December Fun

It has been a busy month! Last week we had our class Christmas play. Unfortunately, I was so busy directing the students that I did not get a chance to take pictures. The students learned to sing Silent Night, Away in a Manger, What Child is This, The First Noel, While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, and Adeste Fideles. They learned The First Noel and While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night in sign language too! The kids did a great job!

Last week, we learned about penguins and the kids made this cute penguin craft by A Cupcake for the Teacher.

We also learned about more than and less than. The kids decorated a Christmas tree cut-out with two different colors of ink. Then, the kids had to write which color had more ornaments. 

Class Auction Item Update

Our class auction item is coming along great! This is our summer tree. The kids has a lot of fun putting their fingerprints on the tree.

October Fun

This month has been busy! We made candy apples for cooking. We used a melon baller to make apple balls. Then we pushed a cake ball stick into the apple ball. Finally, we dipped our apple ball into caramel sauce. The kids had a great time making candy apples.

We also did a math mini unit with a pumpkin. We measured how tall it was with unifix cubes, measure the circumference with a piece of yarn, put it in water to see if it would sink or float, and counted how many seeds were inside of it! The students had a great time!

Spring Auction Update

I have been working on my spring auction item. Here are the trees printed on the canvas. I used a sharpie paint pen to paint the trees. I had to use three coats of paint, but I am really pleased with how they turned out!

More Apples

Here are some more fun apply activities that we are doing. In the dramatic play center, the students can pick apples off of trees and make apple pie.

We have our September words on a board so the students can practice reading and writing them.

We tried apple slices, apple sauce, apple juice, and apple jelly and made a graph of which snack we like the best. I was surprised that the students liked apple jelly the best.

We also sang a song about Johnny Appleseed. If you have ever see the Disney cartoon about Johnny Appleseed, then you have heard the song "The Lord's Been Good To Me". I used the same melody, but changed the words. Here are the words that I made up.

John Chapman was his name.

Born 1774

He planted seeds and helped those in need.

He traveled all around the land.

Yes, we remember him.

We made these two cute crafts that I bought from A Cupcake for the Teacher. The kids did a great job!

 This is the Johnny Appleseed hat.

Music Masters: J.S. Bach

This year I created a new program that I call Music Masters. Each month we learn about a new composer. This month we are learning about J.S. Bach. I teach the students about the composer, then we do a writing activity about the composer, and finally we fill in the notes on one of the composer's songs.

I gave the students a paper with the outlines of the notes, I projected the same paper onto the board and we filled in the notes together. They did an awesome job!

This is a sample of the writing that we did.

We listen to music by the composer of the month everyday during handwriting time. The students love it!

Class Auction

In the spring, my school has an auction. Each class makes something to sell at the auction. This year I thought of a cute idea. My class is going to make a four piece art project on canvas. Each canvas will have a tree painted on it (there will be one tree for each season) and the students will decorate the tree with their fingerprints. I painted the background blue and used the overhead projector to trace the tree onto the canvas. Next, I am going to use a paint pen to fill in the tree.

Religion Lesson: God Made Me Special

This week our religion lesson was about how God made each of us special. We talked about how each person has different talents that God gave us. We also discussed that God made us unique; there is no one else exactly like us. We might look like our brother, sister, mom, or dad, but we are each unique. We made a craft using our fingerprints because no one else has fingerprints like us. The kids made plants, bugs, and animals with their fingerprints.

This student made bugs out of his fingerprints.

This student made bugs, butterflies, and a bird.

The students did an awesome job on their craft!

Art Masters: Jackson Pollock

Each month, we learn about two artists. Our first artist of the year was Jackson Pollock. During the first week of the month we read a book about Jackson Pollock and then did some writing to help us remember who he was. During the next week, we did action painting. I lined the kids up on the grass and they made their creations.  Here is a picture of some of the students' artwork.They did a great job!

This is the writing that we did together. I created a summary of what we learned about Jackson Pollock and the students filled in the blanks.

This is how I lined up the students to create their masterpieces. I was able to have ten kids working at the same time which helped us to complete our artwork quickly.

Apple Labeling and Apple Graphing

This month our theme is apples. We are doing many fun activities using apples. We did an apple labeling activity to learn about the anatomy of an apple.

 The students had to draw seeds on the apple's flesh.

 The students' apples came out so cute!

This is a graph of our favorite apples. First, the students tried a slice of a green, red, and yellow apple and decided which one was their favorite. Next, they  put an apple cutout on the graph that was the same color as the apple that they liked the best. Last, we analyzed the graph and figured out which apple most of the students liked the best.

Patriot Day Craft

Yesterday was Patriot Day. We made the adorable craft created by A Cupcake for the Teacher. It was extremely easy and we also got a chance to review AB patterns! When the students were done with their craft, we hung them up on our clothesline with clothes pins.

 The student's did a superb job!

We will never forget September 11, 2001.

Kinder Cooking

Last Friday, we made school buses out of graham crackers. We followed the recipe out of the Mailbox book called Kids in the Kitchen. I ordered this book off of the Mailbox Magazine website. It is awesome; I use it every week.

Here is the finished product made by one of my kindergarten students. It turned out great!

We do cooking during our center time on Fridays. I pull a small group of 5-6 kids at a time and they follow the recipe to make our cooking treat. It takes about 10 minutes per group. The students practice reading, following directions, measuring, and counting.

First Week of School

During the first week of school we did many fun activities. We did a lot of writing, counting, and reciting practice. We looked at our eyes and made a graph of the color eyes we have. So many of the students had brown eyes that we ran out of room on our graph!

I also got a chance to add some more decorations to my classroom. I reused the name labels on my welcome sign and added each student's name and picture to the word wall. It turned out really cute! Now the students can learn how to spell their friends' names.

Religion Lesson: God Created All Things

Last week, in religion, we talked about things that God created. We read the creation story out of The Beginner's Bible, learned The Butterfly Song, and did an art project where the students colored pictures of things that God made. They used their best coloring skills to complete the pictures. The pictures turned out beautifully!

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom

Every year before school starts I have a day where the incoming kindergarten students can come visit their classroom and spend a morning doing the activities we do on a daily basis. The students get to sit at their desk, locate their cubbies, and figure out where to put their backpacks. They also get to do journal, go to centers, do music, listen to some stories, and play outside. This year at Kinder Camp we read Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom. Then the students made this cute craft.

It allowed me to see if the students could write their name, identify letters, and count the number of letters in their name.

Last Friday, we made this treat during our Kindergarten cooking lesson. I got the idea out of a Mailbox book called Kids in the Kitchen. We do cooking every Friday and we use the recipes out of this book for ninety percent of our cooking lessons. This is a tree that one of my students made. He did a great job!

Back to School Night

Last Wednesday, I had a back to school meeting for the new Kindergarten parents. I gave each family a folder that had all of our classroom procedures in it. I like to put all of our class information into a folder so that the parents can refer to it if they have any questions.

 I put the cute apples with the poem attached to them on top of the folder. The parents loved the apples!

 I decorated the door with the names of my students and this adorable welcome sign that matches my frog theme.

Back To School: Time to set up my classroom!

Last Wednesday I went to my school to set up my classroom. Here is what it looked like when I got there.

I left the classroom semi-set up at the end of June. So I did not have too much work to do. It took me one full day to finish setting up my room. Here is what it looked like when I was done:

 I spent one day setting up the room and now I am ready to start a new school year!