Last Friday, my class celebrated St. Patrick's Day.

The students made St. Patrick puppets. I got the pattern from a blog called Catholic Icing.

We made this pot of gold to help us study our sight words for the week.

Lucky the leprechaun had been watching us all week from somewhere in the classroom. He was very mischievous and kept turning out the light, unplugging the sound cord from the projector, and hiding my blue painters tape (which I use for everything!)! Lucky came to visit us on Friday. He decorated our classroom while were at Mass. 

 He decorated the back door too!

 Lucky left his footprints all over the room! He went over a table,

 around another table,

and across the floor to the sink. My students think that Lucky jumped from the sink to the soap dispenser, then to the paper towel dispenser, and up to the shelf on top of the bathrooms.

 He left us this envelope on the door. The note inside said:

I got most of this note from the rainbow treasure hunt from a blog called A Cupcake for the Teacher.

At the end of the treasure hunt the students found gold coins taped under their chairs. We also found this pot with a craft inside of it under my chair. We had a great day!

Noah's Ark

Last week we learned about Noah's Ark. We made animals with our hand prints. The students could choose to make a duck, alligator, flamingo, elephant, monkey, cheetah, lion, or giraffe.  We made the hand prints in the morning and let them dry. At the end of the day, the students decorated their hand prints to make them look like the animal they wanted to make. Then I created this adorable bulletin board display for our animals. I love how it turned out!

Dr. Seuss Activities

Last week we did a Dr. Seuss theme all week. Here are some of the activities that we did.

 This is our library center with a lot of Dr. Seuss books. We read a few books each day.

 This is a graph that we did during math time.

 This is another graph that we did (I forgot to take a picture when the sticky notes were on it).

 This is a green eggs and ham rhyming activity. The students had to match the word on the ham to a word on the egg that rhymed with it.

 This is a green eggs and ham word family activity.

This is a pattern activity. The students made patterns out of red and blue fingerprint fish. They had to write what type of pattern they made.

 This is a hat we made for our Dr. Seuss party. The students had to make an AB pattern.

For science, we made oobleck! It was a giant mess, but we had a lot of fun. 

 The students generated a list of observations about the oobleck.

This is Dr. Seuss ABC order. I used words from various Dr. Seuss books and put them on Dr. Seuss scrapbook paper.  The students worked together in groups to put the words in ABC order.

We had a great day! I hope you had a lot of fun celebrating Read Across America day too.

~Melissa

Classroom Management

I use a color card chart to help my students learn how to manage their behavior. It works wonderfully in my classroom. There are four colors on the chart: green, blue, yellow and orange (yes, the last color is supposed to be red, but I don't like to use red in my classroom; I think that it is a negative color). When a student needs to have her card changed, I explain to the student why her card is being changed and we discuss how to make better choices. At the end of the day, all of the students who are on green get a sticker. If a student is on blue, she does not get a sticker. If a student is on yellow or orange, I send a note home about why she is on yellow or orange. The students love being on green.

Here is a copy of the note I send home for students who are on yellow or orange. It is a quarter size of an 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper.

Centers

I love centers! My students go to two centers each day. I use this time to work with a small group of students on language arts and math. I work with six kids, nine to twelve kids work at centers and the other half of the class is in our second classroom (which we call K2) with my aide. Yes, I have a full day aide! When the kids are in K2 they choose an interest center to work in. We have a block center, dramatic play center, manipulative center, library center, and art center. I will take some pictures K2 and post them later this week. Here are some pictures of the centers I have up this week in the main classroom.

This is the flannel board in the library center. Right now there are cut outs of chocolate kisses with numbers on them so the students can practice adding and subtracting. The blank kisses at the bottom can be used as manipulatives to help the students complete each math problem.

 I love books. This is the library center.

This is the other side of the flannel board. The students practice writing their sight words for the week on this white board.

I teach at a Catholic school so this is our religion center. I change the table cloth to match the liturgical season. It is Lent so our table cloth is purple.

This is the writing center. The students have paper to practice writing anything that they want. There is also a nursery rhyme flannel board and flashcards to make three letter words.

This is the math center. The students can choose an activity to do. Right now their choices are nonstandard measurement (they use dental floss to measure items), adding up coins on teeth cutouts and matching the amount to the correct envelope, and time flashcards.

This is the art center. This week the students are using water colors to paint whimsical scenes.

This is the computer center. One of our computers is broken so we only have one right now. The students play Reading Eggs, Starfall, and use the paint function.

This is the chart I use to manage center time. The colors are the reading groups and the pictures on the left are the centers they go to. When there is no center picture next to their picture, they come to me for small group work. I just rotate the center pictures when it is time to change centers. It took the students awhile to get the hang of it, but now that are pros at finding their center.

My Classroom

Hello everyone! I want to share what my classroom looks like. It was the end of the day when I took the pictures so the students' chairs are stacked up, but you can still see the class decor. I wanted to do a pond theme for my classroom; when it came time to buy decorations, all I could find were frogs. So I went with a frog theme.

 This is the view from the back corner of the room looking at the front left corner of the room.

 This is one of my library areas (I have three library areas) and our calendar bulletin board.

 This is the view of my classroom from the back corner to the front right corner of the room.

This is my classroom jobs chart. I put each student's name on a frog cut out and taped it to a craft stick. I use one envelope for the boys and the other envelope for the girls. I make sure that I choose an equal number of boys and girls for jobs each week.

I hope you had a great day!

~Melissa

New to Blogging!

Hello everyone! My name is Melissa and I am a Kindergarten teacher. This is my first year as a Kindergarten teacher and I love it! I taught fifth grade for seven years and finally got the chance to switch to Kindergarten this year. I work at a small school (only one classroom per grade level) in Oceanside, CA. I have been thinking about starting a blog for about a month now and decided to have faith and jump in and try it. I love following teacher blogs because they are inspiring; I have learned so much from other teachers. I look forward to sharing my ideas with you.