Thursday, September 13, 2012

Our Morning Centers

I thought I would post a few pictures of our morning centers.  Each morning the students work on a different center while we are taking attendance, going to lockers, etc. 
 
This week we finished centers that related to Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
 
{The centers come from the fabulous, Mrs. Lee}
 
Here are the pictures of what the centers look like before:
 





And after:
 




Doesn't that work look like it was completed by the best kindergarteners?  I think so!
 

The kids are also LOVING the ipads.  They are hits for early finishers or those who have made good choices throughout the day! 
Once we begin guided reading, the students will have the opportunity to visit the ipad center on a regular basis.




I had to put in one picture of my little cuties.  It is a little hard to see, but they are dancing to "Who Let the Letters Out?" by Dr. Jean.
 
 
The song we sing says the letter sound after each letter is shown.  However, we have gotten so good at making our letter sounds you can barely hear Dr. Jean! 
I'm so proud of my kiddos!


Monday, September 3, 2012

The First 8 Days of Kindergarten!

Whew!  I cannot believe that I have not posted about our first two weeks already.  It has been so busy! 
First of all, I love, love, love my new class.  What a bunch of sweeties!  I cannot wait to see them grow and change this year.

Last week we made a handprint gift for our parents and grandparents.  Hopefully the parents were able to put the puzzle together with their kindergartener while they talked all about school.



We have been talking a lot about the routines and procedures of our classroom.  We have read many books that talk about school rules and behavior.  We read this book:



Then, we made our own list of good rules to follow while we are at school.  The students gave suggestions and we added their ideas to this chart.



We also used our Mr. Potato Head to talk about how we can be good listeners.  Mr. Potato Head needs eyes, ears, a quiet mouth, a thinking cap, hands in lap and criss-crossed feet to be a good listener.  When we are getting ready to learn, we pull out our Mr. Potato Head to make sure we have our bodies ready!


Each time we come to the carpet we listen to the song "Come to the Carpet".  We also listen to "Criss Cross Applesauce" to check our bodies for learning.  You can click on either one of the links to listen to the songs.

You might have remembered that in the last post I mentioned our classroom receiving a large donation through the non-profit organization called donorschoose.org.  Last week I received news that another project had been funded!  A large package came to school this week and this is all that was inside:


I cannot wait for the students to begin using these new tools.  Thank you, donorschoose.org!!!

I will be taking pictures of the students learning all about Reader's and Writer's Workshop this week.  I will post all about our learning soon!