The Wheels on the Bus Go...

This week we did lots of activities with "The Wheels on the Bus!" We had so much fun making busses, having bus treats and singing our silly wheels on the bus song!

 

 

We practiced singing the wheels on the bus song with our names! We changed the first letter in "Bumpity, bump" to the same letter that our names start with! Ellie's bus went "Eumpity, eump" and Paige's bus went "Pumpity, pump!" Kindergartners think this is so silly, but it's a skill we need to practice. Hearing the first sound in a word, changing sounds, and deleting sounds from a word are very important skills to have.

 

 

We made bus treats with graham crackers, yellow frosting, M&M's, cereal, and licorice wheels.

 

Our rainbow names sure are fun! We will use these all year to practice writing our friend's names!

 

 

 

What Color Are Your Shoes?

Last week we finished up Pete The Cat and boy do we LOVE him...I know I already said that;) Here are our glyphs we made of Pete the Cat.

By the way, a glyph is a project that is completed by answering certain questions and your answer deciphers what your project looks like. For example, how many letters in your name? If you answer is 5 letters then your cat is green. If you have more that 7 letters then your cat is purple. Your shoes are your favorite color and your nose was based on whether you like to read or write better. We had a lot of fun with this! The kindergartners made little books for their cat glyphs, graphed our cat's colors, and sorted M&M's by color (which went along with our math). Enjoy!

Kinders LOVE centers!

This week we did centers during reading time!!! This is HUGE in kindergarten! Last week we learned how to play all the games and do all the centers. This week we actually got to do centers and the kids LOVE them!!! They tell me "we LOVE this" and "centers are so fun!" I luuuuuuuuuuv hearing them say this! This is why I teach kindergarten:))))))) The kids think we are just having fun, but I know they are really learning;) Each week we will have centers during reading time. The centers will always be as follows:

1. Listening Center - kids listen to a story and then draw a picture of their favorite part.
   
    

2. Art Center - For the next few weeks we will practice our glue skills. I was only planning to do this for one week, but the kids loved it so much we will do a couple more of these practice pages. The best part is that they get sprinkled with glitter too! Most weeks we will complete a page in our ABC journals here. 

 

 

3. Writing Center - Kids make one book or picture here. There are stamps, stickers, little books, paper, markers, and lots of things to use on writing projects. Right now we do drawings here, but more writing will begin to happen soon!

 

 4. Center Baskets (there are 4 of these) - The activities change weekly with these baskets. The activities will be theme based and practice many different skills.

 

 

5. Pocket Chart - This center has a poem in the pocket chart and kids complete an activity here. 

 

 

 

 

All of the centers come home on Friday stapled together with a cover page. You will be able to see what kids completed during the week and how neatly they are completing work. We will do centers whole group next week and learn how to play all the games again before we do centers during reading time. This is a really important time during our day because kids are learning how to be independent workers, work together as groups, problem solve, and practice skills they have gained in kindergarten.

 

Thanks for reading about centers. I will have a sign up sheet at open house on Thursday for parents who would like to volunteer once per week for about an hour to help out during center time. See you all there!

A Week of Writing

 

This week in kindergarten we talked a lot about nouns. What is a noun? It can be a person, place or thing. We drew pictures of each on sticky notes for our large anchor charts and then practiced drawing people in our journals. The kids did such a great job adding details and drawing REAL looking people! Not stick people...Woo Hoo!! On Friday we drew a picture and labeled each of these things (if we could) and on Monday we will do a journal entry with LOTS of details! A person, place, and a thing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No more room for pictures!!!

Soooooo, everyday I try to take pictures of the AWESOME things your kids are doing in kindergarten and I don't have any more memory on my phone! Next time I will buy the iphone with more memory;)

 

First of all, we are wrapping up Pete The Cat this week. I can't say enough about Pete because WE LOVE HIM!!!! We are finished our last Pete The Cat projects tomorrow and will get those posted this weekend. We read lots of Pete books, sang songs, practiced a color poem, and made groovy button books. So much learning and so much fun!

 

 

 

Number Journals...

We will do our number journals every week. We will complete numbers 1-20 with ten frames, addition sentences, building digits, finding digits, writing numerals and the numeral words. This is our first number....ONE!!!

 

 

This week we have practicing our "Reading Centers" that we will do next during center time. First, kids need to learn how to do the centers before they can become independent during this time. Here are a few of the centers we have done this week. If you see the same papers come home twice, this is because we practiced as a whole group once and then completed the activities by ourselves at center time.

 

Spin a shape and a color. Then trace the shape with the right color.

 

We picked a card then colored the crayon and traced the color word.

 

More to come this weekend...when I have more memory on my phone;)

 

 

We LOVE Pete the Cat!!!

We are really enjoying Pete the Cat this week! We have read many Pete books and made these cute Pete the Cats with our handprints. Then, we wrote about things we love, since Pete loves his shoes so much!

 

 

 

Read and Write the Room

In kindergarten we will "write the room" every week! I love this center because kids are up moving around the room, practicing their writing skills, and sounding out words! This week we started with things we will see at school. We did the first two words together at the carpet and then we searched the room for the rest of our words. They did sooooo great!!!!

 

The kids had to find the words/pictures in the classroom and copy the words onto their papers, next to the correct picture.

Kids hard at work!!!

The Kissing Hand and a little scissor practice!

Today we read the book, The Kissing Hand, which is about a little raccoon going to school for the first time. His mother gives him a kiss in his hand to remind Chester of her love, while he is at school. After reading this book we made Chester Raccoons to remind us of our family's love while we are away at school.

But before we could make these raccoons we had to practice our cutting skills, of course!! Take a look at these tricky scissor practice pages!

First Day of Kindergarten in Room 6!

Hi families!
Our first day was BUSY!!! Our highlight from the day was reading David Goes To School and making our "Peacebreakers vs. Peacemakers" poster. We talked about things we should do at school and things we should not do at school. Everyone was right on when it came to knowing rules at school!

We also practiced with PENCILS! We used our big, fat pencils to trace lines and write our names!

 

The kids practiced writing their name the "School Way." This means a capital letter at the beginning and lower case for the rest. If kindergartners need help they can have "highlighter road" and trace the letters in their name. We will do name tickets every morning to practice our names. After kids are successful with their first name we will practice our last names as well.

 

Like I said, I've never had a blog before...not sure how to rotate these pictures!! YIKES! I will figure this all out, but wanted to share these things with you!

 

Thanks for reading, Mrs. Craig