50's Day!

Pretty Poodle Skirts

 To mark the 50th day of school, we had a 1950s party on November 21st.  Your kiddos came to school looking so fabulous in their fifties attire!  We had lots of poodle skirts, slicked back hair and even a motorcycle jacket.  We all had a lot of fun making crafts, counting to 50 and sharing a hot dog and root beer float snack at the end.  I had some wonderful parents in to help out too :)

Martin looking super cool in his leather jacket!

50s day got a thumbs up from Allen & Maddy

Chris and Martin and Morgan & Lily partnered up in the Roll to 50 game.

     Mr. Darpino manned the 50 second challenge station.  

The kiddos had see how many times they could hula hoop, bunny hop 

and more in 50 seconds.  

We had some pretty good hula hoopers…but Riley was certainly the master hooper!          

Here's Abigail giving it a whirl.

 Addy did a great job too while looking adorable in her pigtails & poodle skirt!

Here are Martin and Timothy working on their bubble kid craft with Mrs. Wonsetler.

Shhh…..I let the kiddos chew gum in school that day!  

We all chewed gum and tried to blow a bubble. 

We made a math graph to see how many people could blow a bubble and how many popped!  

This year we only had one bubble blowing champ ~ Abby!

Mrs. Eastlack was in to help too.  She had the kiddos reading color words and coloring  the records to match.  After that, they got to draw a self portrait of what they looked like on the 50th day of school.

…….just 44 more days until the 100th party!!

Blog Password: fifty

November Mystery Readers

I've been a bit behind in adding my pictures to the blog.  The month of November is always such a whirlwind.  The kiddos only had 14 school days last month!  

Without further ado, I present to you our November Mystery Readers…..

Elizabeth's mom came in to read A Turkey for Thanksgiving.  It's a cute story about an animal family that invites Turkey over for Thanksgiving dinner, but Turkey thinks that they want to eat him for Thanksgiving! 

Morgan's mom was our next November Mystery Reader.  She read a story from the hilarious There Was an Old Lady series!  In this story, the old lady swallows a pie first and then numerous other Thanksgiving foods until she gets so big she's used for a floating balloon in the Thanksgiving day parade!  Morgan's mommy also brought delicious homemade cookies to celebrate Morgan's birthday.  

Blog Password: books

A Very Special Mystery Reader

Last Friday we had a very special mystery reader.  Sienna's brother (and my former student) Chase came in to read FrankenFly.  The kids really loved the story and Sienna was so surprised to have her big brother come in as the mystery reader!  I was a little teary-eyed seeing what a great reader Chase has become. Ok I'm not gonna lie...I cried! What a proud moment :)

You can still sign up to be a mystery reader. 

If you can't come in, send a relative...the kids love it! 

You can even skype from your office, how cool would that be?!

Blog password: surprise

Floating Pumpkins and a Mystery Reader!

 Did you know that a pumpkin can float?  For the past few years, I have taught the same lesson on our first 1/2 day in-service in October when the PM kiddos come in to join my class.  We don't get do do a whole lot of science in a half day Kindergarten, 

so I love to get this fun experiment in each year :)

I wasn't so sure that we could work it into our new literacy block and have it fit in with our curriculum. Enter the amazing word FLOAT!  When we read the book We Are So Proud a few weeks ago, float was one of our amazing words.  In the story the word describes what you would ride on in a parade.  It was pretty impressive to see our kiddos realize that there are two meanings for the same word!

We made predictions about what regular classroom items would sink or float

 based upon what they are made from, how heavy or light they are, etc.... 

 Each year, the whole class thinks that the big ole pumpkin will sink 

since it is so heavy.  

They are always so shocked to see that it actually floats.  Pretty cool, right? 

 It's also pretty cool that this lesson keeps the attention of 40 five year olds!!! 

Here are all of the items that we tested.

Danny was did a great job making his predictions.

 Then on Friday, we had our first Mystery Reader... Abigail's mom.

She read Spookly the Square Pumpkin, 

which tied in nicely to the art lesson

 that Mrs. Mathiesen taught that morning on shapes :)

 Abby was so excited that her mom was the mystery reader! 

 She guessed who it was by the time we got to the last clue :)

If you haven't yet signed up to be a mystery reader, 

shoot me an e-mail so we can get you in!  

The kiddos love being surprised by their loved ones at school :)

Blog Password: float

Fun Friday!

Woo-hoo!  We finally got to go outside and play for Fun Friday :) Yes, we almost lost it while the giddy-ness (is that a word?) took over when lining up to go outside.  

Yes, I finished some of my end of the week assessments while they were playing

...but we made it!

  And boy was it fun! Check it out....

Blog Password: Fun Friday

Slow and steady wins the race!

Well, we started the Daily 5 during our literacy block this week.  I wasn't able to get to it every day, but we did manage to get it in twice!  My kiddos still need a lot of practice with using appropriate voice levels and behavior during center time.  Slowly, but surely we will get there!  I'm pretty proud of myself that I managed to snap a few pictures of your cuties during one of our Daily 5 sessions.  I hope they give a little insight as to how the program works :)

Here are Jake and Cole listening to a Pete the Cat story 

at the "listen to reading" center.

We love Pete!

Elizabeth was working hard at the word work center rolling a Pete themed dice 

and writing each letter as it came up.

Aiden was a great listener as Riley read him a story at the "Read to Someone" center.

Sienna and Madison reading some of my Dr. Seuss favorites

 at the "Read to Self" center.

At the "Work on Writing" center, Chris and Kloe were "rainbow writing" their names :)

My incredible teachers assistant, Mrs. Harverson, was a huge help in finishing up our baseline testing this week.  Now that I have all of that wonderful data, I can group my kiddos and start our guided reading tomorrow....woo-hoo!  Mrs. Harverson and I will attempt to each get one group every day during our Daily 5 time.  Wish us luck!

Blog password ~ Daily 5

Week 1 was a success!

Wow, one week down!  Were your kiddos as tired as me?  It really does take a little while to get out of summer mode and back into a school routine :)   All in all, I think the kiddos had a lot of fun at school this week.  We have been working really hard at adhering to our classroom rules and procedures.  Our new reading series is taking up most of our day, but I did manage to get our math and snack centers in every day this week.  I'm hoping to begin our Daily 5 rotations during out literacy block on Monday.

Madison, Addy, Ava and Morgan were busy 

stringing beads onto number flags during math centers.

Abigail and Elizabeth did a fantastic job filling out their all about 1 page!

Kloe & Sienna

....and of course there are always lots of smiling faces at snack time!

Riley & Aiden

If you and your child read this blog post together, 

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

Blog Password: friends

Class of 2026 coming soon...

Hey Kinder kiddos and parents, thanks for visiting my classroom blog.  I cannot wait to meet the class of 2026! I am busy getting things ready for another exciting new school year at Green-Fields.  I stopped at school today to bring a few things home to work on; but I am trying to hold on to summer just a little bit longer.  I hope you are enjoying the sunshine, family time, late nights and lazy mornings...I know I am :)

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