Apple Week Recap

We had a great week in Kindergarten! We learned all about apples, Johnny Appleseed, and tornado drills. I had so much fun working with my sweet kiddos in their centers this week. I love watching them develop social skills and learn how to interact with one another. It is the sweetest thing! We conducted apple investigations with the apples that they brought to school and, on Friday, we had Apple Day! It was a hit for sure. The kids got to try several different apple snacks, including apple muffins that my mama made for them!

My parents were in town for a few days this week and I loved having them in my room...almost as much as my students did. They talked about it ALL WEEK. I'm pretty sure my parents got more pictures than I did from my kids this week, which is hard to believe. I am so blessed to have such a sweet, loving, active class. We learn so much from each other and every day is an adventure!

Our first tornado drill in our new safe building was sort of chaotic, but it was good to get all of the kids in there and have some of the kinks worked out. I'm thankful that my classroom is so close to the safe building/gym! We call it the Cub House (our mascot is the bears), but my kids think it's called the Club House. They want to go to the Club House every day! I always wish I could remember all of the funny things that they say throughout the day, but it's impossible. Everything they say is so precious!

I want to share an opportunity with you. I am partnering with Donors Choose, an awesome charity organization that provides teachers with a safe way to fund projects for their classrooms. I have posted a project for my classroom and would really appreciate any support that you would be able to give! We are in need of a listening center for my classroom. It will be beneficial for all of my students, but especially for my sweet ESL babies, as they need more exposure to the English language than I can give them individually throughout the day. Donations of any size would be appreciated and, through October 4, all donations will be matched (up to $100), with the code INSPIRE. Sonic partners with Donors Choose each year for an awesome project called Limeades for Learning. With any drink purchase, you receive a green sticker with a code on it. The codes count for 2 votes. This is the link to my project. My students and I would SO appreciate your votes! You can vote every day with your email address, on the off chance that you don't enjoy Sonic. If you ask for extra stickers, they'll usually give you a bunch!

I don't have any pictures from this week, believe it or not. I'll try to get some this week. We're going to extend Apple Week through next week, as well! I'm going to keep my centers the same since my kids will still benefit from the practice. I've been working on some other centers this weekend, including a Candy Corn Matching center that I made...they'll match uppercase letters with the lowercase letter and a picture of a word that starts with that letter. They'll love it and I can't wait to get it out next Monday! The nice thing about using the same centers 2 weeks in a row is that I have more time to make and prepare my centers for the rest of the month! I am LOVING creating my own centers for my sweet kinders. It's a lot of work and is definitely time consuming with this dinosaur of a computer, but watching them learn with the materials that I created is so rewarding.

Have a great week, friends!

Apple Week

Happy Apple Week! It's been a busy weekend getting ready for next week. We are going to be very busy learning all about apples and practicing matching beginning sounds, number sense, and counting 1-10. Our apple unit will include an apple investigation, taste testing apple snacks, and graphing our favorite color of apple. It's going to be such a fun week!

Now that my sweet kinders are familiar with how our center rotations work, I'm hoping to get a more structured schedule down this week. I think they're ready! They did such a great job last week with our academic centers rather than just play centers. I'm so proud of their hard work!

We're using Scrappin' Doodles A to Z clip art in a couple of different ways in our classroom this year. It's on our Word Wall and also being used in several centers. I couldn't find the recording sheet that I wanted for our Apple Beginning Sound Matching center, so I purchased the line art set and made the recording sheet myself. Amateur work for sure, but I'm pretty proud of myself! This is our beginning sound matching center this week. I love that it uses the same clip art as our word wall since our students are already familiar with those images.

Check out this freebie on TPT

In math, we'll continue working on counting objects to 5, writing numerals, and counting to 20. We're also going to start working with 5 frames this week as another way to organize and count objects. Our math center will be fine motor as well as counting. Students will roll playdoh into balls (apples) and place the correct number on the apple trees.

Check out this freebie on TPT

Our puzzle center will reinforce numeracy skills, as well. These fun apple number puzzles are printed, cut, and ready to go tomorrow! I printed some 1-5 and some 1-10 puzzles to differentiate. I love that this download has puzzles that count by 5s and 10s, too! I'll definitely be using those when we start working on those skills. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of recording sheet I'm going to use, but it will be something with tracing/writing their numbers 1-10.

Check out this freebie on TPT

We'll still have our writing center, big book center, and library center. I'll also introduce our pocket chart center. They'll retell the story of Brown Bear, Brown Bear and read our poem about our families from last week.

Our laminator at school is still broken. I'll take all of my centers to Coleman's after school this week so that I can reuse these centers next year. It's been a lot of work to get centers ready each week, but I know that it'll be worth it next year when I can just pull out all of our centers without much prep time.

I have never been this busy or exhausted on weekends, but I am so thankful for my job and my precious class. I love this stage of life that I'm in right now and I wouldn't trade it for anything! Have a great week!!

Our Week

We had a great week last week! It was our second color week. My students are loving learning about colors and they sing our color songs just about all the time. They ask to listen to the cd whenever they're working independently and I am happy to oblige! (Although I've had the orange song stuck in my head for 2 weeks...I usually skip that one and hope they don't notice ;) )

My class continues to impress me with their excitement and eagerness to learn. We've just been practicing rotating through centers. The work itself hasn't been challenging yet as they get used to our center schedule. I can tell that they're ready to get down to business, so I've spent my weekend planning fun work centers for this week. We'll start magnetic letters, retelling, patterning, beginning letter recognition, math, and writing centers. We'll keep using the library and puzzle centers but add more content to each.

I have a few pictures of my classroom pre-kindergarten chaos. The room looks more lived-in these days as we make needed adjustments. I love my classroom and my students do, too!

We started our writing groups last week! Each group chose a color name and I worked with each group during rest time. We had fun getting to know each other as writers and my students were so proud of their work. My mentor has been working with me to plan appropriate instruction which has been so helpful! Writing in kindergarten is a bit of a challenge, but we're getting in the groove. My students totally surprised me with their writing ability already. We're already talking about stretching words and recording the sounds we hear in a couple of my groups! They are all doing so well.

This coming week will bring our book fair and parent/teacher conferences. It's going to be a busy week, but I'm ready. Bring it on, kindergarten!

Book Orders!

I sent home my first book orders of the year last Friday and have loved sharing some of the books with my students this week. They are all so excited! For every order, we get books for our classroom, too!! Scholastic Book Orders are a great way to grow a personal or classroom library because the books are SO affordable and the quality is excellent.

My favorite thing about my classroom this year is my library...and my kids love it, too! (i'll upload pictures of this fun space in our classroom next week) I love their excitement when it's their turn to read in our library. They love to share their books with me and show me the cool things that they find. I have a lot of books in our classroom library, but I always love to add new books. Several of my parents have already placed online orders (thank you!!) and I have been picking out new books to add to our library with the bonus points.

At our school, students can't check books out of our library until 2nd grade. Later this Fall, I will be allowing students to check books out of my library to take home. I want my kids to be able to take books home to read with their parents. When they're excited about reading, they're more motivated and parental involvement is a HUGE part of early reading success. Any books ordered with bonus points from Scholastic will go straight to my students' library for them to read at school and to take home.

I have also started a Classroom Book Wish List on Scholastic. If you would be interested in ordering books for my students, you can log on to https://clubs2.scholastic.com and enter our class code (MCYF4). You'll have to enter a student name...I think you should just be able to enter my name so that there is no confusion when the books come in. There's an option to look at our class wish list when you click on Teacher Recommendations (my students get to pick out books for our wish list, too!) and place an order. I'll be submitting our order next Friday and plan to send book orders home each month.

Access to print is one of the most important factors in reading success and my goal is for my classroom to be a place where all of my students learn to love reading. I try to have a variety of texts available so that all of my students can find a book that they love and are excited about. I have already shared one of my "special" books from my shelf about bugs with one of my boys because he loved the book in our library. He loves looking at it when it's his turn at the library center and that enthusiasm is what I LOVE about Kindergarten! As the year progresses, I plan to continue to share "my" books with my students. They think it's so fun when I get a book off of the high shelf for them. This is the kind of joy that I hope to instill in my students this year.

Parents: Remember that Friday is the last day to order books online or to send forms back to school with your child. Thank you for ordering and happy reading!

Welcome!

Welcome to my Kindergarten blog! I am so blessed to be teaching Kindergarten at White County Central this school year. I fell in love with this school and community last school year and am so thankful that I'm spending my first year as a classroom teacher here. I am so excited to share my adventures with my sweet students with you. They are hilarious and I laugh every day. I've been keeping a journal, but I know some of the people that have watched me grow up have wanted to hear my stories and this is the best way to share them with everyone! This will also be a great way to keep my parents updated on what's going on in our room. Thanks for stopping by. I'll update soon!!