We danced our way to the 50th day!

Our 50th day celebration was a big hit!  The kids loved going back in time and experiencing life how it was in the 1950's.  Everyone was dressed to impressed in their 50's poodle skirts and blue jeans.  

Aren't they just so stinkin' cute?

We lined the halls with records and decorated our room to really make it feel like the 50's.

Making our records was a fun way to practice some of our shapes.  My friends are really great at identifying ovals and circles!  We also learned that working together as a team makes things a whole lot easier!

and the finished product...

We turned our records on and danced our way to the 50th day!

We've been practicing a lot with making tallies and counting by 5's.  We practiced making 50 tally marks and counting by 5's to 50.

In our math center, Mrs. Schlagle helped us count our way to 50.  We made special 50's necklaces that the kinders really enjoyed eating.  What better way to practice counting and fine motor than candy necklaces?

Mrs. Ryer helped us at our root beer float center.  Kinders got to make their own root beer floats and give them a taste.  They graphed whether or not they like their floats. 

At the bubble blowing station, we tried and tried and tried to blow bubbles, and some of us did!  We graphed  how big our bubbles were.  I tired to get a picture of my friends that blew bubbles, but they popped before I could get the shot!

We also tried hula hooping to fifty.  Most of my friends were WAY better at this than I was :)  Check out our awesome action shots.

Thanks to Mrs. Bassett, we had an awesome 50's snack.

We had a sock hop to end our fabulous day.  These kinders definitely brought their dancing shoes!  We hand jived and twisted the day away!!

Mason having a ball!

Miss Alexis should have been born in the 50's with those moves!

If the 50th day was this much fun, we CAN'T wait for the 100th day!

Ready to eat our Thanksgiving feast :)

We LOVED every second of our Thanksgiving feast! I want to thank all of my parents that helped make out feast so great.  You guys are amazing :) 

This year our class dressed up as pilgrims for our feast.  Ask your kinder to tell you all about the pilgrims and their voyage to America.  I think they will surprise you!!

Pilgrim friends at our feast

We left with full bellies and smiles on our faces!  I would say our feast was a great success :)

Mrs. Marple surprised us at the end of the day and helped us make mini pumpkin pies and boy were they delicious.  

2 spoonfuls of vanilla pudding

1 spoonful of pumpkin

 stir it all together, scoop it into pie crust, add some whip cream

and enjoy :)

Hoping that you and your families have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

One of those crazy mixed up weeks!

Oh, what a week this has been! 

We had a jammed packed schedule of learning and special projects crammed into three crazy mixed up half days!  This week we have spent A LOT of time with Mrs. Andaloro's a.m. kinders and we have really enjoyed their company.

On Tuesday, our classes had our Veteran's celebration that we have been preparing for since last week.  Ms. Mader (Ethan's mom from Mrs. Andaloro's class) is leaving for Afghanistan next month.  We thought it would be a good idea to honor her, as well as, a few of our other veteran friends.

A.M. and P.M. kinders dressed to impress in their red, white, and blue!

Mr. Cheeseman, Nick's grandpop, explaining how far away Afghanistan is.

Mr. Cheeseman (Marines), Ms. Mader (Navy), Mr. Kueny (Marines) did a great job answering all of the questions our curious kinders had. 

Both the a.m and p.m. class worked really hard practicing these three songs we sang to our special guests.  They did an awesome job considering their teacher is the WORST singer in the entire world and can barely hold a tune!! :)

Loving the delicious red, white, and blue cupcakes Mrs. Andaloro made for us!

Nicolas showing his grandpop the holiday cards we made for our military friends in Afghanistan.  Mrs. Mader is bringing them with her when she leaves in December.  Even though our Navy friends will be far from home on the holidays, they will know that we are all thinking of them! Check out my previous post to see our cards.

Nicolas and Joseph gave these certificates to their special veteran. 

Joseph was loving every second that he shared with his dad!

Nicolas also loved the time he got to spend with his grandpop!

Since we have been doing such an AMAZING job during our Fundations block, I thought I would test out a student led drill sounds session.  Anna was our lucky friend that had the chance to run Fundations.  She did an AWESOME job.  Each day, a new kinder will get a chance to lead our sound drill portion of the program.  They are all so excited for their turn!

We have been hard at work practicing writing our numbers (1-20) and we can never have enough practice.  At conferences, parents were given a copy of our number book that we use to write our numbers in school.   Make sure you are practicing forming numbers at home with your child!

Our 10 Black Dots class book has been bound and ready for our classroom library.  Check out our creative ideas and our awesome writing.  I'm so proud of how great my kinders are doing sounding out their words and writing down the sounds they hear, and I'm so happy to learn that my friends have been practicing their writing at home :)

We also finished our making our Thanksgiving place mats for our Thanksgiving feast.

....and a HUGE thank you to one of our AMAZING room mom's, Mrs. Schlagle, for making all of our pilgrim hats, bonnets, and bibs.  They came out great!

One of those crazy mixed up weeks!

We are thankful for...

Our  "I am thankful" wall is finally finished.  This month, we have been working on the sight word "I," so what better way to practice than writing about what we are thankful for :)

Before our writing activity, we read the book Thanks for Thanksgiving.  We talked about what it meant to be thankful and each student shared one thing they were thankful for this year.  

Thanks to our Fundations program, we are getting really good at sounding out our words and writing down the sounds we hear.  This one is almost right on!  Keep encouraging your child to practice sounding out words at home while writing.

We also have been learning about family.  We did a fun fingerplay I found online called A Family Fingerplay:

This is a family  

Let's count them and see,

How many there are,

And who they can be 

This is the mother

Who loves everyone

And this is the father

Who is lots of fun.

This is my sister 

She helps and she plays,

And this is the baby

He's growing each day.

But who is this one?

He's out there alone,

Why it's Jackie, the dog,

And he's chewing a bone.

After our finger play, we brainstormed what the word 'family' meant to us.

  Here are some of our thoughts: