Kindergarten Happenings

We spend a lot of time in our classroom so it is important for us to get our wiggles out. We do things many different way. We might sing and dance, interact with a yoga kids video or follow along with a kids dancing clip. Whatever we do, we LOVE moving and grovin'. 

This year we are spending a lot of time focusing on college and career. I discussed with the students how there are lots of options for them once they graduate from high school. We talked about how they could become lawyers, doctors, fire fighters, police officers, construction workers, accountants, etc. we also discussed how they would need special schooling for things like that. So we started planning. We made College Savings Boxes where the students can start saving for college or a trade school. Then we made Class of 2026 shirts to celebrate when they will graduate from high school and move on to the next stage in their education. We also made a banner for the kids to sign as the Class of 2026.  At the end of the week we had a career day parade where students could dress up as what they wanted to be when they got older. 

Something else that is exciting we are doing this year at Moseley is houses. Each student drew a color house (blue, red, green, yellow, orange, purple, black). Each week the students will earn points based on attendance, academics, and more.  At the end of each week, we count our points, turn them in and wait for Monday morning when they announce the new house winner for the week.  Each week a team is announces and that color is hanging on each door for the week.  At the end of the month the team that has the most points get a small prize. Then at the end of the nine weeks the team with the most points get their color flag hanging outside for nine weeks.  I have volunteered to be the Purple team captain.  Here are the other purple team leaders and the students on the purple team.  The purple team has the most amazing students who have brought us two week wins and a month win.  Keep up the good work purple house!

Book Buddies

Each year my class partners up with another class to have book buddies. This year we are partnered up with Mrs.  Mulligan's third grade class. Through out the year we will meet and do all kinds of things together. The first time we got together we got to know each other. We partnered each kindergartener to a third grader. Then we gave the. Some time to talk and get to know each other. 

After our first week of getting to know each other our third grade book buddies came to visit us again. This time it was Letter U week in kindergarten. So we had our umbrellas with us.  Our book buddies read to us as we sat under our umbrellas. The students loved umbrella reading with our book buddies. 

Me!

This first couple of weeks we spent a lot of time discussing and learning all about me. We talked about our families, how we look, how we are suppose to treat each other. One day we made miniature us. We made our faces look as close to us as possible by making sure we colored our hair and eyes the color they are. Then we made our dress or shirt our favorite color. Here are some students working on their person. 

One day we read a book about being friends. We discussed how we could be a good friend and a bad friend. We made a t-chart to show our thinking. Then we drew a picture of us being a good friend. 

Centers

This year I am still using daily five and centers. We do daily five in the middle of the day. These rotations are all literacy based. The students are engaged in reading to self, reading to others, listening to reading, working on writing or word work. The students do a great job in these rotations. However their favorite are the afternoon centers. These enters are at the end of the day and they are mostly the play centers: blocks, home, puzzles, computer, etc.  here are some pictures I snagged awhile ago if my class working hard in their centers. 

Math Time

This year we have been doing a lot of fun things in math. But to start the year off we needed to learn and practice how we use our math materials. The first week of school we worked on how we use our math manipulatives by exploring with our pattern blocks, snap cubes, link chains, etc. I gave the students a piece of Manila construction paper so they could practice staying in their space and not taking up all of the table. 

Next we learned how to sort by colors. So I brought a snack size bag of M&M's for everyone to sort. The students worked hard to divide their M&M's by color. We discussed how we figure out which one had the most and least. Then the students got to eat their M&M's in color order of most to least. 

The next week worked on numbers 1-5. The students were practicing how to use their one to one counting. So we used play doh to help. We would make five play doh balls and then use the play doh to make the numeral. The students love working with play doh. 

This week we are learning about patterns. We have been using cubes to create pattern chains. Then we use our math journals to document the different patterns. So far we have learned all about AB patterns, ABC patterns and AABB patterns. We are working on ABB and AAB patterns.