Dreamers

Finally finished our MLK "I have a dream" book during Writer's Workshop last week.  Check out these great dreamers and even better writers:

My dream is "for my friends not to fight."

My dream is "for people to get along."

My dream is "for my sister to be nice."

My dream is "for Logan to be my friend."

(Logan's our safety)

Sending out a BIG thank you to Mrs. Graziano, Mrs. Schlagle, Mrs. Luciano, Mrs. Kueny, Mrs. Ryer, Mrs. Bassett, Mrs. Walker, and Mrs. Marple for coming in to help us make our Valentine houses last week. 

...and an even BIGGER thank you to Mrs. Kueny for wrapping, what felt like, a million tissue boxes to prepare our Valentine center!

We opened our post office today, and the kids are loving every second of it!!

Hot chocolate, snowmen, and mittens!

During the month of January, we were introduced to our first 2 word families, -at and -ug. We have made lists, played games, and did word work with our word families throughout the month.  We also read a book called The Biggest Snowman Ever, and we learned all about the importance of team work.  I thought it would be a really great learning opportunity for my kinders to work in learning teams to make our snowman word families.  

The red table sorting and sounding out -at and -ug words.  

Lauren highlighting the word family ending for each word.

Cayden, Ella, and Nathan sounding the words out, gluing them to the right word family, and building their snowman.

Our -at and -ug word family snowmen:

This week, we read one of my favorite books ever, The Mitten.  The kids had a blast looking through the keyholes on each page and making predictions about what would happen next based on the illustrations.  With this book, we practiced a lot with retelling events in a story.  We used fun animal masks and an over sized 'mitten.' 

We also made mittens of our own during Writer's Workshop.  We brainstormed animals that could have crawled into the mitten to get warm, but ultimately, the kinders wanted to be the ones to crawl into the mitten.  

We have been working with number stories in Math this month.  Check out our kinders practicing number stories in a fun way.

Anna writing her number story.

Mason double checking his addition.

Finished number stories:

Someone's 6!

Happy 6th Birthday Carson!  Thanks for the delicious brownie cupcakes :)

  

In math, we have been working on measuring things and comparing heights.  We practiced measuring snowmen with unifex cubes, recording their height, and writing our sight word 'my.'  Kinders then talked to their table mates and compared snowman heights.  We use words like 'shorter than,' 'taller than,' and 'equal.'

Circle time

Lately, I've been trying to think of a way to have every student more engaged and accountable for what we learn during circle time. Of couse, we love circle and we participate, but sitting for more than 10 minutes has its challenges--even for me!

Over break, I went shopping at Target, my favorite store, because I just had to use my gift card (thanks Joseph!).  I was in the school supply part of the store and saw an awesome deal on binders, and a light bulb went off!  Maybe if each one of my kinders had the circle time activities right in front of them, where they could write, color, graph, tally, etc., then maybe, just maybe, circle time would have that much more meaning. I've seen similar ideas on other blogs,  so I put together these binders and was super excited to try them out. 

Here's what they include:

We use the monthy calendar to practice months, days of the week, writing numbers, counting, and patterns

We use the write the date page to practice writing the month, the day, and the year.

The Days of school page helps us track the number of days we have been in school with tally marks.  This also helps us practice counting by five.

Our weather graph helps keep track of the weather, formulate questions about our graph, and reading results.

The sight word page helps assess the sight words my kinders have mastered and those we still need to practice. 

...and what a hit they were!  The kids absolutely love using their binders during circle time :) A win-win!