Busy, busy..

Next Thursday is our last day of school! It's been crazy with all the special events, meetings, etc., and I haven't had time to post anything. I have been taking pictures, though! Hopefully as the year winds down, I'll get some more posts up. :)

Celebrating Easter

Color by Sight Word

We started off our Easter with a Color-By-Sight-Word page. This is free to download from A Pea in a Primary Pod on TpT.

Adopt a Peep

After morning meeting, the kiddos chose a peep, named it, and made a home/nest for it, by cutting a paper bag to about half size, and drawing windows and doors. Tissue paper was added inside. They left the room for recess, and upon return, it was discovered that the candy peeps had laid candy eggs! Some of the ideas for "Peep Day" came from The Shroeder Page on TpT.

Instead of having Guided Reading groups today, we rotated through three small group centers.

Group 1 - Easter Bunny Drawings

We worked on following directions and visual-spatial awareness while learning to draw a rabbit with sharpies. Later in the day, the kids filled in their drawings with watercolor. The template for this came from Artventurous.

 
Group 2 - Cookie Decorating

My aide helped children decorate Easter Egg cookies with frosting and sprinkles.

Group 3 - Egg Dying

In this center, the kids drew on their eggs with white crayons, and then dyed them. I had a 2nd aide help with this. Yes, I'm lucky enough to have 2 aides during an hour of the day!

In the afternoon, we had "snack time," where we got to eat our boiled eggs, egg cookies, and candy eggs. There are always a handful of kids who have never eaten a boiled egg before. Their reactions and questions are amusing!

"Can we eat the white stuff?"
"Why can't we eat the shell?"
"Look what I found inside! (the yolk)"
"The yolk is a sphere!"
"Can we eat the yellow part too?"

Egg Hunt

After lunch, we learned that the Easter Bunny had hidden 70 chocolate eggs around our room. It took less than 10 minutes for us to find them all though!

We counted up the candy, and then estimated how many pieces we could each have, for it to be fair. We distributed them by going around the circle, each taking one at a time, until we ran out. We didn't have enough for everyone on the fourth round, so the kids decided that we could share the leftovers with the preschoolers.

Peep Reading Time

After all the excitement, we needed some quiet time. The children chose a few books, found a quiet spot and read with their adopted peep.

Happy Easter!

Spring Fever!

It looks nothing like Spring outside right now, but both students and teachers here are starting to get antsy for summer vacation (5 more weeks!). 

We are at that point where we have more daylight than we know what to do with (sunrise before 8am and sunset after 10pm), which means I can start hiking in the morning before work. Over the weekend I also got my classroom set for Spring, and I love walking in and seeing this every day!

I found this pastel banner on Yellow Bliss Road.

The kite printable is from Tater Tots and Jello. I love adding bits of environmental print like this. The kids will stand around trying to read the words, and then determine the meaning of it. "Miss Sarah, is it Happy Spring now?"

I believe these adorable bunnies were from the same blog. I glued on cotton balls for tails.

It was snowing and blowing outside on this early April day, but the little birds are in fact returning! I added some to my window with strings of yarn and bird cutouts. The idea came from a photo I came across on Flickr.

Happy Spring!

Spring?

We woke up to a -20 wind chill in Saint Mary's, and to this sunrise over the frozen river. I'm glad I decided to bundle up and take my morning hike despite the cold.

I also decided to change my desktop display this morning. Design/milk has the prettiest wallpapers with the best quotes, and they have a new one each month.

This is another of my favorites.

Learning with Legos

This year I discovered Lego Education, and am so glad I did! The first kit I ordered is called Learn to Learn, and actually comes with a great curriculum linking construction and problem solving with reading, writing, and math. The materials come in individual pouches, so that each student has their own set.

One thing I've learned already is not to worry too much about all the pieces getting put back in the right bags. I designated a little tub as a "lost and found" for legos, and that is working well. I give each child a tray to contain all their pieces while working, and that helps as well.

I also learned to have kids sit at tables and NOT on the floor. I can't even count the number of times trays were stepped on and legos strewn about when we attempted this.

Wheelchairs

Our first challenge was designing and building a working wheelchair. I showed the children how to make wheels and axles, and they took it from there. Here are some of their designs.

Yes, the wheelchair above has a propeller on it! It was great to see how unique their creations were.

Once the wheelchairs were finished, they had to draw their design and write a sentence about it. My favorites were:

"My wheelchair is going up up up up up up up the hill."
"My wheelchair is SO cool."
"My wheelchair is bum." (It was tippy)

I'm so proud of this girl! She remembered how to spell the /oo/ sound, the CH digraph, and to add a silent E to the end of chair.

A to Z Class Book

For our second challenge, each child was given a letter of the alphabet, and asked to think of something that begins with that letter.

Next, they had to build it. I photographed each one, and we created an A to Z Lego book. The next day, they authored their book page by writing, "_ is for ____." For example, "L is for Lion."

This is a duck..

A horse..

And a fox.

Saint Patrick's Day

This is the first year we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day in the classroom. I found a great idea on Kindergarten Lifestyle that I thought would make some great memories for the kids, so I decided to run with it!

Here is what we found in my classroom Monday morning.

This note was waiting for us on my teacher chair at the circle area.

We found our calendar upside down..

And a big mess in the block center!

There was green glitter and shamrocks strewn across the tables.

And even the fish tank was decorated.

The glitter led right up to a tiny door on our wall...

Counting to 100 with Leprechaun Gold

 

After recess, we found this note.

Of course we needed to find this gold and count it to be sure we had 100 pieces! 

 

Subtraction Bracelets

We needed to make sure everyone was wearing some green, so next we made subtraction bracelets, with green beads strung onto pipe cleaner. We used these to tell story problems and write number sentences.

  

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

I Love My Shoes Class Book

Pete the Cat books are some of our favorites.  The text is repetitive and sing-song, and the kids memorize them quickly.

In the past, I've used the Writer's Workshop model for writing, but it hasn't always worked for all students. Some kids are ready for it, but others (specifically those who aren't huge fans of drawing) can't stay focused or on task very long.

So lately I've been integrating writing more with other subjects. We still do journal writing about 2 days a week, but the rest of the week we are making class books and doing art/writing that goes along with our current theme. Last week we made a Pete the Cat book.

First, I took a picture of everyone's shoes.

Including my own :)

I printed them out, and had the kids write "I love my ____ shoes!" 

Everyone was motivated and worked hard.  When we were done, I bound the pages and we read the book together.

So far, the book has been a popular choice during independent reading times.  We happen to be working on color words at the moment, so this is perfect for practicing those!