! We had three different apples to sample for our "Favorite Apple" graph. We all tried the different apples, and took placed our favorite apple with the corresponding color on the graph. We also had the discussion about describing the taste of the apples. The red was sweet, but tart. The yellow was sweet. The green was SOUR! We had so much fun counting and comparing the numbers on the graph. Students answered the questions, "Which apple had the least amount of likes? Which apple had the most?" I even had students visually deciding what columns would go in order from least to greatest! Math is such a wonderful subject, and we spark many discussions from numbers! We then filled out our own graphs by looking at our data from the big graph. This was such a fun lesson to do, because there was so much learning! Tune in soon to see our learning on spiders, and the activities we do based upon our schema and new learning!
Wow, the beginning of the year has gone by so quickly! I feel like the first day of school was just yesterday. I am having so much fun with my students; I know that this year is going to be an AWESOME year. During the first week, the kindergarteners were introduced to many new things at Meadow Lark. One theme we focused on was Pete the Cat. Who doesn't love him?! We started by reading "Pete the Cat: Rockin' in Our School Shoes" in the morning to set the tone. The story is about how Pete is at a new school and how he encounters all the cool rooms and their uses. I used a cute YouTube video to pair with the book so the kids could sing the song that goes with Pete and his school shoes. The kindergarteners sang their way through the book and LOVED Pete! After, I had "found" a note from Pete telling the kindergarteners that he was somewhere in the building! We went all over the school, touring where the Office, Gym, Music, Computer, and Lunch rooms were. Pete left notes the whole way; even back to our room! The kids were so excited that Pete had been to the school.
We then started to make our own Pete the Cat to display in our classroom. I took basic shapes and asked students how I knew the shapes were what they said they were. One student mentioned that a rectangle is a rectangle because it has two long and two short sides! I modeled to students how to make Pete. The creations were so cute! We also read, "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes." After talking about colors, we added shoes to Pete, and wrote our favorite color on a sentence strip. "I love my _____________ shoes!" Here are a few for you to see! |
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January 2018
AuthorI sing, dance, and laugh my way through life! I love to teach, but my desire is to always learn more. I am truly blessed with the life I have! Categories |