Celebrating Advent

I have always loved Christmas and sharing it with 14 five and six year old keeps the magic alive. We teach two main topics in December; first Christmas around the world and second is the Season of Advent. I love teaching both. There are so many great projects and stories to share that I have to focus really hard on what I want the children to really learn and not get caught up in doing A,B, and C. Anyone else feel like there is so much to do and 3 weeks is not enough time?

 We  mainly focused on three things: What is Advent? Gingerbread Men, and Christmas around the world.  Gingerbread Men is our focus during Reader's and Writer's Workshop. We have been extremely busy, but we have got so much done. One of my favorite projects was creating an advent wreath (pictured above). In the past I have created one wreath using the children's hand prints. This year we traced and cut out our hands in green paper then glued them in bunches to make a candle holder. I placed each one in one of our four windows. As we move through the season of advent we will "light" each candle.

Our homemade slippers with out St. Nicholas treats on Monday morning.

On Friday, we spent most of the day exploring ST. Nicholas. We talk about how we honor him at school and church and how people in Germany and the Netherlands honor him. We created dutch shoes to fill with hay and carrots to leave out for him.

This year I also added a St. Nicholas ornament to our religion time. After reading the Legend of Saint Nicholas, we created these simple heads to hang on our tree. I think they came out adorable.

Sometimes you need to start your Monday off with a little tissue paper and glue.

As we continue to focus on the arrival of Baby Jesus. We created these stained glass window decorations. There are many different version floating around Pinterest.  The children love using the wax paper and lots of glue, especially once they knew they needed a lot of glue. We have big windows that look into our hallway and these look magnificent hanging in them.

We also began our project for our parent gift. Last years ones came out adorable. it is a bit labor intensive and if I didn't have an amazing assistant and some parent volunteers I couldn't see it happening. I love the way the story of the Nativity is told through the children's hand print animals. Here is the original source. I will share our results when they are finished!

That is it for me know! What does your month of December look like?

Native American Week

We are incredible lucky and are located in a place surrounded by history...I kid you not go to the grocery store, favorite bar, or even picking the kids up from school and you can see people in period clothing. At first its odd, but I love it. It also means as a kindergarten class, we have an opportunity to visit a recreation of a Native American village to experience life first hand.

We begin the week with a tree map organizing our knowledge into schema, new information, and misconceptions (fail-no photo). I use post-it notes so we can move the information around if needed. Next, we discuss how Native Americans did not have names like our own. They often used nature and talents to describe their children. We gather a bag full to nouns related to nature. I do require the children to pick nature that is found in our area. Then we gather a list of adjectives. We then have a naming ceremony, where the children choose at random one from each basket. It is amazing how each year the names fit each child. This year some of my favorites were: talented turtle, small twig, and running sky. We then create vest that will be worn to our Pow Wow the week of Thanksgiving.  The children decorate with Native American symbols and we encourage them to tell different stories with their vests.

We spend two days learning about corn and Indian Corn. I love Gail Gibbons for non-fiction books and her book about corn is a wonderful resource. I gave each table an ear of sweet corn and Indian Corn to explore. The children created observational drawings in their Kindergarten Notebooks that focused on the details they could observe before it was husked and after. We then set up a piece of Indian Corn in water to see if it will sprout. We left the corn at the science table to be explored the rest of the week.

We finished the week with science rotations. I set up four rotations that would give the children a chance to try the chores that Native American children completed daily. One group used turkey quills and paint to create a Native American headband for our Pow Wow.

The second group worked on weaving. I used embroidery hoops and scraps for the children to weave.

The third group used beads and colored pasta to create a necklace, which again will be worn at our Pow Wow.

The last group worked on a STEM project building either a canoe that holds 2 people or a yehakin that zero hero bear can live in.

I love how this group added a bed and a firepit inside the

Yehakin

It was hilarious listening to the children during weaving that his arm may fall off it was so tough.

Trying Math Journals

Last year, as I was searching the web, I came across Deedee Wills' math journals and I loved the idea of them and I thought well I could do this myself. After downloading the free sample, I began creating my own, but not very well or consistently, and eventually they fell through the cracks. My students still flourished in math in so many ways, but their math journals didn't turn into the tool I had hoped.

This year Patterning using different sizes.

This year I took the plunge and purchased the whole bundle... And I love them. They really do make math journal time so quick, easy, and painless. 90% of the time I don't even give a mini lesson about the prompt because they are so relevant to the curriculum we are working with. We use Everyday Math, but I do supplement my centers with lots of activities found on TPT or Pinterest. Occasionally I come across one, and want to save it for a mini lesson to guarantee success.

Our quick mini lesson on showing it a different way.

The beauty of the prompts is that even when you need a mini lesson it can be a simple as a white board and class discussion. Excuse the awful picture, but I showed one way to make 5 then challenged my kids to make 5 in 3 other ways. We just drew it right on the board and bam! We were done and it was their turn.

These math journal prompts have cut down the amount of time we spend on math journals. Between getting journals, reading the prompt up to 10 times, and completing the prompt is 10 minutes. JUST 10 minutes. The bundle comes with extra prompts for each month, so I can use some of them during my small group if children need more assistance with a concept.

My last favorite part of these journal prompts is that they are the fastest way to assess the children on a daily basis on all the topics. We are not using Common Core, but each month includes shapes, patters, addition, comparison, subtraction, and writing numerals. Within 10 minutes each day, I know exactly where each child lies within a specific topic. I can choose to stop and teach then or make plans to cover it whole group during another mini lesson.

If you have been on the fence about these prompts... take the plunge, do it!

I LOVE stations

I love math stations and literacy stations.

I had seen literacy stations done during my first grade student teaching, but it was a lot of directions by the teacher and very little student interaction. Ultimately it was busy work, while the teacher met with guided reading groups.

When I started in kindergarten last year, I searched the Internet and came across Deedee Wills' literacy station model and...WOW it just made sense. I got even luckier when my new classroom came with the Debbie Dillard's Literacy Stations book. I decided that groups of two were the way to go. Each day we would complete 2 stations for a total of 10 a week.I have 14 students the last two years so not all stations are done everyday.

This is a perfect first week center. I love the individual tubs for stations.

I chose to make one of my stations meet with me. I love meeting with only 2 students. Both students start on a basic warm up, usually spelling sight words with tiles, while I do a quick walk around to make sure everyone is on the right path.

The tub on the left holds each station and is numbered.

Obviously the first couple of weeks, I do not have a group, but with only 2 people in a group I find that the children settle into stations quickly. When working with just two children I can give them more individualized directed teaching, listen to them read, and assess easily.  after a short independent warm up, we work on decoding strategies. We then move to reading a book. As the year progresses, i read with one of the students and the other child works on a phonics activity or reads with a whisper phone.  

When possible, I try to avoid worksheets.

I am also blessed with an amazing assistant that pulls children i target as needing more directed teaching in phonics, sentence structure, and grammar.she pulls both strong and weak students and it changes weekly based on needed skills.

Nothing like a rainbow stamp pad to help with sight words.

What do the other children do while I'm working with children. They are participating in 9 other centers. Typically one is iPads, the children are allowed to choose any literacy app that we have talked about. one station is always ourWords Their Way Word Sort. I always try to do a literacy craft. This week we cut out pieces to recreate The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We also do lots of literacy games that include rhymes, beginning sound, and then transition it word families such as roll and beginning sound, sight word tally, clip it beginning sounds.

Domino Match

In math, we just do 1 station a day and do 7 in a rotation. I again do pairs, but often make the pairs different. Last year my pairs were typically boy/girl, but this year with only 3 boys that has been super difficult.

Halloween Tens Frame game.

 I again like to meet with one group, although I typically wait even longer than with literacy as it takes longer to learn how use manipulative appropriately. I love hands on math stations and try to include as many amipulatives as possible.

How do your stations look?

2015 Classroom Reveal

I am super excited to share my classroom reveal with you.

 We received the news in early spring that our kindergarten classrooms were being relocated. Which was fabulous because the old classrooms use to be the rooms that were attached to the stage. Yes, I said stage. It was a very odd place for kindergarten classrooms. 

I was extremely worried that construction would run really long, but it was fairly smooth. Ultimately the classrooms were finished on the first teacher work day, but they were adding shelving and finishing up details. So I didn't really get into my last room till 3 days later.

I'm gonna try squeezing my word wall on this wall. The metal boxes is where the clock will one day hang.

The most awesome part of my room is all the light. We got these awesome hallway windows. Adorable right? 

Math manipulatives are on the shelf. The block area is located under the loft this year.

But it did make hanging my screen and space for a word wall extremely challenging, but I am thrilled about how the whole thing turned out. It's not totally finished as Walmart was out of ice bins, therefore I still need another 6 at least for my library, but I am extremely excited to have a much larger library this year. 

 

 Some close up photos.

The children are using the rainbow bins for their work. My assistant and I have the larger drawers for guided reading.

My old teacher desk now holds the science table and the prayer table sits on a small bookshelf below the number of days in school.

Calendar and schedule.

Literacy Stations on the top shelf and math stations on the bottom shelf.

Thanks for taking a look around!

Are they finished yet?

MOVING … don’t you just cringe thinking about it.  Now think about moving CLASSROOMS…nightmares right?  Add in the fact that the classrooms are still being built and well… are you hyperventilating yet?

We arrived Monday to contractors, Tuesday to contractors, and you guessed it Wednesday to contractors. By Thursday I was walking in circles I had helped our fabulous new Pre-k3 teacher arrange her classroom. Which use to be my classroom when I taught Pre-k, so I have a very fond place in my heart for this room. It is also the room my Bug will be in this year. So by Thursday, I had helped carry everyone else’s furniture and I had a pile of great teachers ready to help us with our move. On Thursday, the contractor finally said, “the classroom is yours.” Cue jumping up and down, happy dances, the full nine yards.

Of course on Thursday our wonderful maintenance staff were all busy, so then it was Friday morning. After our in-service with a visiting Sister, I got the pleasure of having all my stuff and more dropped off in my room…cue the hyperventilating. I’m bummed I didn’t get a picture, but I was so anxious to get things going I jumped right in.  Moving furniture is exhausting though.  Next week, it will be all about decorating, labels, and organizing and I can’t wait.

And I started another project!

Summer Projects Part One

I’m so excited to be writing my first official blog post. I have been thinking about joining my favorite teachers in the blogging world, but I was scared! But this summer I decided I would take the leap. So here goes:

Summers are for vacations right? Well not for us this year instead we did a ton of projects, mainly ones around the house. My extremely WONDERFUL hubby fixed our rotting door, built the bug a big girl bed, and tiled the kitchen backsplash!  Yay!

I was also lucky enough to squeeze in a few projects for myself or rather my classroom, the biggest one being designing this blog. I looked at purchasing one, but decided to give it a try myself and despite being frustrated many a time when coding didn’t work the way I had hoped I’m all done. I have Megan at I Teach What’s Your Superpower to thank. Her tutorials were a life save and extremely helpful.

Additionally, I turned all my file cabinets and those of the previous teacher into binders. I had one she had four. Many I had gone through last year, but I had not done a whole lot with the stuff in them. I tossed tons of stuff, especially doubles or outdated worksheets. Then I organized by topic and theme. I’m so excited how they came out and the best part was the awesome EDITABLE binder covers I found by Mandy Neal. Love the chalkboard mixed with the bright colors! BONUS it include spines in two different sizes.

Next, I wanted to create some things for my NEW classroom, yes it is being built. My hubby cut these adorable pencils, which I painted and wrote my assistant and my names on. 

We have a Restore store where I scored this awesome table ($10) and those plastic folder for take home folders ($0.15) Score!!

I covered the table with an older Curious George book. Look how cute it turned out! the bug helped and loved the gluey modpodge.

Still to go are create seats, curtains, and flower boxes but we will see…