I am thankful for...

...my amazing class of Kindergarten kids! They are so fun.

Last week they wrote about what they are thankful for, and we turned their work into a place mat for Thanksgiving. They turned out so cute! I always love open-ended activities like this that allow them to share a little bit of their heart.

Thanksgiving dinner, the alphabet, Barbie, and my teacher :)

Ice Cream, turkey, car, family

Prophets, Jesus, myself, reindeer

My Mom, food, my football, my soccer ball

 Happy Thanksgiving!

The Pumpkin Experiment Continues...

Well, our pumpkin sprouts just keep growing...

 But the pumpkin just keeps getting more and more rotten...

Some sprouts have even started growing through the pumpkin skin!

So we decided to give our sprouts a new home, and continue to watch their growth. We planted the entire pumpkin inside a  pot. I'm not sure how long we can keep it growing inside the pot and inside our classroom, but it will be another fun experiment to find out!

Here are some fun Science Journal entries about our pumpkin experiment.

I Can!

One of my favorite things to focus on in my classroom is helping kids to think more positively about themselves and their abilities.

I get so sad when I hear kids say "I can't do it."
And sadly, I hear negativity like that all too often.

One way that I talk about this with my students is through using learning goals. Although most have been to preschool, Kindergartners are experiencing a more structured school environment for the first time. As such, part of my job is to teach them how to learn and be a student in that environment. I use 5 "I Can" statements that are a part of what I call "High-Five Learning."  To be High-Five Learners in my classroom, we work on these things:

1. I can try hard things.

2. I can stick to my work.

3. I can make mistakes count.

4. I can help others. 

5. I can celebrate my learning.

I like to use I Can language with rules and other objectives as well to help replace negative thinking with an I Can attitude.

I love using literature to show them examples of developing an I Can attitude. 

This book, Bobbie Dazzler, is one of my favorites. We read this book at the end of the year, and then made I Can books as a way to celebrate our learning, and ourselves!

The results were so great. 

As a new year is fast approaching, I'm reminding myself to have an I Can attitude as I think about everything I need to do and accomplish. I'm looking forward to another great year of learning wonders!

Pet Rock Show

We had our rock show last week. This is another project that the kids create at home with their families, and then we host a gallery walk in our classroom so they can show them off to everyone. It was a fun event!

Here are just a few examples of their pet rocks and simile writing. (I have to force myself not to post every single picture I have...I always love everyone's creativity!)

The Tree Frog

 After we studied tree frogs during our animal unit, one of my students wrote this book at the writing center. It made me smile!

"Once there was a frog. He was a great frog. There was a snake."

"The snake ate the frog. The snake was full."

"It was getting dark. The snake was asleep."

Animal Nonfiction Writing

We have been having so much fun with our animal unit! I wish I could spend another week on this unit, but we've still got some other science and social studies topics to get to before the end of the year. Animals has been such a great backdrop for discussing nonfiction reading and writing, and the kids have been really engaged in the activities to try out this kind of genre.

Last week, each student was asked to write about an animal for their Home Journal writing assignment and on Friday, the students shared something they learned with the class. I loved this idea for making a Did You Know list and book that I found on A Place Called Kindergarten, and thought it would be a great way to document some of the facts that everybody learned about animals. Half-day Kindergarten is so short that it seems almost impossible to spend as much time as I would like learning about all the amazing animals out there, so letting kids do some research and writing at home to share with everyone seemed to work really well with our schedule.

Everybody shared one fact that they have learned about an animal, and we made a chart.

Later in the day, I hung the charts up on the whiteboard so the kids could copy their sentence for our Did You Know? book. Normally, this is not the kind of writing I prefer to do with my kids...I heavily encourage them to write independently using sound spelling and other strategies. But I used this activity to focus on writing sentences, rather than spelling technique. Each student wrote down their sentence and then illustrated it to make a page in our class book. It turned out beautifully, and has been a favorite to look at during reading time!

Baby Animals

For the first week of our animal unit, we talked about baby animals.

I've had to try not to laugh as I read a story or show different pictures, and my kids (mostly girls) respond with a collective and sigh-like "awwww!"

I created a flip-book for the kids to read and match animal babies with their parents. There are some "tricky" animals in there, and some of the kids have been surprised to see how different a baby can look from its parent. When there is some free reading time, I often see a group of kids huddled around this book, trying to find matches.

We've also been talking about how babies can be born in different ways, depending on the kind of animal. We sorted animal pictures into "Mammal" and "Egg-Hatcher" categories to show the differences in how babies can be born. Once again, there were some kids that were surprised at which animals do or do not come from eggs! I was really was really excited when the librarian read a nonfiction book to the class about eggs during library time, and we were also able to learn that there are a couple mammals that lay eggs in addition to reptiles, birds, fish, etc. (they are the platypus and the echidna, just in case you needed to remember also...)

Their baby animal nonfiction writing turned out just as cute as the baby animal books we've been reading.

(Left) Dad, Baby Lion (Right) Baby hawk learns to fly.

(Left) This is a walrus and a baby. (Right) Walrus is good. My favorite.
 (Apparently the walrus is a popular animal this year!)

(Left- sorry, I can't decipher one of the words...) Walrus' have ...and big flippers. His mom has bigger ... (Right) Piggies are so cute.

The momma koala has bigger claws.

(Left) Mom's bring worms for babies. (Right) This is a baby alligator. It is 3 years old.

 And as if I'm not getting enough baby animal talk in my classroom, I've been able to go out and see some baby animals out in my community. (I may or may not have used the same "awwww" sound that my students use when looking at these baby chicks.)

Sentence Trains

This is a lesson on sentence structure that I created last year during my student teaching. I really liked how it turned out last year, and so I decided to try it awhile ago with my class this year. The basic idea is to compare the different parts of a sentence to a train, and I like to couple it with a train song and story to help build background knowledge about trains. Here is the jist of what I talk about with them: 

1. The engine is at the front of the train, and it is a special car- it usually looks a bit different than the other cars. In a sentence, the first word is also different and always begins with a capital letter. 

2. Each car in a train is separated by a bar so that they don't crash into each other. In a sentence, we need to separate each word with a space so that they don't run into each other when we read them.

3. The last car in a train is also a special car. It's called the caboose and it is the end of the train. We need something special at the end of the sentence to show that it is the end. That is why we use punctuation marks at the end of the sentence.

I also talk about how the words need to go in order, just like the cars on a train stay right in line and don't switch places. Just to keep it simple for this first lesson, I encouraged everyone to write an "I like ____" sentence. This worked really well, because it allowed every student to be successful in their own way, and those who could write more words did.

One thing that I love about this visual approach to writing sentences, is that it becomes very clear which kids are still struggling to understand certain aspects of a sentence. For example, there were kids that wanted to write all their words on only one or two train cars, and needed support with the concept of different words in a sentence. Also, it allows kids to work with physically building the sentence as they arrange their train cars, and I was also able to identify kids who needed support with word order. Of course, the most common thing for the kids to forget was the punctuation at the end, but it makes it a little more fun to remind them to simply "check their caboose."

The kids were really engaged in making their trains, and now during writing time I can remind them of that visual to help them remember parts of a sentence.

The other plus to this activity? It sure lifted me up to have kids writing things like  "I like school" and "I like my teacher." Kindergarten kids are the best.  :)

Accordion Books

Our awesome art teacher did this project with us last week. She showed the students how to fold paper and glue it together as an accordion-type book. I decided to leave it as an open-ended activity and let them choose how they wanted to fill up the pages. I love how open-ended activities can help students to feel successful and be creative, no matter what level they are at. Everyone's book was different and their individual creativity really shined. I loved all of the results, and what's even better is the kids loved it too. They were all so proud of their books! Some were even carrying them around at recess and showing them off to other kids. It was great. :)

It's always an adventure to "interpret" Kindergarten sound spelling...have fun!