My favorite thing so far…

Each week my students are growing and changing so much but this week was different for some reason. Each morning after breakfast we have baggie centers that are review games from things we’ve learned. I try to challenge the students with new bags of harder things to do. They’ve been very brave and tackled them with excitement. This week they started tapping out more words in the word bags and their excitement was contagious. They were reading words! In the past some could read the words but it was more a memorizing thing, not identifying the actual sounds as part of the word. But this week that all changed. They were master tappers of words and then racing over to tell my assistant and me  the word. That memory will last with me a lifetime, the first time some of them realized they actually can read, without me there by their side coaching them, but instead they were coaching each other. Hopefully they will keeping growing and growing. First grade is around the corner!

(Ta’shae practicing the beginning sounds of words with a snowman match)

(Skei and Ar’quavious practicing finding rhyming pairs, these two students actually were looking at the letters to make sure they were the right family!)

Diamonte so proud he just read his word!

Goumana practicing syllable sound sorting. Finding which words have 1, 2,or 3 syllables.

Ke’Amoni tapping out the word yes. She’s an expert tapper!

Can’t you see the excitement for this one! Ar’quavious just tapped “had” and then yelled, “it’s HAD!” priceless!

Happy Friday!

We’re 100 days smarter!!!!!

Today we celebrated our 100th day. We are so proud of all the things we have learned so far this year. We just have a short few months before we become first graders.

We started our day rolling the dice and adding numbers to get to 100. Some of us felt brave enough to make an estimate on how many rolls it would take. How many rolls do you think it took?

After that we counted 100 fruit loops to make our necklace to wear throughout the day.

After we got to 100 we were so excited to put our necklaces on!

At the end of the day we got to make a special 100th day snack. It was yummy but before we ate it we had to make the number 100 using the food.

We ran out of time to celebrate with our items from home and also drawing ourselves when we’re 100 years old. So check back at the end of the week to see the rest of our celebration!

Happy 100th day! Watch out 1st grade here we come!

Superstar Homework Club!

Every Friday we look through all the homework and check to see who completed all their work plus who got their fluency poem signed each night. If a child has completed all their work and has shown accountability they earn a homework award. They’re in our Superstar Homework Club!

 

Here’s our club members from last week. The week before we only had 9 students in the club but this week we had 11!!! We are so proud of them. Keep up the great work. I wonder who is going to make the club this week?

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Our students celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week on Tuesday! We started off our day by tracing our friend’s hand onto construction paper and gluing the words “fair” and “unfair” onto the hands.

     

After that we watched a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made from the book Martin’s Big Words by: Doreen Rappaport. The movie showed students about how Dr. King created social movements using peace and big words. The students loved the movie but also were sad about him losing his life.

We then used our hands to talk about situations that were “fair” and “unfair”. Our students were brave enough to come up with their own situations to ask the class about. We held up the hand to indicate if we thought the situation was fair or unfair. Here is an example of what a student said:

If I have a birthday party and invite everyone and give everyone ice cream is it fair or unfair?

What do you think?We all thought that was fair!

After our circle time we then thought about if we could spy Dr. King’s dream in our everyday life. The students came up with places where they have seen people of all different colors and backgrounds working together. Here is some of their artwork:

  

We put all of our artwork together to create a poster for our room:

 

 

We have some great students and wonderful thinkers who always lead with their hearts. Celebrating Dr. King gave us a chance to us our brains but most importantly our hearts.

Our Superstar Student of the Month!

Our Superstar Student for the month of December is Nazier!!! He has been working so hard to show compassion towards others. He is always willing to help out any student or teacher who needs it. Nazier also has been improving his behavior choices in class and becoming a role model for others. Congrats to him! Keep up the great work!

I wonder who will be the superstar student for the month of January. Will it be you?

Happy Holidays!

Our class was busy these last few days of school. We made our ornament for our parents, got to see Dr. Jean, participated in the Holiday Program at school, and even got to wear our pjs to school to watch the Polar Express.  Here are some of our smiles from the past week. We can’t wait to start the new school year with new goals.  Check back in 2012 to see what goals we want to set for ourselves for the rest of the year. Watch out first grade here we come!!!

 

    

  

                       

We wish you and your family a happy holiday season and a wonderful 2012 year full of excitement, peace, blessings, and hope! 

We’re becoming writers!

This week we have been reading stories about being a great friend and things friends like to do together. For one of our journals this week we brainstormed things we like to do with friends and wrote our journal entry.  Our illustrations focused on adding details and for this entry we had to spell the words: I, like, to, with, my, and friends correctly.  If you look carefully you’ll notice smiles on our illustrations because the students said when they spend time with their friends it makes them happy!  We also have been making sure to start our sentences with capital letters and stop our sentences with periods. Take a look at some of our wonderful superstar writing!

 

 

 

Come back at the end of the week to see how we did at the Peter and the Wolf Ballet. We’ve been learning about the characters and the instruments now it’s time to see the real show.  You’ll see pictures of our field trip and also our classroom puppets we’re making!

Thank you to our Veterans!

This week in our classroom we celebrated our veterans.  Our students made a banner and cards to send to our local VA hospital. They were very excited to give some “sunshine”, as we call it in our room, to the patients there.

We also had a wonderful flag raising ceremony performed by a group of Citadel Cadets. We were very lucky and had 2 cadets visit our classroom. They shared with us how important it was to have great grades and study hard in order to go to college. I think they also inspired some new dreams in our room to “be just like you” as one student said. Maybe we have some future soldiers in our midst from the marines, army, coast guard, navy, or air force. The students were amazed at how heavy their gear was and how much work it takes to serve our country.  Thank you to Cadet Small and Cadet Abner for visiting our classroom and also thank you to Ms. Carpenter who brought them in to visit with us. It made our day!

Thank you to all of our veterans who have served and to those still serving this great nation. We are forever grateful to you and to your families for the sacrifices you make each and everyday.  You are heroes to us whether we are young or old!

Welcome to the world of kindergarten learning!

We’re so glad that you came to visit our blog about our global kindergarten adventures. So far this year we’ve learned so much about each other and about kindergarten. There’s so much more to learn and experience, come along with us on this global adventure. We promise you won’t want to miss the great things we’re up to! Check back later this week for our first real post!