Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, relaxing, and safe week! We made these cute turkeys on Friday and I just LOVE reading what these sweet kiddos are thankful for.

I am very thankful for all my 18 little turkeys that I get to work with everyday :)

Homework! Makes this teacher so happy :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful week, I know I sure am enjoying it thus far!

Our Thanksgiving Feast!

Yesterday was the school Thanksgiving meal and let me just tell you...we loved it here in kinder!

We have been talking about the first Thanksgiving this week in social studies. We have discussed how the Pilgrims traveled a long way to get here and what happened when they arrived.

Students got to pick whether they wanted to be a Pilgrim or a Native American for our classroom Thanksgiving. The boy Pilgrims made pilgrim hats and the girls made bonnets. The Native Americans used shapes to create a pattern and added feathers to their headdress.

To symbolize how the Native Americans and Pilgrims ate together for their feast, we got to all eat together in the classroom. They LOVED it!

Here are some pictures from our classroom Thanksgiving!

Have a happy Thursday!!

Happy Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day! 

We made these cute flag hearts last week in class. We talked all about the importance of Veterans Day and why we honor these special men and women.

Don't forget to thank all our Veterans today!

Sound Energy

This week in science we have been talking all about sound energy. Science is always a favorite part of the day and this week was no exception.

We discussed the difference between loud and soft sounds. We discussed why when we cover our ears that sounds appear softer. We had fun making loud sounds and making very soft sounds. The kiddos like making the loud sounds and I like making the soft sounds...No surprise there :)

We made a T-chart in our science notebooks and drew pictures of things that make loud sounds and pictures of things that make soft sounds.

Students are really making improvements with their writing and illustrations. We have come a long way in the last 10 weeks!

We have also been talking about how sound energy travels. We learned that all sound is caused by vibrations. We put our hands on our neck and we were able to feel our vocal chords vibrate as we spoke. Today we made guitars using boxes and rubber bands. Students were really able to see the vibration from the rubber bands.  Some worked better than others but I know everyone had fun and learned a lot!

What a sweet group of guitar players!

All About Shapes!

This week we are learning about shapes. We are talking about how shapes are different, where we see shapes, and different ways to sort shapes.

On Monday we talked all about what shapes are and can be. We made this anchor chart together as a class:

Today in class we started this anchor chart comparing shapes. We discussed circles and rectangles. Students loved searching the room and finding different shapes. We will add a shape each day this week and then at the end of the week we will be able to go back and compare all of the shapes. 

It has been quite rainy these last few days so in order to get rid of the rainy day blues I thought we would do something fun and do some painting with marshmallows. Yes, marshmallows!

Students had a great time using marshmallows to paint circles :)

The kiddos loved this, so of course I loved it too!

We also used the eraser end of our pencils to create circles that were a different size. 

Who knew shapes could be so fun?! 

Class Books- All About Fall!

Class books are my absolute favorite! These books are always the hot ticket item in our classroom library. Students love reading their own work and I love seeing how proud each student is of his/her own work. We spend several days completing all the activities, which helps reinforce the skill we are working on. We have just completed our second class book and I wanted to share what a wonderful job these kiddos did.

The first day we brainstorm together and make a chart. students come up with what they want their page to say and I write it on the chart. We use this chart for several days to practice reading our sentences. 

Next I give students an envelope with their name on it. In their envelope they will find all the words that make up their own sentence. It is their job to put the sentence in order and read it to me. This really helps students recognize the difference between a letter/word/sentence. Once they have their words in order they glue them onto construction paper. 

The next day we work on our illustrations. We spent a lot of time this week talking about realistic pictures and making our pictures relate to our sentences. In kinder we often use pictures to read the story so we want our readers to be able to connect to the book through both the words and pictures. 

After students finish their illustrations they have the opportunity to share their work with the class. They really enjoy this part and I like how it helps students take ownership of their work. 

Next, I laminate the book and put it together for the class. Once we read it together as a whole class the book moves to the class library for students to read during read time :) 

Happy Fall!!

Mother Vowel Story

Last week I told the kiddos one of my favorite stories! When I was student teaching in first grade, the teacher I was with told me this story and I have loved it ever since. Right now we are using this story to learn the difference between vowels and consonants. We have been talking about how important vowels are and that all words have at least one vowel. Eventually I will use this story to help students differentiate between the short vowel sounds and the long vowel sounds. The kids love this story as much as I do which makes the story even better!


 This is the story of Mother Vowel and her 5 babies.

Baby "A" LOVES apples. She simple cannot eat enough apples, the only problem is that they are way up high in the apple tree so she always points to the tree and says "ă, ă, ă," until she gets an apple. 

Baby "E" is always playing on the computer or listening to music way too loud. When his mother calls him he can hardly hear her and always responds "ĕ, ĕ, ĕ" with his hand up to his ear. Baby "e" sure does frustrate Mother Vowel sometimes!

Baby "I" spends all his time outside playing. Rain or shine Baby "I" is outside playing. He often gets very muddy when he is outside so when he comes inside the house he says, "ĭ, ĭ, ĭ" as he tries to wipe all the icky mud off his clothes.

Baby "O" is the baker of the family. She loves to help her mom make muffins every night. The only problem is that Baby "O" is very impatient and never wants to wait until the muffins cool down to eat them. Baby "O" always puts the muffins in her mouth right when they get out of the oven and this makes her say, "ŏ, ŏ, ŏ" as she tries to cool down her mouth. 

Baby "U" also loves muffins. He loves muffins just a little bit too much! Every time the family makes muffins he always eats WAY too many. Eating all these muffins make his tummy hurt and he says "ŭ, ŭ, ŭ" while moaning and holding his upset tummy. 

 Mother Vowel and her 5 babies are hung in the classroom so students can easily look to the poster if they need a quick reminder of those letter sounds. I have found that this story along with the hand gestures really help students learn and remember these 5 letters and sounds.

I hope you all have a happy Monday!!