We did it!

We did it! We are leaving for first grade! I am so proud of all my boys and girls. They are all so smart and ready for first grade. I am going to miss them so much. That's the only sad part about teaching at an all kindergarten school, when they leave for first grade, you don't see them next year. It really is saying good bye. :( It's a little bittersweet for this teacher. To all my sweet, sweet kiddos, have a great summer, learn lots and enjoy the "big" school.  I love you all! To my parents, thank you so much for trusting me with your most precious gift. Hug them lots and enjoy every second.

I am looking forward to enjoying a little bit of time off this summer, but with moving into our new home, getting our classroom ready for new k babies and presenting at our NEAEC Conference, I am going to be one busy teacher.  I still think I am going to fit in a beach trip somewhere! :) Hope you all have an awesome summer! I will be posting through out the summer about conferences and things to get ready for next year. Can't wait for another great K year to begin!

~HAPPY SUMMER!~

We went to the zoo, how about you?

This past week we went on one of our last field trips of the year, and it was awesome! We got to visit the Birmingham Zoo. At school, we have been learning facts about zoo animals and really talking up what we would see at the zoo. Finally, it was our day to visit the zoo. We had a great time! We got to see all sorts of neat animals, feed the lorikeets, and ride the train. All my kiddos were great! They all stayed together, used our peacemaker words, and had fun. A special thanks to all my parents who were able to come with us. You don't know how much I appreciated your kindness, help, and support! Here are a few awesome pics of our trip.

 Feeding the Lorikeets

 Got to see the elephants.

 The baby lion cubs! Oh my goodness, they were so fun to watch!

 Our little tour guide! Since it had been a very long time since Mrs. Snead had been at the zoo, Vyveanna, who had came a lot, helped us out! Thanks!

 We even worked on our map skills at the zoo. We wanted to see what we wanted to look at next.

 Having fun on the train ride.

 Checking out the sea lions. Anna decided that she no longer wants to be a teacher at BSLK, she want to be a zoo keeper so she can spend all day swimming with the sea lions! :) Great idea!

We're excited about the zoo!

Well guys, it's getting close to time to say good bye for another school year and move forward. Wow! Just seems like a week or two ago we were just getting to know each other and learning about colors! We have come so far! We are reading now and being such big girls and boys. I'm so proud of all of them. These next few weeks brings Mommy morning, first grade move up days, graduation, last round of DIBELS testing, field day, book fair, and our end of the year party. WHEW!! Lots going on at BSLK! This next week our theme is oceans, just in time to start thinking about summer beach trips. Looking forward to another busy and fun week in K!

Down on the Farm!

It's down on the farm at BSLK! Our unit of study last week was farm animals and how farms help feed us and our families.  On Friday we had school wide farm day. It was a blast. We were able to see and hold baby chicks, goats, pigs and lambs. We also got to see roosters and hens and the eggs they lay. Mrs. Cavannah our ESL teacher also brought her horse, Flash. We got to learn about him and touch his tail. Also, she showed us how she rides him in her horse shows. Here are a few pics of our day!

 Farmer Michael and Tori are working in the milk relay. We had to work together to get our milk (water) from the cow to the table.

 Here are Emily and Jaxon milking our "cow"

 How sweet!

 Just loved that baby pig!

 My cuties driving the tractor!

 We even got to plant flowers with Mrs. Baugh and Mrs. Landers.

 Mrs. Cavannah telling us all about Flash.

 Farm life gets a little stinky sometimes!

Miss Wishywashy was even at farm day!

We had so much fun and learned so much! This week we are learning about zoo animals and getting ready for our spring field trip to the Birmingham zoo! We are so excited! Hope you all have a great week!

The Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that!

Well Dr. Seuss's birthday has come and gone and we had fun celebrating! We spent the whole week learning and celebrating Dr. Seuss's books. First we learned about the man Dr. Seuss and what his books look like. Then later in the week, along with dress up days, we made Oobleck, tried green eggs and ham, and made "at cat in the hat" hats. That's just a few things we did to celebrate this week.

 

    Playing with Oobleck! This is a must for Read Across America week. Its just corn starch, water and green food coloring.

 Trying green eggs and ham in our "At cat in the hat" hats! We loved it!

      

Our cat in the hat craft.

My new seuss-tastic addition to our reading center! truffala trees! Just love pinterest!

Once Dr. Seuss week was over, we moved on to transportation. Our reading unit is all about transportation so this was perfect! We studied  different kinds of transportation and where they travel. At the end of the week, we got to spend the whole day doing hands on activities with transportation.

We got to see lots of different types of transportation from our community. Since we live close to lake Guntersville, one of my moms brought her jet skis for us to see! Thanks Mrs. Dendy!

Mrs. Dendy  even brought the cool motorcycle! Doesn't Jaxon look like one cool dude! Love it!

We also got to spend some time that day just playing with different types of transportation toys. Of course, my boys loved this!

 Is this not just too cute! So excited about some cars!

 My sweet boys playing together.

Just too much fun!

One of the coolest things I got to do on transportation day, was use a bucket truck! Look at those little ants down there. That's my kids! Wow! We were high!

We ended the day with  learning about a hot air balloon. We got to actually climb inside the balloon part. It was so cool, but this time, we were worn out!

Great things are happening at BSLK! We are having so much fun, but first grade is just right around the corner. So excited for them to grow, but sad to see them go! On to more fun this week in kindergarten! Lots more to learn before May!

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!

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!