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!

What have we been doing??

 We have been so busy since starting the new year and what a great start it has been! So glad to be getting back to normal at home and at school. :)

When we came back to school after our long Christmas break we learned about Winter and Arctic animals.
I found this great idea on pinterest! I mixed shaving cream and glue and we created our own "Snowmen." They turned out so cute! We tore paper to add details and then wrote describing words about our snowmen.

We also learned about ice and how it melts. We played a game called  "melt the ice." Each table was a team and each team member had to roll the dice to see how they would get to melt the ice. Either by blowing on it for 10 sec, holding it for 10 sec, dropping it in water for 10 sec, or dropping a pinch of salt on it. They loved it! If you are still learning about winter I recommend this activity! I have the roll sheet I made, if you need it let me know I can email it to you. We talked afterward which method worked the best! Great science activity!

We learned about two Arctic animals thanks to Mrs. Jump's unit.

Here we are asking and graphing which one you like best and our recording sheet.

We also talked about how we celebrate New Year's and why people make resolutions. We made our own resolutions.

I know the picture is kinda hard to tell but its her face and a party hat. Her goal it to help her mommy clean. How sweet is that. Wish she would come to my house! ;) We are also learning about the Chinese New Year!

We have had so much fun celebrating all the fun Winter brings. Next week we are going to do an author study on Jan Brett and her books The Mitten and The Hat. I have made a few things to go with them and if I can teach myself how I hope to have them up or at least pics of them up soon.  Next week is my schools accreditation week and committee members will be there. Ekk!! :) I know we will do fine! I teach at the greatest kindergarten school I know.

Hope you all have a wonderful wet weekend! By the way we are finished with winter DIBELS and we did Awesome!!! Just like I knew they would, they are SO SMART! Just love my little ones!

Merry, Merry Christmas!

Alright, Christmas gifts are bought and wrapped, house is clean, laundry is done, and I am posting in my PJ's today, its official I am ready for Christmas!!! Now it's time to get a new post up!

We have had lots of things going on in kindergarten since Thanksgiving. Christmas is always a special time in kindergarten. We have seen Santa, made crafts, learned about reindeer, rode the polar express,  wrote our Christmas letters, and even managed to get some regular reading activities and DIBELS done in between! whew!  Here is one of my babies working in a math center. In math, we have been working a lot on patterns, number words, color words and numbers 10-20. In reading, we have been working on ending sounds in words, and focusing a lot on writing letters and our last names.

 

 Our Santa craft from Deanna Jump.

 Our list to Santa also from Deanna Jump. He wants a dinosaur, an alligator, and a car :)

 She wants a barbie house, a dress and pink boots :)

 Wanted to share this pic. This is one of our centers we call beat the clock. After they finish their center work, one child works the timer and the other sees if they can say all the letter names and make it to the star. This has helped with our LNF on DIBELS. So easy right! and they love it!

 My class in our PJ's enjoying the Polar Express.

 We even had hot chocolate! yum!

 We graphed if we liked hot chocolate. Saw this graph on pinterest, don't remember who's it was on. sorry!: /

After all that excitement, our Christmas celebrations were not over. Our awesome school and PTO sponsored our Christmas story telling festival. We got to travel to some awesome stations.

 We made cute paper plate ornaments.

 Our awesome PE coach hosted reindeer games in the gym!

 Our librarian read Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett. Doesn't our library look amazing!

 We even had a special visit from Mr. C himself. We were so surprised!

He told us we were so good at Big Spring Lake Kindergarten that he brought everyone an early Christmas gift!

As you can see we have had a wonderful and busy few weeks leading up to Christmas. I love this time of year with the kiddos! I hope you all are enjoying your little vacation with your sweeties and taking in all the Christmas magic. I am looking forward to hitting the ground running in January. We are on the downhill slide to being first graders! Can you believe it!? I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and remember what and who the season is all about. Don't forget to hug those little ones, I miss them like crazy!