Mystery Reader

Last week we had our first Mystery Reader of the year.  Ashton's daddy,  Mr. Hayden came in to read to us on Friday last week after the fire fighters gave their presentation.  Mr.  Hayden gave really great clues for the children to guess who he was.  Ashton had no idea that it was his dad until he took a minute to think about the last clue!  "Today is my birthday" was the clue.  I asked the kids if they knew of anyone that had a birthday that day and they all said no....including Ashton!  But after a minute or two Ashton says, "hey today is my dad's birthday!"  Too cute!  You should have seen the HUGE smile on his face when he saw his dad walk in to read to our class :)

Mr. Hayden read a great book called The Bugy Bops.  

It was a really cute story about friends with food allergies.

I still have a bunch of time slots available for Mystery Reader.  

If you haven't signed up and would like to read, please let me know :)

Falling Leaves and Fire Safety

I'm posting two weeks here, since I fell behind during Columbus Day weekend :)

Two weeks ago, we read stories that were all about leaves.  Some of the kids even found a few of those books in the library this week and were pretty excited to be able to take them home to read again!

Trinintee, Markie, Cayden and Emily are showing off the books we read about leaves!

We used some colored paper leaves to talk about patterning in math too.

Brianna, Rileigh, Jayson and Giancarlo made a: "yellow, red, yellow, red" pattern.

After reading Leaf Man, we took a little walk around 

the front yard of the school to find some leaves to make our own leaf men!  

Those googley eyes crack me up every time I look at them!

Here's a shot of our finished Leaf Man bulletin board with 

Miss Minardi's class' and our leaf men.  

Pretty cute, right?

Last week was all about Fire Safety. 

 We read books about fire safety and watched a cute Sesame Street video 

from when Mr. Hooper's store had a fire.  

How many of you remember Mr. Hooper?  I sure do!

 We went over the rules for keeping safe in the event of a fire.

To celebrate the end of our Fire Safety unit, we had a pretty cool visitor....Sparky!

Before our visit, we made an anchor chart with the kiddos from Mrs. Andaloro's class to talk about what we know about firefighters.  It turned out pretty cute....but I forgot to snap a photo of it!

Sparky brought along two of his friends: Chief Rosen and Captain Gill. Chief Rosen did an awesome job looking at all the things Sparky had in his knapsack.  We discussed things that are safe to play with and other things that are unsafe, like matches, lighters and candles.

Here are a few shots of Captain Joe dressing up in all of his safety gear.  Chief Rosen explained each piece and what it does to the kids as Captain Joe got dressed.

Once Captain Joe was dressed in all of his gear, 

Chief Rosen explained to the kids that it is very important that they are not afraid of a firefighter if they should have to enter their home in case of a fire. 

Captain Joe even crawled on the floor to show what he would look like

 if he were crawling toward them in a fire. 

They explained that is very important to go towards a firefighter,

and to not run away or hide during a fire. 

I hope this video link works! 

 I tried to add one of Captain Joe last year, but it didn't quite work.

Did your kinder give you your homework?

  Fire Chief Rosen told the kids that your homework was to check all of your smoke detectors to see that they are in good working order with fresh batteries.  

Did you check yours?

Blog Password: Sparky

Applicious

Apple day was a success!  

My little kinders had so much fun rotating 

through all of the apple related learning centers.  

At my station, we tasted four different kinds of apples

 then made a graph of our favorites.

  We tried red and golden delicious, granny smith and pink lady varieties.

Pink ladies were the clear winner!

Here's a cute shot of Andy being super silly while tasting a red delicious!

 Ashton's mom helped at the fine motor center, where Markie and Brianna were hard at work tearing paper to make an apple craft we hung in the hallway outside our door.

Ashton is stamping numbers with a bingo marker at Mrs. Harverson's station.  

Our awesome classroom aide helped the kiddos make a class book

 of our own version of 10 Apples Up On Top. 

After they finished making their book page, she pulled apple numbers from a bucket

 and the kiddos had to locate that number on their page and stamp it!

Rileigh's mommy helped Jayson and Mallory at her center.  

Here the kids had to stamp their fingerprints onto apple trees

 to go with a cute poem. 

 Theses crafts are coming home on Monday :)

In all the hustle and bustle of Apple Day,

 I forgot to snap a photo of Cayden's mom and aunt

helping the kids make a really cute book called Apple Faces.  

A big thank you to all the parents that came in to help and to all of you that sent in apple treats and paper goods.  Our first little party would not have been such a success without your help!

Blog Password : apples

Corino's Cuties in Full Color

This week we worked on color words.  We read some really great books about color.   We read Pete the Cat again....boy do they love that story.  I'll have to admit that I love it too!  The message it sends about not getting upset when you make a mistake is a really good one for kinders and grown-ups alike!  "Did Pete cry?  Goodness no! 
 He kept walking a long singing his song.....cause it's all good!"

 The kiddos also really liked Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd.  We are working on a class book to go along with it.  While I had a group with me working on their book page, the other kids were able to work independantly at other fun centers.  This gave them a little taste of what's to come once we build our stamina up to 15 minutes of Read to Self for the Daily 5 block.

  Giancarlo and Trinitee are working on their colorful day book page.

Ashton was hard at work making patterns with our colorful unifix cubes.

Edwin is putting his fine motor skills to work 

as he rolls play-doh into balls to place on one of the number mats.

Mallory is busy coloring the circles to match her color words.  Great job Mallory!

Speaking of Red to Self, I captured some good shots of my kinders building stamina!  

We made a little color book each day that we read together during shared reading. 

 After reading the book together and practicing how to point to each word,

 the kids placed them in their book baskets to be read during Read to Self.

 Look at Ava pointing to each word as she reads them.  Way to go kiddo!

Emily is a happy little reader!

I caught Ashton pointing to his words too!

Don't forget to color a leaf on your child's reading log each time you read together.  They can hand their log in with your signature at the end of the month
 to earn a big fuzzy!

  If you and your child read this blog post together, 

make sure he or she whispers the secret password to me 
for another chance to earn a big fuzzy!

Blog password: Pete

I Can Tell That We Are Gonna to Be Friends

 What a great first week!  My kiddos are all making friends and memories while learning how to be part of a community of little learners.  We have been working really hard to get all of our classroom procedures down pat!  Next week I'll introduce jobs and we'll start working on the Daily 5.

 Mrs. Mathiesen taught the kids all about how to look at things with "artist's eyes" 

when they went to art this week.  Check out Ben and Edwin wearing their artist's eyes.

We worked on sorting and patterning in math this week.  Mrs. Harverson is watching as Chloe makes a pattern of triangles and diamond shapes.

Little Hands at work!

Next week will be all about colors!  

If you and your child read this blog post together, 

make sure he or she whispers the secret password to me to earn a big fuzzy!

Blog Password: friends

Classroom Pictures

I promised you guys some pictures, so here they are!

 Miss Minardi created this super cute bulletin board in the hallway next to our door.

All of your names are on a piece of popcorn.  Yummy!

 

 Here is our "Work on Writing" Center.

 

This is our "Listen to Reading" center.

This is our Weather Frog.  When it is your turn to be the student of the day, 

you will get to dress the Weather Frog to match that day's weather. 

 Isn't he cute?

There are so many more things to look at.  I can't wait to show you everything.

 We are going to have so much fun on Thursday!!

Getting ready!

Hey there kinders,  did you get the postcard I sent you this week?  I am so excited to meet you on Wednesday!  We are going to have so much fun this year.  Miss Minardi and I have been very busy getting our classroom ready for you and your pm kinder friends.  I wish I remembered to take some before and after pictures.  It's looks pretty good.  I will take some pictures when I go back and post them Tuesday night :)

We are getting all new chairs and tables this year...woo-hoo!  Mr. Gould and Mr. Duffy had to take ALL of the furniture out of our classroom so that they could put the new stuff in.  Miss Minardi and I had to sit on the floor while we were sorting out your school supplies! And then guess what happened?!  They told us that our new furniture is on back order and wont be here until October :(  So the custodians had to put all of our old furniture back in! No worries....we will have fun no matter what kind of furniture we have next week!

Have fun enjoying the last few days of summer!  See you soon.

XOXO,
Mrs. Corino

Welcome PM Kinders and Parents!

I'd like to officially welcome my afternoon kinders and their families to our blog!

I try to get a blog post in every week to show everyone what we've been doing in class. 

 I hope you will take a little time each week to check it out!

Last Thursday, a few of Mrs. Elliot's 3rd graders came in to read a book to our class.

My kiddos really enjoyed having some "big kids" read to them; 

and the 3rd graders got to practice their fluency.  

It was a win-win situation for everyone! 

 Jon, Alex and Grace listen to Darian reading the book, Soup of the Day.

Josh, John and Jordan listening intently to Stephen reading to his group.

Here's CJ reading to Sarah, Sydney and Aiden.

Brietta and Andrew are enjoying Cody's story.

Ryan kept the attention of Kevin, Victoria and Marcello with his reading.

Very Special Mystery Readers!

Boy did we have a bunch of special mystery readers this week and last!  

We started it all on Dr. Seuss's birthday, March 2nd.

Rhyan's mom came in to read a Dr. Suess book to celebrate!

Rhyan's little brother came to help too :)

Later that day, I pulled some strings and got Justin Bieber

 to read The Cat in the Hat to our class!

I had some extra time in the afternoon class and we also listened to 

Tim Tebow reading Green Eggs & Ham!  I forgot to take a picture though :(

To finish our Dr. Seuss celebration with a treat, we ate green eggs and ham for snack!

Just this past Friday, Dominic's sister Taylor was our mystery reader.  She gave some great clues and was really good and asking the kiddos questions about the story as she read it!

Dom was able to guess that it was his sister once we got to the last clue.  

The kids loved having a "big kid" as the mystery reader this week!

Mystery Reader #9

Last Friday, King's mom came in to be the mystery reader.

She read a really great book about kids who don't like to go to sleep.  

Does that sound familiar in your house?

King knew right away that his mom was the mystery reader

once I started giving the clues!

We also celebrated his birthday with worms in dirt!  

Gummy worms and chocolate pudding covered in crushed cookies, of course.

100 Days!

Wow!  Can't believe how fast those 100 days went!  

Pretty soon my little kinders will be first graders...yikes!

We had a very busy day on the 100th day of school.

  A lot of my kiddos came to school dressed like they were 100 years old! 

 Even our 3rd grade reading buddies got in on the act!

Here are the old kinders and their old buddies!

Dominc, Katrina and Andrew hard at work adding things in groups of 10s to their crazy 100 day hats.

Here Evie and Aaron are at the snack station 

counting out their snacks in groups of 10

 to make our yummy 100 piece trail mix.

Little old lady Lilly and her little old reading buddy 

working on their 100 day book together.

Boy Kindergarten has really aged Chase...look at all those wrinkles and that grey hair!  

During snack time, we made of list of the things that we would like to have 100 of.  Pretty funny!