Learning the Ropes

We opened Monday with a name activity to try to remember who our friends were from Friday!  

We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and completed a coloring sheet.  The text said "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, will there be enough room for ____________?" Students wrote their name on the line and decorated the tree with the letters in their name.

When everyone finished, we came back to the carpet to read each page and share our work.  

Students turned to the person who wrote the page, waved, and said "Hi, ____!"

After our Chicka lesson, we read the Gingerbread Man.  Whaddayaknow, the Gingerbread Man is real and visited our school!  He left us a clue in the back of the book to go find him.

The kids had a great time, but were disappointed that they didn't catch the Gingerbread Man.  They were also disappointed by the overly ginger cookies he left us as a consolation prize.  The entire rest of the day the kids continued to look for him and speculate what could have happened.  "He's on the roof! He got eaten! Did you eat him? Maybe he's in that closet!"

At the end of the day, we read some counting books and students explored manipulatives.  This is essentially free play so when it's time to do real work with the manipulatives the novelty is gone.

Yesterday, we read the book Unlovable.  It's one of my favorites! Who are we kidding? Every book is my favorite.  But really. This cute little pug character is always made fun of ... until he makes an unexpected friend next door!  The ending is just too cute.  You want to cry in the beginning and scream with joy by the end!! Can you just check out how focused the kids are? They were really concerned about the main character.

We've also been taking some GoNoodle breaks.   (Remember THIS post?  Gotta get this group of kids as excited about exercise!)

Yesterday was our first Writing On Demand assessment, when the kids are asked to write with ZERO help.   They all did a fantastic job!  They took their time and remembered what they wrote about.   

Today we read "How Full is Your Bucket?" and talked about ways to fill other people's buckets.  Students made a bucket and shared how they'd like to help be bucket fillers.  (If, as adults, you're familiar with Gary Chapman's 5 Love Languages, the "bucket" is the same as a "love tank," to give you an idea.)  If you're not familiar with either of these, well, we all have an "invisible bucket" above our head, and when people say or do nice things, it's like adding a drop to your bucket.  When people say or do mean things, it's dipping out of your bucket.  We all want to strive to be bucket fillers!

Before kiddos made their buckets, they had to practice using glue bottles without the mess.  Just a dot, not a lot!

Then we had our second of three writing on demand assessments.  Today was the informational genre.  (Parents, you didn't know? Kindergarten students have to write in three distinct genres these days! Narrative, informational and opinion writing.)  That sounds crazy if this is your first child in Kindergarten.  Trust me, they end up doing it and it's amazing.  Anyway, some of the stuff they were teaching me today was downright hilarious, especially since in some cases it was something I'd gone over earlier in the day.  "That's a sticker. I'm teaching you that if you move your sticker too many times, it won't stick anymore."  

One of the other teachers has a really decent garden and was selling watermelons for $5.  I bought one the other day and had no idea how gigantic it was going to be.  After slicing and deseeding it, I brought half of the watermelon for the little ones to eat at recess today.  

How cute are they??

Books that teach good behavior

Everyone knows that in the first few weeks of school, kids are testing their boundaries.

As teachers, it's important to help them see the good choices they can make to help themselves and their friends have the best day possible! 

A few days this week, we read a story about good citizenship, brainstormed a list of things we learned in the book and made an accompanying project to hang up as a constant reminder of how we should act.

Book 1: No, David! and David Goes to School

Students looked at all the things David got in trouble for and why they were poor choices. They made their own David with one of our school rules (i.e., "No Running," "No biting," etc.)

Book 2: How Full is Your Bucket? For Kids

If you haven't read this story yet, PLEASE DO! If you're familiar with the popular Love Languages books, you'll realize that this is teaching the same basic premise to children.  Instead of a love tank, we all have invisible buckets above our heads.  We can be "bucket fillers," helping friends and saying kind words to help fill their buckets, or "bucket dippers," being rude and taking things that aren't ours to dip out of someone's bucket.  Students made their own buckets with what they felt was the most important way to fill another person's bucket. Ask your child how their bucket is today... and ways you can help fill it!

P.S. This is an entire series of books, if you're interested in reading more of them to your child or using the same guidelines at home!

"Give Gifts" (we said this should be homemade, like a picture!)

"Stick up for our friends"

"Say nice things"

Book 3: Hands are Not For Hitting

After watching some children shove in line and seeing the ultimate school no-no (making pretend weapons with hands!), I felt it was important to review what hands are and are not for.  This book goes over good uses for our hands instead of bad ones.  Each student traced and cut out his/her own hand, then wrote a good use for hands before decorating.

Hands are for... "washing, hi-fives, hugging, braiding..."

In reading workshop, we've moved into partner work with some echo reading and book discussions. This week we'll transition into half independent, half partner time and introduce the reading response journals. 

In writing workshop, we discussed and made anchor charts to help us remember: how writers look when they're working, what steps writers take to get an idea on paper, and what we can write about (people we love, places we've been, feelings we've had or things we've done).  We also practiced more independence by introducing the alphabet charts and learning where and how to get our own writing materials.  This week we'll focus on the use of our writing folders.

We also learned how to do a basic sort this week - we did it whole group on the SMARTboard, then cut and glued it into our sorting journals. Even though this was a concept sort, students learned right from the beginning how important it is to compare each picture to the headers! Everyone did a wonderful job!

Math focused on number writing (which we may have to revisit again in a few weeks) and manipulative exploration. When we got to 10 on Friday, we read Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews and created our own pictures using up to 10 black dots. This week we'll discuss ways to count with one-to-one correspondence.

"Soldiers going into battle"

"Flowers"

"Fire Truck"

And to share an exciting bit of personal news, as I am wont to do... David and I adopted this cute little guy this weekend! He isn't officially ours until next Saturday since we did the "foster to adopt" program through Georgia Canine Rescue. We've renamed him Zulu and decided he's pretty much the best dog ever. Now I have a wonderful story for my demo piece (the writing I do to show students how to write). ;)

YAYAYAYAYAYYYYY We finally have a puppy!

(Yes, I know we just got married and to say finally implies we've both wanted one for a long time. I've wanted one since moving out of my parents' house, over four years ago.)