Owl Treat bags

We made some OWL-some treat bags today! 

They are all ready to be filled with treats at our Halloween party :)

First, everyone had to trace their own belly-shapes and eye circles. 

Then, we cut them out, creating an astounding amount of scraps. Nearly unbelievable.

Finally, we glued them all together and it was TOTALLY worth the mess!

 Hoot hoot! We are ready for Halloween treats!

SO much going on

We are seriously busy in kindergarten and try not to waste a single minute. We have so much work to do! I'm always impressed by their sponginess- eagerly soaking up new information. Here are just a few events from this week:

The class goes to the computer lab once a week to teach me about learn about using the computers. These students arrived in kindergarten with ROCKIN' computer skills. This picture shows my class working on starfall.com, a great beginning site for kids.

This Wednesday, our Family Council held GRANDPARENTS DAY. Lots of Grandparents came to school to share lunch with their grandchildren and then play outside on our beautiful kindergarten playground. It was so nice to meet all of them. And there were only a few tears when they left!

More than anything, we are moving forward with learning and using the alphabet. This is my attempt at making the ABC Center more appealing. Yeah, it's still matching up the letters. But, it's colorful :) And I love that the letters are on matching paint sample colors, which makes this activity self-correcting.

And one more project I made this week. These are $1 photo albums. I slipped in an alphabet card on each page. (There are 24 pages, plus the inside of the front and back cover. 26!) Kids can write each letter of the alphabet with a colored dry erase marker, and they wipe clean beautifully!

We had an awesome week. Annnnnnnnnnd, we deserve this three day weekend :) Happy happy!

Whisper Phones

I MEANT to finish some whisper phones this weekend, so I could add something new to our classroom library. A whisper phone is a little tool to help kids hear themselves as they quietly read. Lakeshore sells them for $5 each. (http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/seo/ca|searchResults~~p|2534374302175284~~.jsp)

I need at least 5, so a group of kids can use them, so I decided to make the 94 cents version. I was GOING to make them. But it was a pretty full weekend.

So- I brought the supplies to school and the class helped me make the whisper phones this morning. We cut some 3/4 inch PVC pipe into 3.5 inch lengths, slipped on some L ends, and decorated/secured them with pretty tie-dyed duct tape.

The phones are a real hit, and I think the class maybe likes the phones even better because they helped to make them.

Hooray! Let the whisper-reading begin :)

Making Reading Connections

Oh, I LOVE this book, and this little smile. 

We've been making connections with books, or activating background schema, also known as having fun. The kids had a great time with Owl Babies today. If you have not read this beautiful book, you SHOULD!

 

And, of course, there's PETE the CAT- "We're rockin' in our school shoes!"

And this book, which is not all that great except that it's Mr. Potato Head and I love him SOOO much!

I can't even believe how much we accomplished this week, and so much more to go!

Literacy Centers

I love when the kids are all working in literacy centers. More then any other part of the day, this feels like what kindergarten should be. 

Here's how it fits into our morning: 

8:35 Morning work (handwriting, math review)

9:00 Morning Meeting (greeting, calendar, alphabet, counting, shared writing, phonemic awareness)

9:30 Reader's Workshop (mini-lesson, silent reading/partner reading, sharing)

9:45 Literacy Centers 

10:25 Read Aloud and Poetry Time

10:40 Lunch

Our centers provide extra practice in reading, writing, working with words, listening, and speaking.
There are five centers, so students get to visit a different center every day. The kids are so engaged in their work that I can use this time to meet with them individually or in small groups to work on reading skills.

Here are this week's centers: 

Writing Center- mini books. Students are practicing writing in a little book. They love these little books, just a folded and stapled piece of paper. 

Reading Center- student shop for books, revisit books, and read to each other and the monsters and stuffed animals in the reading tent.

Word Wall Center- Students have clipboards and are reading and writing the words from the word wall.

ABC center- Students are sorting and matching letters, reviewing our alphabet chart, and playing "Say it Fast" where we blend letter sounds to make small words like "tap" and "hat".

Puppet Center- Students are working together to tell stories. I often hear the puppets singing songs and retelling stories from our group times.

I love literacy centers, and so does my awesome class. Hooray!

Pumpkin Pieces

Today we made a paper pumpkin project pasting pretty paper pumpkin pieces!

The kids loved this. It made me sad that we currently only have an art teacher for half of the year. And it's not this half. I should do more art with them. They were so happy with this project!

Pumpkin Seeds- Day 1

Today we tried one of those awesome projects I pinned on Pinterest this summer :)

We started with a little pumpkin, and cut the lid off.

Everyone took turns reaching in and getting some gooey seeds to take home.

There were PLENTY of seeds left, so we mixed in a little dirt and a little water.
We set it in the window so there will some sunshine.

And now we wait. :)

I hope they grow, because I LOVE tasty, salty pumpkin seeds and it killed me to put these babies in dirt!