Thanksgiving Fun!

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Happy Thanksgiving (Late!)!!! I hope you and your family had a great holiday and were able to spend with the people you care about! Over the past few weeks we have been talking about what we are thankful for and making a turkey!

Our bulletin board is a turkey and the on each feather a student wrote what they were thankful for! I forgot to get a picture before I left on Wednesday (I will post one later).  But, I did get pictures of students working on their feather! We went through the writing process (write, proof, edit, final draft).  I helped them proof and edit but they wrote the final draft on their own. 

Can you see how he is already using spaces?! :)

She is thinking about what she needs to do next.

These two girls were working really hard to get their feather just perfect.

I was so proud of her! I have never seen her work so focused! 

The next thing we did was make a turkey using our shoes and hands.  The students thought it was hilarious that we were tracing our shoes! They were more than eager to get their shoe off and get to work!

She was trying to figure out how to trace it so she could fit both feet on!

These two work so well next to each other.

She couldn't quit giggling about tracing her shoe!

Then we had to trace our hands! That was a huge project! Many students got frustrated because they cut a finger off (on their paper).  It took a lot of patience and practice.  Eventually, we all got there!

You can see the concentration on her face!

Our friend is hard at work cutting his hands out.

As you can see, they had to cut their hands out in multiple colors!

Some do their best work standing!

We have one making his turkey body using the feet and the other one is cutting her hands out!

She was so happy to have her red hands done! She only had one more set to do!

I wanted to get a picture of all of them with their turkey but our school day was done and they were eager to get home and start their long break!   It was a fun week.  I am looking forward to December.  It was one of my favorite months because there is so much fun crafts and learning to be done!! :)

I will see you all on Monday!

Morning Dancing!

As I am getting into the swing of blogging, I have realized that you don't know what a day in our Kindergarten classroom truly looks like! So, I have decided to start taking pictures so you can see what your student does! 

Every morning we do our calendar.  We say the month we are in, count the days in our month, count to 70 (it goes up every few weeks), talk about the weather, do some phonemic awareness, making 5 and then we DANCE! We dance to get the students moving, wake them up a little bit and just to have some FUN.  We have some pretty awesome dancers in our class! So, here are some pictures of us dancing to "Freeze!"

These 2 boys are constantly dancing and they are not shy about it! :)

The girls love to dance, especially when they get to go into the middle of our circle!

These girls are a bit shy, but they love to dance when the camera isn't on them!

That is just a glimpse of the beginning of our day,  Through out the rest of my blog posts, I will try to capture our day in bits and pieces!

Making 5

During early release Wednesdays, I have Professional Development sessions.  I have decided to take a class called "Constructing Knowledge".  This class focuses on ways that the students are able to make discoveries on their own and share what they have learned with the class.  Right now, we are focusing on using constructing knowledge in math.  Math is a subject that students can quite easily develop their own learning. 

I have asked Mrs. Zinsli, our Math Achievement Adviser, to come in and team teach "Ways to Make 5" with me.  I wanted her expertise to help me to become better at teaching with constructing knowledge.  We have been introducing tools and manipulatives along with the 5-frame.  Each student gets 2 different tools (bears, tiles, sea animals, dinosaurs, cubes, etc).  They get five of both tools they select.  They then create different combinations in the five frame and tell their partner what they have.  For example: I have 1 sea animal and 4 bears and that makes 5.  This is helping the students to add numbers between zero and five fluently-one of our math standards.

The students have been having a fun time exploring with manipulatves and the 5-frame! It is awesome to see how they think and to see their face when they make a connection. 

They are listening and thinking carefully as Mrs. Zinsli asks them questions.

We are discussing what a 5-frame is.

Reflection is a huge part of constructing knowledge.  We always talk about what we discovered while working with tools and 5-frames.

It has been such a fun experience for me to see how they learn when we let them explore on their own.  They end up teaching each other and it is so awesome to see! It is always more fun to learn through exploration than worksheets! Ask your student what they know about 5-frames and tools and ways to make 5.

Veteran's Day

Well, we are two week into November and we have celebrated Veteran's Day.  Last week, we discussed Veteran's Day and what it is and who it celebrates.  I have two brothers who are active duty in the military and one brother who was in the military.  Veteran's Day is a huge celebration for me. I try to incorporate that into our classroom.  In honor of Veteran's day, we made cards for my brothers!

Many students were being very diligent and asking what color hair and eyes my brothers have.  They wanted to make the pictures look as much like them as they could.

She is thinking what she wants her card to say.

You can see just how carefully he was concentrating on his artwork.

We brainstormed what we could say in our cards to Mr. Bladen and Mr. Bladen! They came up with awesome things like "thank you for keeping us safe" and "you are doing a responsible thing" (from our 3 B's!) and "thank you for helping us".  They were very excited to be able to make cards for them.  I have sent them out and have asked for a return letter! Our class is a very caring class and this shows just how caring we are.  My brothers will be very grateful for these cards!