Back in the Swing of Things!

Three weeks of school have passed already! I was out for the end of the second to the beginning of the third week for a visit in St. Louis with my family. So maybe that is why it doesn't quite feel like 3 weeks. Yet, it does! I have a spectacular group of kindergartners! I am having fun learning about them and we are moving along.

During the second week of school, my kindergartners heard different gingerbread men stories. Here are a few pictures of what we did.

Kindergartners kept track of the different endings of the various endings of the different gingerbread stories. They are doing great with Kagan's StandUp-HandUp-PairUp.

We are learning about being good listeners and giving feedback with "happy talk".

This is our gingerbread man we made on Monday. He ran away! I didn't get to join my class on Friday's hunt through school. I did spy some deer and their fawns while on a little hike.



Sorry for the blurry picture! I am so wanting one of those DSLR cameras!

On Tuesday, we made a missing poster for our gingerbread man and posted it outside our door. One of my cuties was asking everyone he met to help us look for our gingerbread man. I am glad they found him. They told me he was yummy!

This was inspired by Kim Adsit's gingerbread baby persuasion writing. My sub did this activity with my class.

 

 This past week, my kindergartners had fun with Brown Bear and Pete the Cat. There are many wonderful Brown Bear resources out there. I didn't take any photos this year, but I had created a ditto for my students a few years back to retell Brown Bear with. I used clipart from Microsoft's gallery. Here is a picture from another school year. CLICK ON THE PICTURE to get the Brown Bear pictures for popsicle puppets for retelling the story.

When I came back from my trip, I spent 3 days on Pete the Cat. I saw that there are some more new titles besides the 3 that I have. Here are some things we did:

We made Deanna Jump's Pete the Cats. We also graphed the color of shoes we made and analyzed the data.

 

I saw this Pete the Cat song on Pinterest. Not sure of who is the original creator. I copied it and put the chart at one of my centers. In the basket are bags for sorting different pictures by their beginning sounds.

I am also using this book as a resource for this sorting center. Click on the book picture to get more information about it from Amazon.com.

This Question of the Day shows how my students enjoy listening and singing along with Pete the Cat books. I am so proud of them. It's only the 3rd week, and they are trying their personal best to write their names with a capital and the rest lowercase letters.

Before heading off on my vacation, I asked my students who/what they would see first- me or the postcard. The postcards made it back before I did!

Here are 2 boys signing in. They are getting into the routine pretty quickly! I am so proud of my class.

This week we will start our 2 week unit on nursery rhymes. I am in the process of creating a nursery rhyme unit to put on TPT. One of the activities I created a few years ago was a Jack & Jill Rhyming Activity. I used clipart from Microsoft's clipart gallery. I cut the pictures and words out and pasted them onto red construction paper. I had them laminated. For a whole group activity, I had my students respond with "ack" and rolling their hands to show me they knew the word rhymed with Jack. If it rhymed with Jill, they put their hands on their foreheads and said "ill". If it rhymed with neither, we said nothing. We sorted these pictures on a pocket chart while doing the activity. CLICK HERE TO GET MY JACK & JILL RHYMING ACTIVITY.

Here are just a couple of pics from St. Louis. We were busy each day visiting different sites. I got to visit with my sister and her family, as well as my father. I also got to visit with an old high school friend and meet her daughter for the first time. I also went to my nephew's school during his first week of kindergarten and had lunch with him. I checked out the Galleria mall to see what their Anthropologie had to offer. We went to LouFest, the City Museum, and the Art Museum. It is a fun city to visit.

The arch.

At the zoo with my family.

We made several homemade meals together, as my sister and I both like to cook. We made four different types of ravioli one night.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!!