Peace, Love & Pencils

Read Across America- week 1

2012-03-09T18:16:00.000-05:00

We ended our first week of Read Across America! We are having so much fun!

Parents who have been able to come in this week, thank you so much for reading to our class!!!

We sat down and thought about all the different books we read this week... 11 to be exact :)

Which book did you like best? Who is the Author of that book? Illustrate!

Let's Read!

2012-03-09T18:14:00.001-05:00

Here are some things we are thinking about and discussing after reading our books.

Eric Carle and New York!

2012-03-09T18:09:00.001-05:00

This week we "stopped" in New York to read a few Eric Carle books!

Eric Carle was Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1929.

"His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten its way into the hearts of literally millions of children all over the world and has been translated into more than 50 languages and sold over 33 million copies. Since the Caterpillar was published in 1969, Eric Carle has illustrated more than seventy books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 110 million copies of his books have sold around the world." (http://www.eric-carle.com)

We learned a lot of interesting facts about New York. Our focus was on The Staue of Liberty!

Did you know that the Statue of Liberty is just over 305 ft tall?

Her face alone is over 8 feet tall!! The kids wondered how big their faces were...so I got a ruler out and measured them! Just over 6 inches! Now, they were really able to understand just how BIG she is!!

The tablet held in her left hand reads, July 4, 1776 (in Roman Numerals)

Ask your child why the people of France gave her to the United States!

Did you know that today Eric Carle divides his time between the Florida Keys and the hills of North Carolina?!!

Way up in the sky....

2012-03-09T17:35:00.000-05:00

In a writing center this week we used our word of the week up in a sentence, then illustrated!

Way up in the sky I see.....

the moon

a shooting star

fast planes

puffy clouds

jet planes

Great handwriting, sounding out our words, and awesome illustrations!

Art... Michelangelo Style

2012-03-09T17:33:00.001-05:00

Ok, so this was definitely a belly laugh project over a "use your brain and let's learn a lot" kind of project!

I took paper and taped it under our table. Then invited the kids to come lay down and draw...under the table! They had a lot of fun being creative lying down! I told them they looked like a little Michelangelo and we sure can respect how difficult it is to draw/paint while laying down!

The class says...who?! Michael who?

Hmmm...

Can you hear my gears turning for another Artist In Me Study??!! :)

Thumbs Up!

2012-03-09T15:35:00.000-05:00

This week in circle time we played thumbs up!

I say a word....if it starts with the Uu sound give me thumbs up! If it doesn't...thumbs down!

Sometimes the simplest games are the ones they LOVE the most :)

The letter Uu

2012-03-09T15:12:00.001-05:00

Adding raindrops Under our Umbrella!

After gluing our raindrops on our sheet, we added them from both sides of our umbrella. We then wrote our math sentence at the bottom of the page!

Start your engines!!

2012-03-07T16:25:00.004-05:00

and....we're off!!

We are having a great time reading across America!

So far this week we have been to Maine, Vermont and Connecticut!

Read Across America!

2012-03-04T19:12:00.000-05:00

March is National Reading Awareness Month and in our class, throughout the month of March, we will be "reading across America".

As we "read across America" we will be reading 50 books; one per U.S. state. 26 of these books are written by authors born in a specific U.S. state and we will be using these to "plot" our progress across America on our new U.S. map in our classroom!

And....I am excited to have invited our awesome parents to participate in our month long event by spending an afternoon having lunch with their kiddo and reading a book to our class!

The 26 states (and books) that we will "visit" during March are:

Author	Book Title	Author’s State
Cynthia Rylant	Henry and Mudge	Virginia
Jan Brett	The Mitten	Massachusetts
John J Muth	Zen Shorts	Ohio
Janet Lawer	If Kisses Were Colors	Connecticut
Deborah Diesen	The Pout- Pout Fish	Michigan
Janell Cannon	Stellaluna	Minnesota
Kate DiCamillo	The Tale of Despereaux	Pennsylvania
Eric Carle	The Very Hungry Caterpillar	New York
Lois Ehlert	Planting a Rainbow	Wisconsin
Travis Flores	The Spider Who Never Gave Up	West Virginia
Bill Martin	Brown Bear Brown Bear	Kansas
Kelly Bennett	Not Norman	California
Sandra Boynton	Horns to Toes	New Jersey
Mo Willems	Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!	Louisiana
Anna Dewdney	Llama Llama Red Pajama	Vermont
Dian Curtis Regan	Barnyard Slam	Colorado
Julia Cook	Sorry, I Forgot to Ask!	Utah
Audrey Wood	Silly Sally	Arkansas
Byron Barton	I Want to Be an Astronaut	Rhode Island
Peggy Parish	Come Back Amelia Bedelia	South Carolina
Audrey Penn	Chester Raccoon and the Big Bad Bully	Maryland
Steve Jenkins	What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?	North Carolina
Chris Van Dusen	If I Built a Car	Maine
Beverly Cleary	Two Dog Biscuits	Oregon
Janet Lunn	Amos’s Sweater	Texas
D. Mankus Pinwater	The Big Orange Splot	Tennessee

I am so excited to begin this endeavor with the class. I think that the kiddos will really enjoy the books that I have chosen and I am thrilled that our parents will be involved as well.

So....let's get started on our road trip!!

One Fish Two Fish....

2012-03-04T18:36:00.001-05:00

In a math center this week we rolled the dice and counted our goldfish to make a math sentence. Lots of fun and yummy too :)

Rhyming With Word Families

2012-03-04T18:36:00.000-05:00

This week in a writing center we used 3 different word families to make rhyming words....Seuss Style!

at, an, and our word of the week, in.

We cut out Cat In The Hat hat shapes and wrote the word family name at the bottom, then came up with different words in that family.

cat

hat

rat

sat

man

can

fan

pan

fin

win

tin

Nonstandard Measurement

2012-03-04T18:35:00.000-05:00

Nonstandard units of measure are objects such as cubes, paper clips, toothpicks, even toothbrushes :) that have the same size but are not typically used to find length.

This week we measured different things using toothbrushes, of course!

We even measured our friends!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!!

2012-03-02T17:26:00.001-05:00

We had such a fun week celebrating Dr. Seuss. Learning about his life, his artwork, and his passion for writing books that truly entertain children.

Our Eggsperiment - Part 1

2012-03-02T16:43:00.003-05:00

Part 1 of our "Eggsperiment!"

The results.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here in NC. Sunny Carolina blue skies and 81 degrees! Can't beat that! So I decided to take our little experiment outside!

What happened? Our eggs left in soda turned brown...just like our teeth would if we didn't brush every day! The one egg left in water, with no sugar, stayed nice and white!

Wow, those sugar bugs really attached to the other 3 eggs!!

Part 2!

2012-03-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

Part 2 of our Eggsperiment!

Let the brushing begin!

Using toothpaste and our toothbrushes, let's brush away the nasty sugar bug stains!

The result of brushing...our brown eggs are turning white again!!

Tt for Teeth. Dental Health Week!

2012-02-29T16:50:00.000-05:00

This week we are learning about our teeth!

We learned what the parts of a tooth are, what makes our teeth white, what makes our teeth healthy and what makes our teeth unhealthy!

We started the week with making our very own toothbrush...well, our own paper toothbrush! After we made our toothbrush we each wrote a fact that we learned about teeth and toothbrushing.

The kids really got a kick out of making these "giant toothbrushes" and I loved watching them use their super scissor and writing skills!

Water, soda and some eggs!

2012-02-29T16:39:00.001-05:00

I always love the look on their little faces when I bring something into the classroom that they know doesn't belong (like shaving cream!!). I typically get a "whaaat in the world?!"

This week... A soda, a bottle of water, and some hard boiled eggs!

We placed one egg in water and 3 others in soda. I explained that we are using eggs to represent our teeth. Both teeth and eggshells are made of minerals containing mostly calcium. We are letting them soak in our classroom overnight.

Hmmm, I wonder what will happen to them???

Short week, with a lot of learning!

2012-02-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

I still can't believe this past week was only 3 days long!! We learned so much! We practiced the correct letter formation of the letter Ss by writing it in our ABC journals, writing it on our white boards, and even in shaving cream!

We learned our very first phonogram this week- sh. We made a word list of all the words we can think of that have the sh sound in them. Beginning, middle or end. I was so thrilled at all the words they came up with! Even words that are not actually sh words...but only due to the English language ;) like ocean and sure.

We hit our record for our word list with our letter of the week- 51 Ss words! Wow!

We learned about new shapes this week and even went on a classroom shape hunt to find our shapes.

This week coming up is a very special week. On friday March 2nd we will celebrate Dr.Seuss' birthday!!

I LOVE Dr. Seuss and I have a lot of fun things planned for the week.

PLUS! March is National Reading month for kids.

More info to come..... :)

Shaving cream in TK?!

2012-02-26T10:49:00.000-05:00

Yes!

A great FUN way to practice writing our letters and words is with... Shaving cream! Who woulda thought?!

We each got a squirt of shaving cream and spread it out a little in front of us. This became our shaving cream writing canvas! Using our pointer finger we made the correct letter formation of the letter Ss...which is such a tricky letter and easily flipped. Then we "cleared our canvas" by just wiping our hand over the Ss we just made! How cool is that?! :) Next, we wrote our sight word of the week, so.

We practiced writing our first phonogram learned...sh. Then some sh words, like fish and dish! We had SO much fun....we will definitely be doing this again!!

Sh for Shapes!

2012-02-26T10:33:00.001-05:00

We're going on a shape hunt. Look what we found!!

We knew the shape of a diamond and a star , but the cylinder and cube were a little tricky!! Wow, they are 3-D shapes. 3-D stands for 3 dimensions. Length, height, and depth.

Stamping Out Sight Words!

2012-02-24T16:59:00.002-05:00

I've had these letter stamps, capital and lowercase, since Christmas. As a matter of fact, my sweet husband got them for me as a Christmas gift! My kids were a little confused at all the gifts he bought me that were not really for an adult woman, but for a 5 year old kid!! Each time I opened one, my face lit up with joy...that was a little confusing for them too!! :)

Anyway!!! Finally, I was able to use them this week. I was just as excited to have my classroom kiddos use them as I was opening them Christmas morning!!

Ss is for Stamping and Sight words!

This was a great center! The kids were able to decide on their own which sight words they wanted to stamp....other than our word of the week, so, which was a must :)

They found their letters, stamped the word out one letter at a time, and then wrote the word with their very best handwriting! Great learning, great fun!

Rhyme Time!

2012-02-21T11:16:00.000-05:00

Rr is for Read!

2012-02-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

What's the most important Rr word? READ!!

We made mini books reminding us to bring one of our favorite books to school on Friday for Ms.Kristy to read to us!

Rr is for Rocks!

2012-02-17T18:30:00.000-05:00

Hey kids, let's go find some rocks! Huh? Are you still feeling ill Ms. Kristy??

Let's go outside and go on a search for rocks, big and small for our math center!

Rocks for Math Center??

Are you sure you are feeling ok?

Teamwork in action!!

Dump truck full of rocks!

"How are we going to learn with these rocks Ms.Kristy?"

2012-02-17T18:11:00.000-05:00

So...did they really think we were going to just collect rocks?? Did they think there wasn't going to be some type of educational reason for having what seemed to be an extra recess just digging around the playground looking for rocks??

No, they know me well enough now :)

As soon as I told them we had enough rocks and it was time to go in, I heard it...that question I was hoping to hear.... "How are we going to learn with these rocks Ms.Kristy?"

Ah ha! Let's go find out!

First we had to sort our rocks! Small, Medium, and Big!

We grouped our rocks into piles of 10's and 5's and counted. We had to fill in the underlined part of our paper with our answers!
I counted 32 small rocks
I counted 52 Medium rocks
I counted 40 big rocks

I have the most Medium rocks

( Notice how I actually snuck in a writing center with this math center too!! ;) )

Art Show

2012-02-17T17:43:00.001-05:00

Wow! What a great Art Show and Valentines Day party we had this week! Thank you so much for coming!! The children were so excited to give you a tour of our little art museum! Every piece of art has a story and the kiddos did such a great job explaining their art, and it's story.

Today we made big art folders to carry our valuable Picasso art pieces home!

Enjoy :)

The Artist In Me

2012-02-17T17:36:00.000-05:00

The Artist in Me ~ Picasso

2012-02-12T12:40:00.002-05:00

I had Picasso on my lesson plans for last week...Pablo Picasso fit beautifully with the letter Pp! However, with having a lot of the class out....and myself, I decided to postpone the lesson.

Author and artist studies are absolutely my favorite weeks! Picasso is one of my favorite artists to teach to kids. His art is broken into different stages of his life which makes it interesting and easier for the kids to understand.

We learned about Picasso's life and his art. We learned that some of his art styles were directly related to his life. The Blue Period, where his art consisted of mainly blues, greens, and greys was directly related to Picasso's sadness. He had lost his best friend and Picasso felt sad and alone.

After the Blue Period, was the Rose Period. His art was more lively and cheerful colors- a lot of pinks, reds and oranges. This was during the time in his life he met and fell in love with Fernande Olivier.

I am so excited for our Art Show this Tuesday! I will wait to post any photos of the kids art until after the show.

I Heart Math

2012-02-09T17:38:00.004-05:00

We love math yes we do! We are becoming addition superstars!

This week we rolled the dice, counted, and drew that many hearts to one side of our heart. Then we rolled again, counted and drew that many on the other side of our heart!

We then counted our total and wrote our addition sentence.

As we write our addition sentence, we always say what we are writing out loud... Five plus two equals seven.

Happy (belated!) 100th day of school!

2012-02-05T17:11:00.004-05:00

Finally, on our 104th day of school we were able to celebrate!

Lot's of fun activities followed by a surprise Pizza Party!!

P is for Patience!!

2012-02-05T16:13:00.001-05:00

So I had this brilliant idea that I would have the kids make beaded necklaces to sport on the 100th day of school. Using 100 beads of course!

This project took quite a bit longer than I had planned, but they did GREAT! If we don't work on fine motor skills for a whole week, we'd be ok after this project! :)

This took so much patience and pride in their work to complete. I was super proud of them!

100 Pennies

2012-02-05T16:01:00.002-05:00

100 Pennies.

That's one whole dollar!

On our 100th day we did a bunch of fun math activities with 100 pennies.

We separated our pennies in groups of 10 and counted by 10's. We then separated them in groups of 5 and counted by 5's.

We placed the pennies on a 100's chart and counted to 100.

We took 10 off at a time and counted backwards from 100 by 10's.

90, 80, 70, 60....

When I am 100....

2012-02-05T15:50:00.002-05:00

Here's some imaginative writing for you! :)

To help celebrate our 100th day of school, we finished this sentence- When I am 100 I will be....

Oh, of course, an ice cream man!

Very true!

A 100 year old princess!

Too funny!!

Not so many belly laughs this week...

2012-02-05T15:43:00.000-05:00

This week was certainly NOT a typical week in TK.

We have been so sick! One day we were down to just 3 kids in class!!

I always pride myself on being a very health conscious tacher. We talk about healthy foods, taking vitamins, covering sneezes and coughs, and washing our hands....A LOT! The kids know that everyday for lunch Ms.Kristy drinks a bottle of vitamin water to stay healthy, because if she gets sick...well, she can't teach!

So, this week it happened. I started feeling ill last Saturday and by Monday morning I was full blown sick! I was out on Monday, returned Tuesday for half a day and was back out on Wednesday. I should have known, the kids have been out sick for days at a time, some even an entire week...this bug was nasty with a capital N! I was certainly going to have to miss some time myself :(

I am feeling much better and am SO excited that so are the kids! On friday we had the WHOLE class back! That is the first in THREE weeks!

The kids made this special book for me when I was out. Each one wrote to me, wishing for me to get well and come back and teach them :)

Love, love, love these kiddos!

Letter Pp. Creative Math.

2012-02-05T15:22:00.001-05:00

This week we did a very creative math center. We took 6 different types of pasta and glued them to our paper to make a Pasta Picture! Anything from a house, a person, flowers, to just random pasta pieces to make "imaginative art" :)

Once our pasta picture was complete, we counted how many of each different type of pasta we used to make our picture.

We then graphed our pasta pieces. Which did we use more of? Less of? Equal?

O for Octopus

2012-01-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

This week we learned all about the Octopus!

I started this unit by introducing the kids to a KWL chart.

We talked about everything we thought we already Knew about octopuses. Then we discussed what we Wanted to know, then the fun part...teaching it! (oh wait that's for me!) Learning!

We learned so many fun facts about the octopus. The kids listened so well to books (fact and fiction) and were able to come up with such a long list of "L"'s for our KWL chart!

We had sick kiddos in our class this week. Poor Jack was out all week, but was able to return on Friday! I can not tell you how proud I was of the kids on Friday. They were SOO excited to tell Jack everything they learned throughout the week! We sat down at our morning meeting and I let each child take a turn "teaching" Jack all about octopuses.

Certainly was one of those teacher moments...the moment where I sit back, listen, smile, and get warm fuzzies :)

Octopus facts we learned this week:

- Octopuses are boneless creatures

- Octopuses can live 6 months to a couple of years

- Octopuses are bottom dwellers of the sea. However, as they hatch from the eggs, the young ones swim to the surface. After floating on the surface with the planktons for about a month, they swim back to the sea bed.

- The color of octopus blood is blue.

- Octopuses vary in size depending upon the species. While those found in tropical waters are small, octopuses of the colder seas are larger in size.

- Females are smaller than the males.

- Octopuses have three hearts. Two hearts pump blood through the gills whereas the third one pumps blood through rest of the body.

- Octopuses have sensory receptors at the bottom of their suckers that enable them to "taste" whatever they touch.

- Octopuses are known to eject a cloud of black ink when attacked by a predator. Sometimes they may also shed an arm to escape a predator. The lost arm regrows in some time.

Octopus Art

2012-01-29T11:08:00.001-05:00

Using washable markers, the kids colored an octopus shades of green, blue and purple.

When finished, I dabbed their papers with a very wet paper towel to blend the colors!

Always a fun trick with washable markers!

When they were all dry, we glued "suction cups" to their arms and numbered them 1-8.

Handy Facts :)

2012-01-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

We made handprint octopus art buy painting our hands, excluding our thumbs. We then each picked one fact we learned and wrote about it on our paper.

Making Oatmeal Clay

2012-01-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Oh, Oh, Oh CheeriO

2012-01-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

This week in our math center we used Cheerios as our manipulative!

We grabbed Cheerios, counted, recorded and added them up to find the total!

(and snacked on a few too!)

Our Next Class Book....

2012-01-23T18:18:00.001-05:00

Coming home this week, a very special TK class book.

Sight Word BINGO Fun!

2012-01-23T18:14:00.001-05:00

BINGO!!

A Net Full of Nn's!

2012-01-23T18:01:00.002-05:00

To help us practice our letter Nn formation, we made Nn Nets! Inside our nets we made an AB pattern of capital and lowercase N's!

Fun Forming Sight Words!!

2012-01-23T17:49:00.007-05:00

If I haven't mentioned it before :) play-doh is such an amazing kid/teacher tool!

Kids love it, easy clean up, AWESOME for fine motor skills, great use of imagination, AND the kiddos are proud to show me what they know- forming their letters and words!

I.Love.Play-Doh.

Number bean bag fun!

2012-01-18T17:42:00.001-05:00

We played the number bean bag game 2 ways....the silly way and the smart way :)

I have bean bags numbered 1-20. I randomly passed out 3 bean bags to the kids.

Now, what can we do with these bean bags? Hoping for a "Oh, let's learn with them Ms.Kristy!" instead I got a very serious "we could see if we can balance them on our heads" response!! So of course, I laughed, and said.... OK! Let's do it!

* the serious faces crack me up...they are trying not to smile or laugh because if they do, well, they fall!

Now let's do this another way...let's look at the 3 numbers we have. Who has the number 1? That kiddo will be the leader of our game. This is the number line game! Each kiddo needs to know what their number is and where it belongs on the number line. We did GREAT!

Number stampin'

2012-01-18T17:23:00.000-05:00

Practicing our numbers this week in a math center. The kids LOVE using stamps. Anytime I can incorporate stamps into a learning project, I'm happy...and so are they! :)

Nn is for Numbers.

2012-01-18T17:14:00.001-05:00

We have been gradually adding to our math circles and centers each week. Starting with number recognition, number formation, adding with manipulatives, greater than less than and this week counting by 5's! However, I've been noticing we are having a bit of trouble again with our number formation.

Numbers are backwards (especially that pesky number 6!) and we are having to look at our number line just to remember what the number looks like! Uh, oh...time to go back, and review, review review!

So, this week...Nn, for numbers.

On Tuesday we wrote numbers on a napkin...one of the very few times we were allowed to use a marker to write! The kids were thrilled! Silly kids!

Project Brown egg, White egg.

2012-01-16T12:28:00.001-05:00

Ms.Kristy is the only one of us in class with blue eyes. Would it be fair if she wasn't allowed to eat at nice restaurants just because she has blue eyes?

Would it be fair if everyone who has brown or green eyes was able to go to the best schools but Ms.Kristy had to go to a different school... one that was not as good, with broken playground equipment, and was far away from the brown and green eyed school?

Of course not!

Does it matter what we look like on the outside? Does it matter if we are tall, short, dark skin, light skin, blond, or brunette? Should we judge someone by how they look? How they dress? Where they live?

Project Brown Egg, White Egg.

Let's look at these two eggs. How are they the same?

They are both eggs. They are both oval shape. You can eat both of them. They are the same size.

How are they different.

One is white and one is brown.

Is that it? Yep...that's it.

Ok, what do you think they look like inside?

"Ms. Kirsty are you going to smash the eggs open!?" No, no!! But I am going to crack them open and see what they look like inside. What do you think? How do you think they will look inside?

"The white egg will look yellow and the brown egg will look brown." The kids were completely convinced that the inside would definitely look different.

(certainly helped my project that the kids all seem to only eat white eggs!!)

I crack the white one open. Yep, we are right! It's yellow. Now the brown egg...WOW...

"IT'S THE SAME INSIDE!"

Project complete!

Even though we may look different on the outside, on the inside we are all the same. We are humans that deserve to be treated equally with kindness and respect.

Teacher warm fuzzies for knowing I made an impact that will always be remembered :)

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King Jr!

2012-01-16T12:04:00.001-05:00

In one of our writing centers this week we thanked Dr.King for one of the things he did to change our world...love these kiddos! :)

Teamwork

2012-01-16T11:58:00.001-05:00

It's not all ABC's and 123's in Ms.Kristy's class.

Not at all!

I am always telling the kids that we are a like a family. We need to work together as a team, solve problems as a team, and treat each other with kindness and respect.

We were already taking about kindess and respect during our Martin Luther King Jr. studies this week, so it just seemed like a good time to do a teamwork project.

I had several copies of a blank black and white butterfly. I handed them out to the kids. Each child had ONE crayon, a random color I chose for them that they had to color their butterfly with. When we were all done we looked at them. Did they look nice? Sure! We are so conscious now of staying in the lines and doing our best job coloring these days!

Now, let's put our butterflies aside and do this again. This time let's share just one copy of the butterfly. Each of you pick 3 spots on the butterfly to color with your one crayon, then pass it to your friend. Let's keep doing this until the entire butterfly is colored.

Done.

Look what we did! We each had only one crayon and our butterflies looked nice. But our butterfly that we ALL did together using teamwork...that was the most beautiful butterfly of all!

Me On The Map writing center

2012-01-12T17:29:00.000-05:00

We knew our world was called Earth. We learned that our country is The United States of America and we can shorten that by saying we live in the USA.

What is that weird looking shape?! That's our state! North Carolina!

Hey, finally a map with roads! That road is the road our school is on!

This is me, on the map.

Look at all the places I am at right now!

Earth. The United States of America. North Carolina. Our school. Our classroom!

I've got the whole world in my hands...

2012-01-12T17:26:00.003-05:00

Look, we can find the United States of America!

Me on MY map!

2012-01-12T17:07:00.002-05:00

Me ON THE MAP

2012-01-11T17:13:00.001-05:00

This week we are learning all about maps! Our studies and projects are based on the book

Me On the Map by Joan Sweeney. This is an excellent book for young kids to understand what maps are.

What do we already know about maps?

1. They have roads on them.

2. We look at them so we know where to go.

3. You won't get lost if you have a map.

Three very good responses! I admit, I was very happy (and surprised) that not one kiddo said, "what's a map? Isn't that what we have a GPS for?!!"

We learned that we can have maps of so many more things! It's not just roads!

In the book, we followed the life a little girl who lives in Kansas. She first shows us a map of her bedroom! WHAT?! A map of her bedroom?! Yep! And a map of her house, a map of her street, a map of her state and a map of the world!

Maps are for many things and certainly not just to show us where roads are!

We learned that we could make a map of different places we know. Our homes, our school, our bedroom, even our classroom!

So...we did.

I'll be posting the photos of our completed maps tomorrow!!!

Mosaic m's

2012-01-11T16:51:00.002-05:00

A project that the kids love to do that is also really great for their fine motor skills....and patience!! :)

The letter Mm

2012-01-11T16:46:00.001-05:00

Every week we do a letter of the week word list. I am more and more impressed (and super proud :) ) at the words they are thinking of! This week we came up with 22 Mm words! When we are all finished making our list the kids each come up to the white board and underline the Mm's. They know the more words they come up with, the more they get to come up and pick a word to underline!

The little things that make TK'ers super excited... LOVE love white boards!!

Let's Roll Math!

2012-01-11T16:35:00.001-05:00

Let's Roll!

This week in one of our math centers we rolled dice, recorded our numbers rolled, and added our numbers! We did this 4 times and then circled which answer was MORE!

If you notice on the sheet, there wasn't a + sign or = sign! The kiddos did great remembering our math symbols and filling them in where needed!

Next Week's Newsletter

2012-01-07T16:55:00.001-05:00

Starting next week I am going to break up the newsletter posts into smaller "topics" like, literacy, math, etc. to make the reading easier. So going forward you will not see any more single (and very long!) newsletter posts.

Big Smiles,

Ms Kristy

Newsletter (Ll)

2012-01-07T11:43:00.000-05:00

This week,the letter Ll

Word ofthe Week- Like

Number ofthe week- 12

Happy New Year!!

Look! I found the letter Ll!

Using our magnifying glasses we looked for the letter Ll in newspaperprint.

We are now adding to thisfun activity by also looking for any words we know. Even if it hasn’t been a word of the week, ifwe can read it, we record it at the bottom of our page. It’s exciting to see what words the kiddosalready recognize that hasn’t even been taught in class!

Math: Learning with Legos

Lego Bump Addition

In one ofour math centers we added the “bumps” on Legos! The kids really enjoyed this and thought it was really cool that theywere able to use Legos as a learning tool!

What acool manipulative for math! Being ableto not only see the manipulative, but also feel it!

Duringfree time the kids were building with Legos. Spaceships, buildings, cars, animals …all sorts of imagination!! I absolutely love to see the kids using theirimagination. This week it took on awhole new level as I watched them counting and adding their bumps on theobjects they made…WOW! J

In mathcircle we discussed the meaning of less than. We started very basic. Just 1 Lego in my hand and 10 Legos in myother hand. Which is less? Silly Ms. Kristy…. obviously only one is lessthan 10!

Ok, let’sbump it up and use our number line. Which is less 23 or 29. If we are not sure, let’s look to see whichnumber is closer to 0. We are picking upon less than very well! We will beworking on more than next week and continue to use more than/ less than in ourmath circles the rest of the year.

We playeda one less snowflake game where the kids grabbed a numbered snowflake. They then recorded the number they picked andwrote the number that is one less.

Literacy:

The letter Ll.

Well, we sure like the letter Ll as it is pretty easy to write! Reviewing letter formation was abreeze!! Using letter stamps we stampedaround our letter L. We made rainbowLl’s and play-do Ll’s!

In Lit circle we came up with a HUGE list of L words! Our word list keeps growing each week andsometimes I’m just shocked at the vocabulary your kids are learning!

Happy New Year! How many Letter L's can you find in our Happy New Year cheer?

We are half way through our year and the letter L fits perfectly into oneof my goals for the kids. Lastnames! This can be either dreadful orexciting for the kids! There wasdefinitely mixed emotions on my new rule of EVERYTHING must have your first andlast name written on it now. Of courseI’m making it fun and sometimes silly J Singing the last namesto each child to the tune of B-I-N-G-O. Luckily they all can be sung to that tune without sounding toosilly. Now my last name… that was thesuper silly! Try singing S-E-R-D-I-N-S-K-Yto that tune!!!

We cut out the letters in our last name, unscramble them and glued them toour “I know my last name” paper.

Writing: Happy New Year! In the year 2012 I want to_________________.

We always have a writing meeting before we sit and write. I question the kids to get themthinking. Think… I want to… go somewhere? Do something? Learn something? After we meetthe kids are free to write whatever they have come up with. It’s fun to hear their ideas of what theywant for the year 2012! From learninghow to ski, learning math to going to Chuck-e-Cheese!

Is it spring or winter? Well, it is winter but often in North Carolinaour winter days can feel like spring! That’s how it’s been most of our winter here so far. This week was CRAZY weather though! We froze on Monday and Tuesday and by Fridaywe were outside enjoying the 65-degree weather. No hats, mittens, or bright red cheeks!

We took advantage of the weather and used our giant number line to have amath circle outside. We lined up and oneat a time I told the kids how many to step or jump. The tricky part…. I gave them a number thatthey had to recognize and stand on first. Now, we are only jumping or counting less than style! Stand on the number 27. Jump 2 less than 27. Again, great learning fun while getting outthe extra energy!

It’s going to be close to 70 degrees this weekend…enjoy!!

Big Smiles,

Ms.Kristy

Baby it's COLD outside!

2012-01-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

Well, we certainly aren't used to this weather! A few days ago it was in the 70's and today we had a high of 38! Yikes! We did go outside for a quick recess today- I had the kids run on the field but before too long, they were all cold.

Now I'm not talking just a little bit cold. I'm talking cheeks bright red, numb fingers, shivering cold! It was the first time this year they actually asked me to go in! I looked at my watch...well, it's only been 8 minutes. Hmm, what do I do? Ok, time to go in and do something fun...where it's nice and toasty!

We did the Crazy Shakedown which they LOVE, but I wanted to try something new. In those 8 minutes, they actually got a ton of energy out and seemed more tired (or just numb all over!) than crazy. How about Yoga! Yoga?! What is Yoga? Well, two kids actually not only knew what Yoga was but wanted to teach the others different poses!

I have these Yoga for Kids cards at school. They have pictures of someone doing the pose and the name of the pose. I thought I would keep their interest the best by doing all the "animal poses." The elephant, the shark, the gorilla....

I soon realized- hey, they are actually really into this! Before long we had done over 10 different Yoga poses!

This is why I am constantly trying new things with the kids. You just never know. A class mostly full of boys, who LOVE yoga...nice. :)

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T19:32:00.002-05:00

Today was a great day back to school! I loved hearing about all the holiday fun the kiddos had over the 2 week break!

We kicked this week off with the letter Ll, the number 12 and the word Like!

We've got a great week ahead!

Jumping Bean Games

2012-01-01T19:24:00.000-05:00

Here is a little letter recognition and phonics game that my kiddos love to play. During circle time I place the deck of cards on the floor – it consists of all of the letters, with separate cards for upper and lowercase and 6 “extra” cards (the jumping bean). On each child’s turn, they flip up a card, say the name of the letter and then the sound that it makes. If they pull a jumping bean card, they get to stand up and yell “jumping bean!” and jump up and down. It’s super simple, helps with their letter recognition and phonics, and gets a little bit of energy out of them to boot!

I use the same technique for sight words and double-digit number recognition as well.

Good fun!

Circle Time Games

2012-01-01T15:18:00.001-05:00

Newsletter (Kk)

2011-12-31T10:44:00.000-05:00

Here are the highlights of this week.

Our Focus:
The letter Kk

Word of the week: be

Letter Kk

This week, the letter Kk! We practiced the correct letter formation of the letter Kk by gluing around the letter K and adding the cereal Kix to our K!

Using our fine motor skills we tore up Kleenex into really small pieces and glued the pieces around the letter K. The kids discussed in circle time that they think the letter Kk is quite tricky to write! The reasons: there are two slanted lines going in opposite directions and the lowercase k is so similar to the capital K…yet different! Wow! It’s nice to know what the kids are really thinking; it certainly makes my job easier! I was able to spend more time focusing on the letter formation and giving them some helpful pointers such as visualizing the letter Kk is kicking…straight line down, slant in, kick out.

Math Centers:

This week we reviewed the numbers 5 and 10. Each day we practiced counting by 10’s. My goal is to bump it up and start counting by 5’s in the New Year. Snowman addition! We added 3+2, wrote the number 5 as the answer and glued 5 buttons down our snowman’s belly!

We made a Rudolf craft this week by tracing our hands and cutting them out for his antlers. We then numbered our antler fingers 1-10.

Our class sure does love ketchup! We did a class graph on who likes ketchup and on what kinds of foods do you like ketchup on! So many things from French Fries, eggs, and even Mac-n-cheese!

Literacy:

This week we read a lot of Holiday books! Again, we reviewed and discussed fact from fiction. We read a Kwanzaa book, which we decided, had a lot of facts in it! We also read a book about a polar bear going ice-skating, which was definitely fiction!

We played Letter BINGO this week a new “tricky” way. Whenever I pulled a letter that we already learned, I only gave them the sound of that letter!

Writing Center:

In our journals we wrote: I like to be at the ________. As always, we had to sound our word(s) to finish our sentence. I have seen a wonderful improvement since we started sounding out our words! We then illustrated our sentence.

Pajama Day! We discussed that it was really fun to wear our pajamas to school on Thursday BUT we weren’t wearing our PJ’s just for fun. We were wearing them in celebration of helping other kids in need, whose families have trouble affording or can’t afford pajamas. Since we recently learned the meaning of Thanksgiving and now Christmas, we felt pretty good about ourselves giving to other kiddos who needed our help! Our school collected over 50 pajama sets! Thank you!!

The Holiday Spirit! We spent a lot of extra time this week, and we will next week as well, doing holiday type crafts. Right now the room is decorated with these holiday crafts but I assure you they will all come home this Thursday! The kiddos really wanted to take them all home right away! I love it that they are so proud of their work. ☺

We have been spending a lot of our circle time singing and practicing for our big play coming up this Friday!

Thank you all so much for taking the time to come meet with me on Friday!

Big Smiles,
Ms Kristy

Newsletter (Jj)

2011-12-30T11:25:00.000-05:00

Our Focus:
The letter Jj and Rhyming

Word of the week: at

Number of the Week: 10

Letter Jj

This week, the letter Jj! We practiced the correct letter formation of the letter Jj by tracing the Jj with many colors making our rainbow Jj’s. We also learned and practiced the sound of J, coming up with a long list of J words!

Math Centers:

This week in math we continued with addition using jellybeans as our manipulative! We grabbed a few jellybeans and counted them. Wrote the number, then grabbed another handful of jellybeans and counted them as well. We placed our jellybeans on paper between the + sign and then added them all together to find the total. The kids had a great time doing this! I love to see them using other math skills while leaning another. An example, they made patterns with their jellybeans they were adding! Smart kiddos!

As a fun math activity we had a jumping contest! We used cubes as our non-standard measuring tool. Sydney had the longest jump at 75 cubes!

How many jellybeans are in the jar? We made our prediction, wrote it down, then as a class counted all the jelly beans to see how close our estimation was.

We made a kid bar graph using our jackets this week! We sorted and graphed by color, buttons, zippers and hoods!

Literacy:

This week we discussed rhyming words. Our word of the week was “at” so this fit in perfectly! Do you know how many words your kiddos know now that they know the word at? A lot!

Hello “at” word family! At, sat, fat, cat, rat….

We then made our At Hat. Filling in a missing letter to create at words.

We played lots of silly rhyming games this week. The silly name song was a hit. We all sang the silly name song and when I pointed to a kiddo I gave them a letter, they then had to rhyme their name using the sound of the letter I gave them! Example- If I gave Ethan the letter G, he would say Ethan gethan. A great letter sound review as well! It was a little tricky but the kids caught on fast and laughed at all the silly names! ☺

Jack and Jill went up the hill… We read Jack and Jill and then made up our very own TK Jack and Jill story using our own rhymes!

Writing Center:

This is my jacket. I wear it when________________. The kids thought about when they wear a jacket. Do they wear a jacket in the summer? No! They wear a jacket in the fall, winter, when it’s cold, and when it’s snowing! They then illustrated their sentence.

In free Art we decorated a jacket! I always tell the kids the only rule in free art is to use your imagination and be creative! They sure were creative looking jackets ;)

At recess we counted how many jumping jacks we could do until we just got too tired! We also counted how many times we could jump. Was a nice way to get out that extra energy they have!

Next week, the letter Kk!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Big Smiles,
Ms Kristy

Newsletter (Ii)

2011-12-29T11:32:00.000-05:00

The letter Ii
Theme: Thanksgiving
Words of the Week- it and I. Number of the week- 9

Centers

Theme: Thanksgiving
This week we read thanksgiving books, discussed the meaning of thanksgiving and talked about all the things we are thankful for.

We also talked about family traditions and what our family does on Thanksgiving. Some of you travel, some stay home, some have family to your home, some eat turkey and some eat pork!

We drew a picture of what we thought our dinner plate would look like this year on Thanksgiving. Making sure we added all the different types of foods our family eats!

Math:
This week the number 9! We practiced writing our number nine a lot this week! We wrote the number nine 9 times! Once we had 5 number 9’s on our paper we used manipulatives to see how many more times we needed to write the number 9 till we have a total of nine 9’s! Phew! The kiddos are doing great with this basic math and truly enjoy the fact that they are really solving math problems!

Literacy:
The letter Ii. The letter Ii makes 2 sounds! The short i sound as in insect and the long i sound as in Ice!

We did 2 different activities to go along with both sounds. We made Ice cream cones by cutting out circles and triangles then gluing them together, and of course adding our “sprinkles!” Then we made insect fingerprints with ink! The kids had a lot of fun with this and were quite creative I must say!! ☺

I spy the letter of the week AND our words of the week! We looked for letter Ii’s in newspaper print, highlighting each one we found and finished by counting and writing the total number found. Since playing I spy and letter hunts have been so much fun and the kids really enjoy them, I decided to add a word hunt as well! Using books from our library we had to spy our words of the week, it and I.

It makes me so proud of your kiddos when not only are they finding our words of the week but also raising their hands to tell me they found past words of the week!! “Oh, look Ms. Kristy, I found the words do and go!” Big Ms. Kristy smiles ☺

Writing:

On Thanksgiving my family _____________. We wrote about a tradition that our family does each year for thanksgiving and then illustrated our sentence.

We also made paper bag turkeys using the feathers to write what we are thankful for!

We had some yucky weather this week! That didn’t stop us from having some great indoor recess fun! Did your children tell you about our class roller coaster? We used bendy straws and play-do to make an object. Anything they wanted. A building, an animal, a house...they made quite the impressive roller coaster! This is a great rainy day activity that not only makes the children use their imaginations but really helps their fine motor skills as well!!

We sure did have quite the busy week of learning and fun!

Have a great weekend!!!

Big Smiles,
Ms. Kristy

Our Class Book

2011-12-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

Laura Numeroff Study

2011-12-27T11:47:00.000-05:00

Newsletter (Hh)

2011-12-27T11:46:00.000-05:00

The letter Hh
Theme: Author Study- Laura Numeroff
Word of the Week- He.
Number of the week- 7

Centers

Math:
This week the number seven (7)! We practiced correct formation of the number seven. We talked about the numbers before and after 7, that adding 3 more to 7 equals 10! We used ourselves as “human manipulatives” ☺ to show seven. 6 kids + 1 teacher = 7! 5 kids are lined up at the door; we need 1 more kid and 1 more adult to make 7! 5+2=7. I decided to keep reviewing the formation of the number 6 this week. The kiddos are still writing the six backwards often. Practice, practice, practice make perfect!

To go along with our author study, we did chocolate chip cookie patterns. (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie) With these patterns the children had to make the correct number of chocolate chips per cookie as written. They had cookies that were 7 chips, 7 chips, 6 chips, 7 chips, or an AAB pattern along with several other AB/ABC patterns.

A busy week for math! We also learned about halves. We cut shapes in half, and then glued them to a solid sheet of paper to show our halves we cut. We also took a pencil and drew a line down the middle to show our shape in half, then only colored one half of our shape.

Literacy:
This week, the letter Hh. Did you know that a dog on a hot summer day is always making the H sound? Huh, huh, huh! To remind us of what the letter H says, we pretended to be dogs on a hot day panting the H sound. This was a silly way to always remember what the letter H says!!
We practiced the correct letter formation of the letter Hh. The capital H is pretty easy for us! We made Hh scarecrows this week! Decorating our Hat with the capital letter H, the scarecrow’s eyes with a capital letter H and the nose with a lowercase h! These came out super cute and are hanging by our staircase if you’d like to come see them before they go home!
A huh huh HUG for you! We painted our hands and cut them out. Then using sentence strips we measured our arm span. We decorated our “arms” and wrote “A hug from ___” (Me!) Me, one of our sight words we already know!!

Writing:
Author Study- Laura Numeroff inspired class book. Our third class book, to be coming home soon. If You Give a Kid…
The children wrote and illustrated their own page in our book. It’s super cute, can’t wait for you to see it!!!

***I have a separate sheet that was to come home with you today that explained our Author study. You will be getting this on Monday. Unfortunately, I was unexpectedly out of school today. I was in the hospital with my daughter till the wee hours of the morning. She started going into anaphylactic shock, needed her Epi-pen and had to be taken to the ER. She is doing much better today, but obviously needed me to take her to the doctor today and give her extra hugs, kisses and love ☺

I did make it in this morning to give Amanda my full lesson plan for today so the kids didn’t miss a beat! Thank you for understanding.

Have a great long weekend!!!

Big Smiles,
Ms. Kristy

Magic C

2011-12-26T15:12:00.000-05:00

Newsletter (Gg)

2011-12-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

The letter Gg
This week, the letter Gg!
Word of the Week-‐ go. Number of the week-‐ 6

Centers
Theme: Corn

This week we made Indian corn out of construction paper -‐ cutting ovals for our leaves and gluing little pieces of “corn” on to our ear of corn. This may look like a relatively easy project, but the reason I picked doing this was to help work on our fine motor skills. The pieces of “corn” were pretty tiny! Picking them up and gluing them one at a time on the ear was quite time consuming and really put our little fingers to work!

Math:

This week the number six (6)! We practiced correct formation of the number six this week. We used unifix cubes as manipulatives to show six objects. We played a hidden cube game with the unifix cubes -‐ the kids knew I had six cubes stacked together. I took one off behind my back then showed them the stack again. Now how many are there? Five! If there are five cubes now, how many are behind my back? One! With this we were able to do some basic addition. The kids LOVE that they are stating to learn addition! If Ms. Kristy shows us 3 cubes we know she’s hiding 3, then we wrote on the white board 3+3=6. We talked about the plus and equals sign a lot this week! Plus means we are adding! We also used our plus and equals signs when we made the color green. Yellow + Blue= green!

We also did a Grab and count Math center. Grabbing a handful of small objects, counting, recording and then determining which grab was greater.

Literacy:

This week, the letter Gg. We practiced the correct letter formation of the letter Gg. We discussed that the letter Gg is a "magic C" letter. Both the upper case and lower case start by making a C. Ask your child about the magic C and have them show you how easy it is to remember how to make a letter G once you start with the C! We also looked at all the other “Magic C” letters in our alphabet. Magic C letters: lowercase a, d, g, o, and q. The capital O, G, and Q.

Gg makes 2 sounds! The hard G (guh) and the soft G that sounds like a J in the word Giraffe. We listed as many words as we could that start with the letter Gg. Making two columns, one for the hard G and one for the soft G. We easily saw that there are many more hard G words than soft G words!

As a whole group, we used our clipboards to find and circle all of the letter Gg’s in several sentences I wrote.

Writing:

In our journals we wrote the sentence: Do you want to go with me? We discussed what a question mark is and why we needed it in our sentence. We were asking a question! We used creative thinking to illustrate our sentence. Thinking, go where? Writing this sentence gave us practice writing and recognizing our 3 sight words we have learned so far. Do, Me, and Go.

Happy Birthday this week to our friend Brady!!

Have a great weekend!!!

Big Smiles,
Ms. Kristy

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2011-12-01T19:47:00.000-05:00