Dinosaur School!

My district uses Incredible Years - Dinosaur School to teach about behavior and doing your best in school. This has helped my kinders as far as behavior. It also goes well with the Getting Along Together portion of SFA (Success for All) that is our reading program. I have dark skinned Wally and Molly puppets so I have named them Alfonso and Monique. My aide plays Alfonso while I do Monique and Dina. The kids love when the puppets come to visit.

100th Day of School!

We had so much fun this last week as we celebrated the 100th day of school. I started the day by fixing a very special 100 breakfast of sausage and pancakes. The lunch lady was wonderful in providing milk and fruit to round out our breakfast. My students were to bring in baggies of 100 items for our 100 museum. We also made posters with 100 drawings on them and did 100 exercises. It was a fun day. My aide provided the kids with 100 Day certificates, pencils, and stickers!

Busy Busy Bees

I have been busy making literacy centers for my kinders. First was a CVC word building center. I made the pictures with boxes for letter tiles. They really enjoy working with the tiles and building words. It has helped with their confidence in sounding out words and writing. You can find my CVC center on my TpT page here

My CVC word building center.

My other center I made with the help of my aide was rhyming word houses. They turned out so cute!. The kids separate pictures into houses depending on what they rhyme with. Such fun! I also have this on my TpT store. You can get it here . My aide made the houses out of milk cartons. I did have to resize the labels to make them fit the milk cartons. If you want the resized labels, let me know and I will get them to you.

Snow Globes!

We had a great time making snow globes. The kids had great ideas for living in a snow globe. Their writing is getting better.

Holidays Around the World

Whew!!

We have been very busy in my kindergarten classroom. We have visited 11 countries in 2 days, learning about holidays, making crafts, and tasting food. This was a fun unit. I got it off Teachers pay Teachers. It's actually 2 units that I combined to get more countries. I think for next year that I will add more countries. The kids enjoyed it and we were about to do reading, writing, and math within the unit. All while having fun and travelling the world. I made passports and the kids made suitcases out of cereal boxes. Their suitcases were stuffed full by the end of the day today - good thing they were taking them home. Now I am exhausted, and glad that I only have 1 more day until Christmas break. Added to this - lots of testing for the end of the semester. I managed to get all my testing done and the crafts. Woo-hoo!
Here's one link for one of the units: Holidays.. Part II
And the other one:  Holidays... with passport

Here are some of the suitcases.

Maternity Leave!

She's here! Clara Emily Shipman was born October 4 at 4:22 AM. Weighing in at 7 pounds, 10 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long. She is beautiful and her brothers are smitten. I am officially on maternity leave now for 6 weeks. I miss my kinders already though I know they are in good hands with my long term sub. My project for this time off is to create a 4-day unit on Thanksgiving as well as a 5-day unit on Holidays Around the World. I'll be scouring Pinterest and Teachers pay Teachers for ideas - if you have any, send them my way. I only wish I had my lap top as I'm working on projects for my classroom. Had to leave it for the sub. LOL First order though, is making Halloween costumes for my kids. They want to be minions. Should be fun!

Loving Kindergarten

I am loving kindergarten. My kiddos are great and we are having such fun. The reading program we use is Success for All and I love the KinderCorner part of it. It is very engaging and I even get to use puppets! There are challenges in learning a new program, but so far it has gone very well. It's only been 3 weeks but I've sent home 4 books for my students to read to their families and keep. They are so excited that they are able to read these books all by themselves.