Caution: Picture Overload!

Oh my goodness, it feels like it has been FOREVER since I put anything up on here!! We had Spring Break and then I had my finals for grad school and had zero time for updating my little blog! Well I am happy to have all of that behind me (the finals at least, not Spring Break!) and I am back in the groove! Here is a little of what we have done so far this week:

This week we are learning all about caterpillars and butterflies. We were so lucky that our Science Lab teacher found caterpillars in her yard and gave them to us right before they went into their cocoons! Here they are in their cocoons inside the little home we made for them.


One of our craftivities we did this week was on caterpillars and butterflies, another glyph. Oh, how I love glyphs!

We even got to act out the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

One of my projects for my grad school finals was to write up a big 25 page long paper on some of the activities I do in my class that assist with reading. I took pictures of my students completing these activities and figured it might be nice to post them on my blog as well :)


This activity is something we do as a pre-assessment and a post-assessment on many of our units that we study. It is called a Graffiti Wall. For the Graffiti Wall, I have four big pieces of bulletin board paper and write four topics relating to our theme. Our theme for this particular lesson was Spring and the topics were Spring Weather, Spring Clothing, Spring Activities, and Plants and Animals in the Spring. Each table has four students at it and they get 5-7 minutes at each paper to write a sentence and draw a picture relating to the theme. When the 5-7 minutes is up, I have them rotate to the next station. This is always a big hit, you can literally hear a pin drop in my room when we do this (which in kindergarten is a big feat!). Here are the pics:

Another one of the strategies I used was the game boards found in Words Their Way and using educational games to track reading success. Throughout the year I put out a few game boards at a time and the students play these games during centers. These games can be geared towards whatever strategies I am trying to help my little ones develop at the time. We have games that focus on beginning sounds, middle sounds, ending sounds, sight words, decodable words, CVC words, etc. Once my kiddos have become very strong in a particular area of focus, I switch out the game for new one in order to keep it challenging. I must have about 15 of these game boards and keep making more, I can't get enough of them! Here are some pictures of a few of them:

Happy Easter!

This whole week (Monday-Wednesday) we celebrated Easter before we left for our Easter Break (woohoo!). We made Easter Egg "Stained Glass" art projects to hang up in our windows. These are similar to our "Stained Glass" crosses we made during Catholic Schools Week. It is hard to tell from the picture, but the template was made from a deep purple cardstock which we then put contact paper on one side, let the kiddies put cut up pieces of tissue paper on them to decorate, and then covered the other side with contact paper again. I wish there hadn't been a strange glare that makes everything look so dark, but they ended up turning out very cute!

Then we had our Easter Egg hunt. The children in my class all have numbers they are assigned to which helped to make filing their papers, changing centers, etc easier. Prior to the hunt, I labeled all of the eggs with each child's number. This made the hunt a little more challenging. Instead of just running around grabbing every egg in sight, they had to go find the eggs that had their numbers on them. This also helped me make sure everyone had the same number of eggs.

Two of the boys checking their numbers :)

One of my boys checking the numbers.

Then came the highlight (for me!)- our Easter Cross lollipops. Each student got to make their own cross lollipop. I swear, they were more excited about this than the Easter Egg hunt because it was something they've never done before. They were super easy to make too! The kids picked out 5 Jolly Ranchers, put them in a cross formation on the shiny side of aluminum foil, and we baked them in the oven on 325 degrees for 6 minutes. When they were done, I pushed the sticks into the melted Jolly Ranchers and gave them a little twist. Once they cooled down, we put them in sandwich baggies, and tied them with cute ribbon. 

 

 I cannot take credit for this wonderful idea, it came from www.catholicicing.com.

More Hidden Eggs and Classroom Decor!

Wow, this week totally got away from me! I feel like yesterday was Monday! It probably doesn't hurt that I had two presentations in grad school this week so i was SUPER busy! Anyway, I finally have my pictures of my classroom and some more hidden egg pictures! These were SUCH a big hit! I loved that they not only had to find the eggs, but had to answer an academic question inside :)

This one was hidden inside our Lego table. This one took them awhile to find because it is hidden down below the table.

This one was inside our Tattle Monster. The kids were like "He is going to eat my hand if I take it out!!"  They make me laugh :)

This one was in our sticker bucket in the back of the room, an easy find.

This one was found surprisingly pretty fast. I thought this one would take them forever! 

Now for pictures of my classroom... I took these pictures at the end of the day, when my room looks like I had a tornado go through it, and I had grad school at night so I tried to do a quick clean up. It's still a little messy, but much better than it was!

This table is in the back of the room and is where I pull out for small groups. We also use this table for centers and it is always where we do our big activities like making soup on the day we learn about "S". There obviously aren't enough chairs for everyone so they all stand around it.

This is a big view of the room. Our Smartboard up front (it is very old but as long as it works, I am ok with it). Their little tables and the carpets up at the front. Their snack cubbies are off to the side, and the classroom library and bigger carpet are off to the other side. 

This is our behavior management plan. Each boy or girl has a number and a frog with their number on it. They start in the middle lily pad, and if they make a good choice, they move to the left and if they get to purple, they get a sticker on their sticker chart. If they make a wrong choice, they go to orange and yellow and they get a note home on yellow.

There is a lot more to my classroom but like I said, it was kind of a mess. I only took pictures of the parts that are cleaned up :) Maybe next week if I get in the "Spring Cleaning" mood I can take a few more.

Have a good week!

Hidden Easter Eggs Day One!

Today was the first day of our hidden Easter eggs with mysterious problems inside. This was a HUGE hit with the kiddos. They were hidden around the classroom in pretty obvious places today (tomorrow will be harder hee hee!). I made the mistake of sending my boyfriend the pictures of where they were hidden only to get the response "I know they're in kindergarten, but you could've made it a LITTLE harder!"  Hopefully tomorrow they are up for more of a challenge! Here are the pictures of them hidden around the room:

This one in our Sharpened Pencil basket

This one sitting in Brian Broccoli's lap. Brian Broccoli is our stuffed vegetable my little ones get to snuggle with when they are reading in our classroom library.

Now this looks more obvious than it actually is! This "extra crayon box" is hidden under one of our tables for centers until a child needs to borrow an extra crayon. They would only see it if they needed to borrow one.

This one was in our Go-Home folder box for when the students arrive. The first thing they do when they come in is unpack their folder and put it in this box, so needless to say this was the first egg found!

This one was in our container of foam building blocks, also out of the way from where they would typically find it. This one was the last one found :)

Inside the eggs is a problem the students had to answer. It was either a reading problem or a math problem. If they got the answer right, they got a little mini prize :) 

Hope you all enjoyed this, more to come tomorrow along with *hopefully* pictures of my classroom. 

Yay! It's Easter Season!

We are finally close enough to Easter to begin hiding our Easter eggs around the classroom! This week I will hide five Easter eggs per day for the children to find when they come in. Inside each egg is a question the students have to answer. If they answer it correctly, they earn a prize!  This all leads to our GIANT Easter egg hunt around the playground and school on the last day before Easter break. It will be so much fun! Pictures to come!

Also, I will (hopefully remember to) take pictures of my classroom and how it is set up to post on my little blog.