Advent Retreat

On November 30, the Kindergarten, first grade,  and second grade classes had an Advent retreat. We divided the kids into mixed grade level groups and then each group rotated to three classrooms to learn about Advent. We learned about the Holy Family, the Annunciation, and about Advent in general. We talked about Advent wreaths too.

The kids in my room also helped make this bulletin board display of Bethlehem. 

 Last week, my class learned about Mary. Here is an anchor chart that we made.

 We also made these cute crafts from the Oriental Trading Company. 

We had a wonderful time learning about Advent. 

We Are Thankful For

I know this post is a month late, but here is a cute anchor chart that my kids and I made about what we are thankful for. 

We are also thankful for rain. It rained last week and we saw a beautiful rainbow.  Rainbows remind us of God's promise to always be there for us when we need him. 

So beautiful!

Tall Tales

We have been learning about tall tales. We talked about exaggeration, and fact verses fiction. The kids had a lot of fun learning about these characters in our history. 

The craftivity in the middle is from a pack I bought by Cupcake for the Teacher on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Throughout the unit, we read books about the heroes by Mary Pope Osborn and Steven Kellogg and I showed the kids short videos from the Disney's American Legends DVD.  We compared the books with the movies to find what was the same and what was different. 

At the end of the unit the kids got to make sicker scenes of two characters that we learned about. I got the sicker scenes from the Oriental Trading Company. 

Community Helpers Field Trip

We have been learning about community helpers over the last month. Last week, we took a walking field trip to visit the library, post office, and to look at the fire station. 

The kids got to see how a machine sorts the books that are returned.

They learned how to return books.

 The librarian told us how to get a library card.

She also read us a book about a garbage truck. 

The librarian sang a song with us about eating bananas. 

At the end of the song, the kids went bananas.

We got to watch a short video about a garbage truck.

Then we went to the post office. The postal worker told us how to mail a letter.

We visited the post office boxes. Our library is really old so they still have these cool old post office boxes.

It was about a three hour field trip and the kids had so much fun. 

Math Lessons

We have been making groups and then finding out how many there are in all. The first page is ways to make 5. 

This is ways to make 10. We love using stickers for math. The kids love stickers and taking the stickers off of the sticker sheet is a good way to practice their fine motor skills.

Art Tip

My students do art often. The thought of washing 32 (or more) paint brushes does not sound like fun. So a few years ago I decided to use sponges and then have the kids throw them away after they are done with their work. Last week, I ran out of sponges so I went and bought more today. Here is what I do.

First, I cut the sponges in quarters.

Next, I let the sponges air dry completely.

Last, I put the sponges in a ziplock bag and store them in my art closet.

I only use the sponges if the whole class is painting at the same time.

Class Auction Item Number 1

I have so many cute ideas for our class auction item that I think we need to do several auction items.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and I had to make it. I bought a piece of wood from Michael's craft store. I painted a tree trunk and branches on the wood. 

Then the each of the kids put five fingerprints on the tree.

Then I wrote the students names around the edge of the wood. Finally, I painted Mod Podge on top to seal our project. 

This Week in Kindergarten

We have been very busy in Kindergarten this week. We learned about Jackson Pollock and then did splatter art. We wore smocks, but we were still covered in paint! The kids loved doing splatter art. 

Our seventh grade buddies read books to us outside. The Kinders love having big kids read to them and the big kids do an awesome job acting like older siblings.

We visited our school garden. I think we will plant some veggies soon.

We did patterns in math. This child is making AB patterns with apple cutouts.

We also made AB sticker patterns. 

These two kids are making ABC sticker patterns.

We learned some prayers.

We did a craft about prayer before meals.

Back to School 2018

We had an awesome first week of school. I took each child's picture on our playground with a basket of apples. It is going to make a cute keepsake for the parents. 

We practiced our fine motor skills by using stickers to write our names. I wrote the kids' names on a piece of paper with a marker first. Then the kids used stickers to cover the lines. They came out so cute! 

The kids made these adorable apples for their parents.  First, they finger painted circles on a sheet of white paper. Then I drew a stem, leaf, and apple shape on the paper. Next, the kids cut out the shapes. Last, the kids glued the pieces to black paper to make an apple. 

The kids made a jelly fish craft. They had to follow verbal step by step directions to complete the project. 

It was the second grade teacher's birthday so we made her a bouquet of flowers made out of cupcake liners and pipe cleaners. Each student made two flowers. 

We had a wonderful first week. I have a great group of kids and cannot wait to post more fun projects this year.