January

Learning About Money

Here Mrs. Williamson is helping a student learn how to identify coins and count money during a whole group math lesson on money.

Here I am working with a small group of students during math on a math worksheet. The students had to identify coins, practice coin rhymes, and then complete a sheet in which they had to count out and circle the correct coins in order to purchase the items in each box.

Here a small group of students is working with Mrs. Williamson on money. She taught them a fun song about spending money at the store. They had the opportunity to play store and write different amounts of money on the dry erase boards.

Independent Silent Reading

Here a table of students are enjoying a container of books from the classroom library. We have silent reading every morning after the students have completed journal writing. They read their books silently several times and then they read it to an adult for extra practice. I took papers all around my hometown asking for children's books. I was amazed at the amount of books that I received. I would recommend all teachers to do this and just look at the flow of books that will be coming your way.

Living and Non-living

One of the kindergarten science standards is identifying living and non-living organisms. We spent a week talking about and reading books about living and non-living things. I print some pictures of off the internet of living and non-living things and cut them out. I put signs that said living and non-living and drew a line between the two. I gave each student a picture. The students placed their pictures under the heading they thought the pictures would go. That all placed the pictures in the right group.

100th Day of School!

On Wednesday, January 21, 2009 we celebrated the 100th day of school! We did activities all day. We counted by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's to 100. We wrote to 100. We did an art activity using laser stars. We even had cake at the end of the day and had plates, cups, and napkins that said 100th day of school.

Here I am reading the students a book called Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten. I love the Miss Bindergarten series. I read the students books all day long about the 100th day of school.

The students each counted out 100 laser stars and put them on black construction paper so it would look like stars in the night sky. I put the dividers up so each student would create their own unique design and not copy anyone else's.

Here all of the students are holding their pictures up after they completed them. I thought the pictures looked cute.

I hung the stars on in the hallway by our classroom door. I called the pictures 100 Stars in the Sky. This activity also went along with our kindergarten science standard about day and night sky.

Here a student is writing the numbers 1-100 on a paper. We counted and wrote numbers to 100 on the 100th day of school.

Here is the cake that I bought from Publix that says "Happy 100th Day of School. In the story book 100 Days of School at the end the class eats a big cake as part of their 100th day of school celebration. I thought that would be great for our class to do so I had a cake made. The cake was so good!

Here is a picture of  some students eating their cake and chips and drinking fruit punch. I even found some napkins that said Celebrate 100. The students said the food was tasty. At the end of the day I gave all of the students a pencil that had 100 days of school written on it.

More Reading Tubs!

Guided Reading Tub - I have a tub that I call Guided Reading that I do with the students each week. I go over all three sight word lists with the students and then we talk about a little book that i have chosen. The books are sight word readers which help the students learn their sight words and fluency. We predict what the story will be about. We read the book aloud together and then each child reads the book aloud to me while the other students read the book quietly. At the end of the book we discuss what the story was about. We practice retelling, summarizing, and other reading skills. We also talk about the author's purpose: to entertain, persuade, or inform. This tub stays the same each week. I just change out the reading book and focus on some new reading skills each week. That is always Tub 4.

Identifying and correcting errors  in sentences. I write some sentences on sentence strips and the students have to read the sentences, identify what is wrong, and rewrite the sentence correctly on another sentence strip. The students love writing on the sentence strips. One of the kindergarten language arts standards is for students to be able to identify errors in sentences and to write sentences with using capitalization and punctuation. I purchase the thin rainbow sentence strips for the students to use to write on. They are thinner and cheaper and easier for students to write on than the thicker ones. Mrs. Ragan helps the students with this tub. She checks the sentences after the student write them on strips.

Handwriting Tub - I write messages on handwriting paper and the students copy the messages neatly onto handwriting paper. I write mine with a black marker and laminate them for durability. The students get out a piece of paper and copy the message quietly. This is an independent work tub. I try to do one of those each week.

Making Words - I usually do a tub each week called making words. Here the students use a small table top making words pocket chart and they practice spelling their names, the week's spelling words, and word wall words. This really helps with learning how to sound out and spell words.