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!



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!

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom! AND a classroom donation!

I have had a great week spending time assessing my new kindergarteners!  It has been nice to spend time one-on-one with so many of them.  I hope that they are as excited as I am about this year!

We have a new addition to our classroom....a chicka, chicka, boom, boom coconut tree!  We will spend a lot of time reading the book

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom by Bill Martin, Jr.  Now, we have our very own coconut tree!  The kids will have a chance to add letters to the tree as we learn and practice each letter and the letter sound.

Thank you, Gail for the materials!  Thank you, Mr. Pfister, for helping build the tree!



I got the idea from a wonderful kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Jump.  Thanks Mrs. Jump for the inspiration!

I will send home a Scholastic Book Order form during the first few weeks of school.  Look for Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!  It would make a great addition to your child's home library.

We also had a large donation to our classroom this week.  Over the summer I created an account through a non-profit organization called donorschoose.org.  I created two "projects" for our classroom.  The projects consist of items that I think would enhance the learning of the students in my class.  I got an email yesterday saying that three donors had contributed to a project and that the project had been fully funded!

A shipment from Lakeshore Learning Materials should be arriving in time for the students!

Here is a picture of our new learning materials.  We will use these pieces to practice retelling familiar stories.  Retelling a story is an important standard that all kindergarten students should be able to do by the end of the year.

Once school beings, the students and I will work on creating thank you letters to the generous donors of our project.  I know your child will love using these materials!

A reminder: The Back to School Ice Cream Social will be Monday from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.  You may bring your child's school supplies at that time. 

Classroom Tour

I was excited to welcome all of my new kindergarten kids today at Kindergarten Camp! 

This is what their new classroom looks like!

Here is our outside bulletin board.  All of the student's names are listed on the treasure map!  As you can see, we have a pirate themed classroom this year!

This is the view from our classroom door.  Soon there will be a Star of the Week on display!

These are pictures of the student's mailboxes and our classroom library.  The pirate ship will be used to display the center rotations for each school day.

This is our take home library.  Each week students will be able to choose books from this bin to add to their take home book bag. 

This is our whole group learning area.  We will read, sing, and use the Smartboard while we are on the carpet.

This is a picture of our classroom behavior chart.  All students will begin each day on the green section, "We Arrr Ready to Learn".  Students have the opportunity to move up the chart when they demonstrate good choices. 



This is our Popcorn Success Wall.  We will refer to our sight words as "popcorn" words because they should "pop" right out of your mouth!

This is our writing center and a view of our word wall.  As we learn new words, we'll place them on the word wall.  The word wall will assist students as they begin to write independently.

This is a view of our classroom from our library.  We have four tables for the students.  We refer to each table as a color: red, blue, green and yellow.

This is our guided reading table.  Each day groups of six students will come to this table for small group reading instruction.

Thank you for stopping by to visit our classroom!  Check back often to see what we are learning!

New Blog!

Welcome to our new kindergarten blog!  Come back soon to see what we have been busy doing!