Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Everywhere!

My Kinders at the Pumpkin Patch

Last week my class was fortunate enough to go the pumpkin patch! The kids were very excited ever since I mentioned it. I love to do fun stuff but I also think its important to do things for a reason. My kids had a lot of hands on experience with their pumpkins before and after the field trip. Before the field trip we learn about what we would be doing there at the pumpkin patch by reading books about pumpkins, trips to the patch and fall.

After the field trip the kids were asked to leave their pumpkins at school. Some family things came up so I had a sub and we didn't get to do the activities before the weekend and they were bummed. :-(

But... This is what we did the following week...

Described pumpkins...
We used adjectives that described the inside and outside of the pumpkin and wrote/learned some new descriptive words. I love when they read these charts during reading and they actually use the adjective!



Measure our pumpkins with cubes...
This served as another way to assess their counting from 1-10.

Counted the seeds in our class pumpkin. They learned to count to a very high number 490. They also counted by tens. This was a great group activity.

Painted pumpkins...
Many of my students do not get to carve their pumpkins at home so I wanted to make sure they had something ready to help them decorate their home with :-)

I will admit this was a fun week! Can you believe it's already Mid-Trimester!

My New Little Family!

At the beginning of the school year like every classroom does... We went over classroom procedures and rules.

After making our social contract (the rules the students made for our class), we made a visual contract to display in our classroom. No rules just our thumbs. :)  It represents our promise to follow our contract to the best of our ability each and every day!

This is also a Pinterest idea! I'm not sure if it's what it was used for in that specific pin but I loved the idea!

Our Family Tree

Teaching the Alphabet with the Letter of the week

Every teacher has a different way to teach the alphabet. In my class I teach a letter each week. This does not mean that we do not review other letters. The focus of my literacy centers will usually have something to do with the letter of the week. For example...

Letter of the week: Ee

In writing I had a special project for a writing center and the students made an ear of corn. In Spanish it is called an "elote". They write the letter E (Capital) & the e (lowercase). This has helped my students remember the sound of the letter and at least one word that starts with that letter.

You can also see my short rhyme with the letter Ee.

In my Literacy Centers I do "Mi libro de la letra ____" (Translates to "My book of the letter ___"). The students have pictures of things and they are to collect the ones that start with the letter of the week and glue into the book. This also serves as a very helpful tool to help them remember the letter and build their vocabulary.

My other center has another book which ties in with my word of the week (yes it starts with the letter of the week). Each week they get a small book that has their high frequency word of the week. I love these books! By the end of the week they can read the book and then have another book to add to their "I can Read" collection.

We also do a poem of the week & song of the week which I use as my shared reading component and we read that EVERY day!

Ok so now that I have written a huge post... (Huge for me). How do you teach the alphabet?

Name Recognition

At the beginning of the school year I like to do a lot with student names. From the beginning I have students practice writing their names (yes, even if they "don't" know how). We have been in school for 4 weeks and every one of my students but one knows how to write their name! Maybe not perfect but with practice they will soon all have beautiful little tails on their a’s, n's, u’s etc.

This particular project was with their name written with a sharpie then the kiddos added tissue paper on top with their eraser. This was helpful to show them how to use just a tad bit of glue and with their motor skills.

Phonics Lesson

Beginning of the Year Bulletin Boards

When I start my school year I begin all my bulletin boards without decorations besides the word wall & calendar. I like the student's work to be displayed in our class on those bulletin boards throughout the school year so I try to leave them blank.

Here are a few pictures of what those look like so far. Oh yes, I also forgot to add that I love my wall space and that too begins to fill up rather quickly.




Outside Bulletin Board- Pinterest Bus Activity (Cutting practice)

 

Student Name Activity (Phonics Lesson to learn the letters of their name)



Calendar Area- Similar to what I had last year

My Word Wall- Has student's names on there (with pictures soon)

Behavior Chart

So I told you about this Behavior Chart that I made and never showed it to you! So here it is!

I was so hung up on the cuteness of my behavior board that I messed up the order (It should be yellow then orange)! So, I hope to redo it soon. Hopefully within the next week or so. I don't want the kids to be super confused.

Of course, this was not my idea. I saw it on Pinteresta and decided it was time to throw out the different colored cards and try something new. It has been hard to remember to move kids to the blue and purple because I usually just give a verbal praise... I will definitely work on this!!!
If you want to make something similar here is the English Translation in the correct order:

• Purple: Exemplary model

• Blue: Great Behavior

• Green: Ready to Work

• Yellow: Warning

• Orange: Consequence

• Red: Conference- (Parent or phone)

P.S. I am trying to keep up with posts so bear with me.

First Day!

The first day of school was on Tuesday! For the first two weeks we are only going half day so that we can schedule conferences with parents & their student as part of the WA Kids requirement. For more information on WA kids you may visit their website.

The first day was not bad. I am use to full day so it went by really fast and I felt I was just cramming those poor kids with information. All the Kinders came in to the Kinder playground then the duties gave them name tags to help teachers identify their students. The bell rang and they lined up. Some parents walked into the class with their kiddo to make sure they were settled. Their first assignment was to color a first day picture, besides one student who crying they all seemed ok so I had them say their goodbyes. I felt bad because one parents asked if she could stay all day and I had to say no. What do you guys do on the first day with parents? Last year I had a few stay and it was too much to handle, not enough room, and a huge distraction.

I walked around and wrote the kids names on their paper then we went to the calendar area and sang a song. I played a silly song so that the kids could let loose a little and they did just that.

A parent came in later after having dropped off her little girl and while I was talking to her the little girl who had been crying decided to run out the door (to the playground/street)! I won't lie, I freaked out a little bit! I had to run and get her so luckily that parent was there to help out :)

We talked about rules for the classroom and what we need to do to listen and learn. Many were very helpful so that tells me that some did attend preschool or some sort of school setting prior to Kindergarten.

It was pretty much procedures the rest of the day. I took them on a tour and we visited all the important areas (office, library, Gym, music, art, cafeteria and the 2 playground areas). I thought it was:( important for the kids to practice getting lunch as this is a new procedure and I wanted them to at least have an idea of what they are expected to do. Our lunch ladies were a bit grouchy last year so I didn't want that to happen again but it didn't quite work. :( We have 5 Kindergarten classrooms; 1 English & 4 Bilingual. The English classroom has 30 plus students with 25 being our max! Needless to say lunch was CRAZY!!!

After lunch we scrambled our kids out of the lunchroom... with 2 minutes left of our day we headed to our classrooms. The bell rang but I felt it was important for me to address the going home procedures so I kept them a little longer. I think parents were probably wondering where we were but I feel that this part of the day could have been a break it or make it thing for me and the rest of the week. I'm glad I did it!

Dismissal was a little stressful... I want to make sure I send off these kiddos with the right person and even though I had a list, it made it hard when some people were not as understanding with the process.  I hope that by now they know that their child's safety really is important to me. :)

The afternoons was way easier. I only had 3 parent conferences and it was nice to get to know the parents and child in a different setting.

So, how was your first day?!