Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Jack Hartmann, Valentines Day and Community Helpers! Oh My!

Well it's been another busy and fun week at BSLK! This week our theme was community helpers. We learned a lot about what people do in our community and we talked about what we would like to do when we grow up. Our wonderful counselor planned  a great career day for us to end our unit. We got to meet a mail carrier, a nurse, a police officer and a K9 unit police officer, and she even fit in a little plan time for us teachers. She's great! Here are a few pics of career day. Also, Jamie Mayes over at Mrs. Mayes kindergarten has a wonderful community helpers unit if you are looking for one. :)
Carlos wants to be a police officer.
 Stop! Freeze! Its Officer Anna and Bernardo!
 We loved crawling around in Officer Mayer's police car.
Watching the K9 Unit

We also got to celebrate Valentine's Day and we had a special visit from Mr. Jack Hartmann! If you have not checked out Jack Hartmann and you are an educator, you must! A lot of his songs are uploaded on youtube.com. Our school arranged for him to come and give a concert for our school and surrounding schools. IT WAS GREAT! Our kids were so excited because they have seen him in all his DVD at school. We had so much fun! If you are from around here  (Albertville, Al ) and want to see Jack next year. Let us know! Jack was even kind enough to come of to all 24 of our k classrooms and visit with our kids. They loved it!
We LOVED the concert!



Well it's on to another great week. This week we are learning about Presidents. Pics to come! We are also getting ready for one of my favorite weeks at school, Dr. Seuss week! I just love all the fun and all the cute stuff they have now. Can't wait to post about that.

I hope you all have a great week and I hope you had a great Valentine's Day with your sweeties! I know I did!


Sunday, February 12, 2012

Happy 100th day!


HAPPY 100TH DAY OF KINDERGARTEN!
Here are just a few of my sweeties celebrating on our special day!

If you don't know, the 100th day of kindergarten is a BIG deal! We have counted everyday of school looking forward to the day when we get to bundle our 10 groups of 10 and place them in our hundreds pocket on our place value chart. That is why the kids look forward to it, but this teacher looks forward to that special day because it reminds me to remember how far they have come. If you are a kindergarten teacher, then you know what I am talking about. Some of my sweet babies didn't know how to write they names at the beginning of the year, and now they are reading and writing sentences, solving math word problems, and making connections that I didn't even think of. Yep, watching a child go through kindergarten is just amazing and that's why I love it!
We had lots of fun celebrating the 100th day of kindergarten! When my kids came down the hall from car and bus duty, this is what they saw....
 Our room was decorated with streamers and I wished them a happy 100th day very first thing! Then we got started with our day. We made hats to wear on our special day, we did 100 exercises to count to 100, we also counted by 5's and 10's to 100. While they were gone to PE I hid 100 kisses around our room. Each kiss had a number from 1-100 written on the bottom of  it. When they came back, I had them run around the room and find all 100 kisses. Once they found it, they had to read the number on the bottom and find it on our hundreds chart. Let me tell you it was CRAZY but such fun!  Here are a few actions shots.



 Another one of our activities was to paint 100 dots. I let them pick their favorite color and go to town. They love anything to do with paint and this really shows how many makes 100. We also did some writing activities on what they would buy with $100 and what they would look like at 100 years old.  These were so fun, but since we had some other specials activities that day, we weren't able to spend a lot of time on them. Some of my co-workers did an awesome job on them and they are just too cute. Haven't looked to see who has posted pics, but look through my fav blogs and you can probably them. Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Mayes, Mrs. Holcomb, Ms. Chamblee I think all did some cute ones.

 This is one of my favorite activities for the 100th day. I give each child the number 1 and two zeros and let them make their 100 into whatever picture they want. They always turn out so cute and creative. Here are just a few of my great artist.
 Owen made a monster truck with his 100.

 Anna made a pair of glasses. Some of my kids also made glasses, but colored in the eyes black to make sun glasses. Creative!!
 Caroline made a flower.
This is an up close shot of the writing paper that goes along with the picture. I also had butterflies, trains, and cars made by some of my kids. They all did an awesome job!

The 100th day of kindergarten was a blast! We had so much fun celebrating and remembering that we are 100 days smarter. I asked each child to share something they had learned to do in the past 100 days and yall, that was just so memorable. I had everything from tying shoes to writing my last name, to reading a book all by myself. Just really made me think! My sweet babies are on the downhill slide to first grade at the big school.

As usual, this week doesn't disappoint at BSLK. Its another great and busy week. We have Valentine's day parties, can not wait for our Jack Hartmann concert this week  (if you haven't seen this guy you must, check him out on youtube.com, some of his songs and videos have been uploaded there), we are also looking at community helpers and ending that unit this week with career day on Friday.  Whew, lots to do! Looking forward to all the fun!