All About Me Books

SUMMER IS HERE!!! WOOHOO!!! I finally made it and let me tell you- it. feels. GREAT!

Before we let out for summer break one of our last activities we did was our "Me Books". The Me Book is an all-about-me book where the child writes their names, favorite animal, favorite color, about their best friend, their family, what they want to be when they grow up, etc. It takes a lot of hard work but looks fantastic in the end! It is a great way to show off how far their writing has come over the past year. Here are some pictures of our "Me Books"

 It ends with this adorable poem. I did not put pictures of all the pages up, just a few. you can create your own pages based on what you want. In our class we had a friend trace our feet and hands and then we had to cut them out and glue them into our book. The outside of our book is a construction paper body with arms that wrap around the front of the book when it is closed. I had them draw their own eyes (correct eye color) and they got to make their own hair out of contrsuction paper and glue it on.

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:

Dental Health Month

Ok well I finally got around to posting our Dental Health pictures! One of the many activities we did was an idea I saw on the blog "The First Grade Parade". We read the story "What Does the Tooth Fairy Do With All Those Teeth" and created little tooth fairies to go along with our writing prompt. They turned out so cute!!

 "I think he turns them into golden teeth for people" I LOVE that this one was a male tooth fairy- too cute!

"I think that she turns your teeth into dust"

 This one is a little blurry but it says "I think she finds out what kind of teeth they are"

I had cut out the major parts of this craft for them and then let them decorate their own faces and make their own hair. I loved how creative some of them were!

President's Day

Last week we celebrated President's Day and made some adorable Abe Lincoln hats with facts to hang up in the hall! My kiddos LOVED learning about Abraham Lincoln this week, they loved finding out that he kept important letters in his hat :) George Washington was equally as exciting as they are now spotting his face all over the quarters and one dollar bills they bring in for lunch money!

 

These were the "Abraham Lincoln Fact Books" they made. The outside covers are stovepipe hats.

 

Then inside they wrote down some of their favorite Abraham Lincoln facts :)

These were super easy to make and my little ones loved making them :)