I back to blogging because I want to brag on my class!
We are winners!!!!!!
We didn't win grand prize, but I am so stinkin excited to have won First Runner-up! My kinders did a fantastic job singing and dancing their hearts out to Zero the Hero. If you have never seen Heidi Song videos or used them in your classroom, you need to change that today. I believe in them. I have seen the way they have transformed my teaching and the number of sight words my students can read and spell and recognize. Thank you Mr. Michael for being our Zero the Hero. Thank you Heidi for picking us as First Runner-up! I can't wait to share this with my kinders tomorrow morning!
Mother Goose is an imaginary author of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. May 1st was Mother Goose Day.
I think it is safe to say that only a teacher would have that date on her calender!
When I was a little girl my dad apparently won his precious little girls a talking Mother Goose from our local county fair!
As a little girl I loved listening to Mother Goose read to me and I always followed along with the book. She had books and tapes that you could purchase. Most of the books that she would read were fairy tales. I loved watching her mouth move, eyes blink, and head twist side to side. It made reading fun! I loved her!
Mother Goose and me when I was around 3.
So in honor of Mother Goose Day we spent the morning reading some nursery rhymes and fairy tales!
We also enjoyed listening to her read The Ugly Duckling!
My students were so amazed by her!
Some were begging me to let them take her home! I am so glad she is still in great condition.
Friday was a blast! Each student was so excited to come in wearing their costume and checking out their friends costumes too. They were in awe of my costume!
My fear was that I would have some students come in that morning and not have a costume or not have a book. I really discussed it with my students about what they were going to wear and that they needed to have a book about who they were dressed up as. Like any great teacher I was glad I was prepared because I had 2 students come in that morning without a costume or a book! I had gotten some simple things together which I am SO glad I did!
I was Cowgirl Kate from the book Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa by Erica Silverman (who also wrote one of my most favorite books Big Pumpkin)!
My assistant was the Old Lady from the book There Was A Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick.
Some other that showed up in our class were...Little Red Riding Hood, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Pinkalicious, Tinkerbell, Soccer Player, Junie B. Jones, Firefighter, Splat the Cat, and Justin Bieber!
The students in the other Kindergarten classes dressed up as ducks from the book Make Way for Ducklings!
We came into the gym and paraded around for all the other grades and then sat down to enjoy seeing the other grades parade around to show off their costumes. There was also a parade for the teachers and parents who dressed up.
Two local newspapers were there snapping pictures!
After the parade we broke it down to Gotta Keep Reading! Our chorus teacher did a great job leading and teaching the school the dance!
What a great day to encourage reading and get our students excited about books!
Now I must start planning my costume for next year!
Happy last week of school before Spring Break! I am so super excited about a week off! I do not have too much planned but I am excited about having some time off and enjoying some time to myself.
Every year my school has a "Book Character Day." Since my Aunt worked at the same school a couple of years ago I had heard about this special day and so I knew how this day was such a big deal to our school! I have been reminding my students about it for over a month and we have been deciding what each student can come dressed as!
Our Book Character day is on Friday. I am getting so excited about it.
Our music teacher has also been planning something special with the whole school. If you have not heard or watched this song and mob dance you must check it out!
The students have been practicing in music and in our class almost every day! We are so pumped about being able to dance in our costumes with our favorite books on Friday.
One of my favorite questions that has been asked this year by one of my kinder friends, "Do you have a reason why leprechauns like to play tricks on St. John Patrick's Day?" Well, that is a hard one to answer. First I enjoyed a little giggle about St. John Patrick. Not really sure who that is. Never heard about him before!!! I had a hard time coming up with some reasons. The only way I can explain is that leprechauns like to be tricky and sneaky. And that they were today!!!!!!
We had some great traps set up around our room, but they were not good enough for those little guys! We were all a little bummed about that!
LOVE the spelling!
Those leprechauns made SUCH a mess!!!! Took the green squares off our magic rug and threw them around the room, turned over chairs, books were everywhere, chairs turned over and on top of the tables, lucky charms were on the tables, gold pieces thrown around, little feet prints on desks and the floor, and green bead necklaces for everyone. One trap had an alarm on it, and we thought we had caught the leprechaun because as we were walking to our room, we heard it going off. We just knew we had it, but when we got in the classroom, he was not in there!
(little shoe stuck in the window as he was trying to escape!)
As we walked in everyone was in shock! One kinder friend said, "Ms. Brown, I just can't even believe my eyes!" She didn't move. She just stood there in shock.
I enjoyed watching their excitement. My favorite though was a girl just leaning on one of the tables eating the lucky charms that the leprechaun left on the table! She didn't care about anything else going on around her except for the cereal!
After a little more work we enjoyed a wonderful St. Patrick's Day snack! Rainbow cupcakes! I let them ice their own cupcakes. I like to let them participate a little in their snack time. They were very yummy. We also had some leprechaun juice!
(fun recipe from familyfun.com! i love getting their magazine. such great ideas!)
So much excitement for one day!
One more picture....this is the note the leprechaun left
This is one of my favorite things about St. Patrick's Day....ENJOY!
We are getting ready for St. Patrick's Day in my class this week. We started the week off by talking about rainbows. I introduced rainbows by reading The Magic School Bus "Makes A Rainbow." As I was reading a student said, "Ms. Brown, I wish you were Ms. Frizzle." I agree! I love her science lessons. I wish I were better at incorporating science into my classroom! It is something I plan to continue working on!
I found a cute craft and poem to go along with the colors of the rainbow on a great blog I like to follow.
They turned out so cute!!!
Our room is filling up with traps and green and gold. We are very hopeful that we are going to catch that sneaky little leprechaun!!!
Last day of our Dr. Seuss celebration week! I had one parent come in this morning and tell me that they have had so much fun this week! I love to hear that!
Today was Green Day. We read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss!
And what kind of green day is complete without trying green eggs?!?!?
I scrambled the eggs and divided them into 23 little cups. While I was passing out the cups of green eggs, I had one student tell me not to give her a cup because she was not going to try it! I begged a little and told her she should just take one little bite! So I counted to 3, and we all tasted them at the same time. I think it surprised so many of them that they actually LIKED green eggs! 3 students did not try the eggs. 1 student told me, "Ms. Brown, if I eat these green eggs, I will throw up!" I did not force her!!! They begged me for more! I only had enough for everyone to have a little taste. I had a couple more eggs and told them after lunch we could maybe have some more.
Each student made a green egg with construction paper. Then we used the eggs while we made our graph. We made a graph with the question
Do you like green eggs?
Friday is an exciting day because we have Fun Friday snacks at the end of the day. Today I provided the snack. We ate yummy sugar cookies and each child got to ice his own cookie with green icing and then put green sprinkles on his cookie. And since they begged for more eggs I scrambled more eggs!
I know you are thinking the same thing as I was...sugar cookies and green eggs go really good together! They didn't seem to mind.
My door has been decorated for Dr. Seuss the past two weeks and I have forgotten to share!
We read The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss and had a discussion on opposites.
A little sad that this week is over. It was a fun and exciting week. We read lots of great Dr. Seuss books and some other Beginner Books that my kinders brought to share. I know that I will treasure this week forever, and I hope my kinders will also.
This has been an exciting week that has worn me out, but it has been totally worth it! We are all having a blast!
We had a early dismissal today so I had a lot to cram into Hat Day today!
We read The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Another book that I had never read and it was really long but my students seemed to really like it!
All but 2 wore hats today! I love that most of their hats are bigger than their heads! They all looked so cute in their hats. I was hoping that someone would wear a Justin Beieber hat. They didn't fail me. My student who has been faithful to JB from the beginning sported her JB hat and matching shirt. Too cute!!!!
I have been trying to go with the whole Dr. Seuss thing in my apparel this week.
We did not have extra time today to do special Dr. Seuss activities, but we did color and design a hat as if we were Dr. Seuss. We also did some rhyming. I love to listen to their thought process as they think about what words rhyme.
So thankful that tomorrow is FRIDAY!!!
Tomorrow is Green Day. I am excited about cooking green eggs tomorrow with my kinder friends!
First thing I told my students..."We might look wacky today, but we are not going to act wacky!" Special days like this whole week has been my kinders tend to be a little on the wild side. I know they are excited because I am excited and their teacher is doing some crazy things this week!
I had never read the book until over the weekend. It is a funny book!
My kinders looked so cute and wacky today! We enjoyed giggling as each student walked in. I had one sporting a red and black wig! It was too cute! We made a cute Wacky Wednesday class book. They had to draw someone or something wacky from our day.
My wacky look for the day!
We also talked about Dr. Seuss. My kinders did not realize that Dr. Seuss was a human. They told me they thought he was a character! Glad I had this reader from Mrs. Perry!
We had yummy cupcakes made by Ms. Jordan! She made a Cat in the Hat cake too! I didn't get a picture of it before her students enjoyed it! The cupcakes had cute cupcake toppers from Frogs, Bees, & Under the Seas.
Today was Cat in the Hat day. I was most excited about this day because my assistant and I dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2!!!
I made the shirts last night. I was up pretty late and kept asking myself why I still procrastinate!!!! I am proud of how they turned out so it was worth the little sleep!
Our students loved the wigs and our outfits. They referred to us as Thing 1 and Thing 2. Not Ms. Brown and Mrs. Green!
While we were Thing 1 and Thing 2 our students were cats! They wore these super cute hats from Really Good Stuff.
After lunch while we were working on some fun Cat in the Hat activities my aunt, who is teaching at my school for 12 weeks, called my room and asked if she could bring her 3rd graders and come "look at us." So they came and paraded through our room, took a look at us, and walked out!!!
We were quite a hit at our little school today!
We worked on some great learning activities from a unit I purchased from teacherspayteachers.com.
I really like the Dr. Seuss patterns and beginning sound worksheets that are included witht this unit.
Mrs. Larremore has a great blog that I follow. She put together an amazing unit on Dr. Seuss, and it is free! We made the cutest cats today from her unit.
Today was silly sock day. We read this book to go with our theme of the day.
Have you ever read this book out loud?
It is really hard to do actually. It is full of tongue twisters! My kinders thought it was silly!
I was a little sad that more of my students didn't wear silly socks today. Those who did were super cute. One student glued wiggly eyes all over her socks. Her mom is so creative. I also had a student wear socks around her waist! Two of them were sock puppets and the other two were her mom's smelly socks! I didn't smell them but I hope she just was being silly!
I love Target's dollar spot!
We colored silly socks and then made a graph with our socks of who wore silly socks and who did not wear silly socks.
We also traced our feet and measured them with cubes. I had the students also measure 3 other friends' feet.
The measuring of feet was a little more difficult for them than I thought it would be. I finally let them help each other trace their feet. It was a good lesson to introduce measurement and allow each student to do some investigation with measurement.
