A Double Dose of Mystery!

We were extra lucky last week.  

We had not one, but count 'em, two...two mystery readers!!

First, on Wednesday, a crazy Kindergarten day that we shared with Mrs. Everwine, 

we had.........wait for it...... MR.  COHEN as our mystery reader!! 

 It was so cool that Mr. Cohen came in to read on a day 

that both of our classes were together, 

so that we could all share in the fun.  

He read a really funny story called The New Improved Santa.

 Mr. Cohen did an excellent job reading and showing all the pictures!

Then on Friday, it was Chase's birthday and his mom was the mystery reader!

Mrs. Struzynski read a really great story about teamwork called

  The Biggest Snowman Ever.

Chase knew that it was his mom after he heard just a few of the clues!

He was really excited to have his Mommy be the mystery reader on his birthday!!

Santa's Spy!

In case you haven't already heard....we had a very unexpected visitor to our classroom!  Last Thursday when we sat down to do our morning calendar routine, some of the kids noticed that we had an elf listening to a story at the listening center!!  My kinders proceeded to tell me all about their elves at home.  They told me how he watches to see if they are naughty or nice and then he flies back to the North Pole to tell Santa what he's seen.  I had never heard of such a thing!  ....and to tell you the truth, it kind of freaks me out a bit!  That little stinker threw a bunch of my books all over the floor before settling himself down in a chair to listen to his own story!! 

We read said story and found out that we had to give him a name.  

We voted on a few names and Christmas won out! (Mara suggested "Pat", but didn't actually choose it when we took the survey...how funny!!)  

We even practiced making tally marks as we made our choices on the smart board ;)

Here is Christmas making himself at home in our listening center!

I guess all that flying back and forth to the North Pole really wore him out; 

the next day we found him sleeping in a tissue box!

That sneaky little elf TP'd our tree. 

 (At least I didn't have to climb up to get the tree down off the shelf!)

This morning we found him in the treasure box, 

trying silly bands and necklaces on for size.

I can't wait to see where he pops up next.  

I hope he tells Santa that I've been good!

Fabulous Fifties Friends!

Wow!  It is hard to believe that 50 school days have come and gone.  Christmas is right around the corner...yikes!  We had so much fun celebrating all things 50 on Monday.  Many of us came to school dressed in our 50s garb.  

Everyone looked great!

Dominic's mom looked fab in her 50s clothes.  Even her socks had poodles on them!!

My partner in crime!  Poodle skirts and Pink Ladies. 

We started the morning comparing life in the 50s to what we have now.  It was so funny to listen to kids try to explain what they thought a typewriter was!  They all thought it was so weird to have to sit by the wall to talk on the phone too ;)

Mrs. Carson and Mrs. Hoang helped out at the bubble gum blowing station.  

The kids made a craft to correspond with their results....

"Yes, I can blow a bubble!" or "Nope, mine popped!"

Lauren was the only one who could actually blow a bubble...

I couldn't capture that on camera though! 

 We tried a bunch of times, but it popped too quickly.

Here is the graph showing both the results from our class and Mrs. Everwine's. 

 Only three of our kinders were able to blow a bubble!

A shot of our bubble gum blowing crafts.  Didn't they turn out cute?!

Mrs. Contarino helped at the 50 second station.  She timed the kids to see what they could do in 50 seconds.  They counted how many twists, hula hoop revolutions, bunny hops, bubbles blown and what number they could count to in 50 seconds!

I caught some great action shots of David and Lauren working the hula hoops!

At the sink or float station, Mrs. Witherspoon had the kids make their predictions on whether they thought the ice cream would sink or float in the root beer floats.  They filled out their prediction paper, drew and ice cream scoop in either the top or bottom of the glass and then added their scoop to the graph.  They all got to wear a soda shop hat.  The awesome people at the Pop Shop in Collingswood donated enough hats for our class and Mrs. Everwine's.  Thanks, Connie!  

If you've never been to the Pop Shop, you must go check it out!

 It is set up like a real 1950s soda shop. 

 The food is great and kids eat for free on Saturday mornings

 if they go dressed in their pjs!  

How much fun is that?!

Joey's Nanny, Marlene, came in to help with our math center. 

If ever there is a special day in the classroom that you can't make it to,

 see if a family member would like to come in your place.  The kids love it!

At the end of the party we all enjoyed hot dogs and root beer floats!

A Feast of Fun!

Boy did this week go by fast!  We had such a short week, but we packed in a lot of Thanksgiving themed learning with centers, movies and stories!  

We so enjoyed the company of our roommates in Mrs. Everwine's class!  

We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving together while we made our noodle necklaces, we read stories about the first Thanksgiving, 

and then we ended the week with a fabulous feast!

Here's Evie adding "whipped cream" 

to her pumpkin pie at the fine motor center.

King and Keynen listened to Turkey Trouble at the listening center.

David was hard at work putting the Thanksgiving themed number cards

 in order over at the pocket chart center.

Mrs. Monahan is our helper for our crazy Kindergarten days!  

Here she is helping Jaylen with his letter sounds at the ABC center.

 Mara was working hard to make a pattern with her noodles.

Here's Rhyan threading the yarn through her noodles 

to make a necklace to wear for the feast!

Lily has a pattern going too :)

A special thanks goes out to all the parents that sent something in for our Feast! 

 From napkins and plates to  chicken nuggets and pumpkin pie...

we couldn't have done it without the help of all who were involved!

My kiddos had such a great time sharing their meal with friends! 

 I hope you all had a wonderful holiday too!

Turkey Time!

Wow, what a crazy week!   I can't believe we are working on Thanksgiving crafts already....I feel like Halloween was just yesterday.  

I guess that's what a week off will do to a girl ;)  

This week had two of our crazy kindergarten days where we joined with 

Mrs. Everwine's class for our half day schedule. 

 It was a little tricky though, as I had a substitute for conferences on Thursday

 and Mrs. Everwine had one on Friday.  So our kiddos were together, but not us :(

We started out the week with a Chick-fil-A inspired, "Eat more ____" craft.

They turned out so stinkin' cute!

 Check out the incredible writing going on in our room.

Amazing job Katelyn!!

 I wasn't very good with my camera this week.  

I did capture some cute pix on Wednesday of my kinders making placemats

 for next week's Thanksgiving Feast.  

 We were once again painting hands.   I think the kids love it as much as I do. 

 At least I hope they do, since I have a lots more ideas like this!!

  A big thanks to Rhyan's mom, Andrew's mom, Lily's mom and 

Josiah's grandmom who came in to help out!

Mrs. Hoang helped everyone make their turkey prints.

Look mom, messy hands!

Mrs. Carson had her groups stamping the borders with bubble wrap

 to make it look like a corn print.  

One year I tried using actual corn rolled in paint to make the borders, 

that was a disaster bit challenging ;)

Katrina shows off her bubble wrap stamper!

Josiah's grandmom also helped her groups make their bubble wrap prints.

Josiah proudly proclaimed, "First my aunt Debbie was a mystery reader, 

and now my mom-mom came in to help!"

The kids love to have their families involved.  Pssst....I do too!

Mrs. Way helps finish up with the turkey prints while the kids who have already completed thier placemats relax on the carpet to read a story

 from our Thanksgiving bucket.

We have a very short week coming up.  All three days will follow a half day schedule.  

Mrs. Everwine and I have a lot of fun things planned for our crazy kindergarten days!  

On Wednesday we will share a feast with our whole kinder family at Green-Fields.

Don't forget our 50th day of school is the Monday after Thanksgiving......

break out your poodle skirts and leather jackets!!

A Well Deserved Break

Hi all!  I hope you have been taking advantage of this gorgeous fall weather!  While spending the past three days in workshops with my colleagues, I heard about a great idea!  My little cuties have so enjoyed the mystery readers and I was kind of bummed that not all of you were able to come in to participate.  I completely understand that most if you are at work during our school day.  I don't know why I didn't think of this myself, but one of our presenters was telling us about another teacher in the US that has her students' grandparents Skype in to the classroom to read the kids a story!  A lightbulb went on for me thinking about mystery readers!!  My sister 

(Kristy McGlinn...the best 1st grade teacher at Red Bank) and I skyped last year so that my kinders could take a tour of their new school and meet a 1st grade teacher.  They loved it!  

I thought that since some of you can't physically come into the classroom,

 maybe you could steal a few moments and Skype from your desk to read a story!  

E-mail me or comment below to let me know what you think!

In a totally unrelated note, I have to brag about my teaching partner Mrs. Everwine's new blog.  Your kinders see her almost everyday and may have a friend or two in her PM class.  I know they would love to take a peek at her pictures and see if maybe they recognize a friend or two.  So check it out!

http://jeverwine.blogspot.com/

Enjoy your break! 

Halloween Honeys, Reading Buddies and Mystery Reader #2

Witches, zombies, skeletons, fairy princesses, shining knights, brides, and ninjas....we had them all this Halloween;  and then some!  The kids and I had a really great Halloween!  They all came to school dressed to impress! Mrs. Mathiesan had a goulish group for art that morning!  After art, we practiced our Halloween songs a couple more times then headed out front to show off our costumes!
 I have to admit, I wasn't very good at taking pictures this year.
Thank goodness for Mrs. Hoang and her trusty little camera!  

I took individual pix of all the kids for a class book,
but I didn't get a single group shot :( 

This post would not be possible without Lily's mommy!  Thanks, Colleen:)

I have to give a big thanks to Mrs. Carson and Mrs. Hoang 

for putting together an awesome Halloween party!

Halloween in Kindergarten can be a very chaotic day.  

This year I can actually say that I was very relaxed on Halloween.  Crazy, right?!  

.....That is until I got home to my own kind of Halloween chaos 

complete with my own kids dressed as Cleopatra and Robin.

Gabe isn't usually so grumpy, but his little sister was "on his nerves".

  But once we got out trick-or-treating

 they were best buddies and had a great time!

Anywho.....Colleen and Jill gathered up a great group of parents
 to help with our rotating stations.

The kinders all had fun making finger puppets, counting and eating candy corn, making lollipop ghosts then reading and coloring the story "The Chocolate Chip Ghost".  After our stations, the kids all had snacks and the day was over before we knew it.  Things ran so smoothly, that I was able to put together our book orders and even take down their ghost footprint crafts to send home.  

My parents rock this year \,,/   Yay me!

Andrew, Lily, Evie, Aaron and Dominic.

Joey, Katelyn, Rhyan and Josiah.

King, Hannah, Chase, Mara and Kassidy.

David, Lauren, Delaney and Keynen.

This week was our "off week" for Library,
so we met up with our reading buddies in the library!
Mrs. Purvenas suggested we do reading buddies in the library this time.  
What a great idea.
There is certainly a lot more room in there compared to my classroom.
The kids were spread out all over our library.
Each set of buddies all got to choose a comfy spot.
 Since they weren't all on top of each other,
it made it easier to hear the story that their buddy was reading to them.

David and Dominic share a buddy :)

Delaney and her buddy chose a nice spot in the sun!

Lily is listening intently to her buddy's story.

And last, but not least......dun, dun, dunnnn.  (Cue the suspenseful music!)
This week's mystery reader was King's Dad, Chazz Witherspoon.

Mr. Witherspoon read "Froggy Goes to School".  The kids thought this book was great; especially the part where Froggy goes to school in his underwear!
Don't worry, it was just a dream!!

As I read the clues, King's smile got bigger and bigger with each one!
He knew for sure that it was his Daddy coming to read to us on Friday.
I wish I had an extra hand to take pictures and read clues at the same time
 so I could have captured that moment!