Marriage Advice from Kindergarten

Tomorrow my co teacher is getting married! I wanted the kiddos to do something special for her, so I had them give her some marriage advice. I was blown away at their responses! The advice they had is so cute! Take a look and see why they had to say.

Where the Wild Things Are

For art appreciation month we are slowing down and working on our art techniques. We focused on a famous quote from Bob Ross, "There are no mistakes, just happy accidents."

One of my favorite projects we did was create monsters using oil pastels and watercolors. I got this wonderful idea from deepspacesparkle.com. This is a fabulous blog with so many art lesson plans. It is perfect for someone like me who is a little artistically challenged!

To start the lesson we read "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. As we read, I asked the students to look closely at the illustrations in the book. They used ideas from the book to create their own monsters. I had them start by drawing a head and body with oil pastels. I made sure that they took up most of the page. Then the students created details with different colors of oil pastels. When they were finished with their drawing they used watercolors to complete their picture. I love how vibrant their pieces turned out!

Make your own liquid watercolors!

This week we are learning about different modes of art. We are slowing down and learning different techniques in painting, drawing, and sculpting.

If you have ever seen a child paint with watercolors, you know that they do not last long! With several watercolor lessons planned I knew I needed to figure out a better/less expensive way to watercolor. I stumbled upon liquid watercolors, but soon realized those were equally expensive! Then I looked up DIY liquid watercolors. Low and behold- I found a recipe to make my very own!
I found the recipe here: http://www.curbly.com/m/12172-how-to-make-diy-liquid-watercolors

I modified it to fit my needs. I found these cute storage bottles at Michaels that hold 2 oz each.

2 cups boiling water
1 TBS vinegar in each container
About 10 drops of food coloring in each container

I put the vinegar in first and then filled the rest of the container with boiling water. I added the food coloring, put on the lid, and shook hard. I had to make sure they worked so I painted a rainbow. I think they worked pretty well! I can't wait to experiment with more colors with the kids at school!

DIY Easter Baskets

Last week we had an egg hunt at school. Instead of having every child bring their own basket, we decided to make them! They only hold about 3 eggs which was perfect for our hunt. They were easy and turned out super cute!

Materials:

Liquid starch
Strips of construction paper
Styrofoam bowls
Pipe cleaners

Step 1:
Paint the styrofoam bowl with liquid starch.

Step 2:
Apply strips of construction paper one or two at a time. Our kiddos just ripped their own strips!

Step 3:
Paint with liquid starch after applying one to two pieces of paper. Continue process until entire bowl is covered.

Step 4:
Let air dry for about 24 hours. Remove from bowl.

Step 5:
Punch holes at the top and add a pipe cleaner! Voila! Your very own Easter Basket!

Lucky Leprechaun Scavenger Hunt

Since St. Patrick's day falls on Sunday this year, we celebrated the holiday at school today. To start off the day we had some amazing Irish dancers come to showcase their talents. The children were amazed at how well they could dance. The best part was when they had volunteers from the audience participate. Several children and our very own Miss Amanda were brave enough to get up on stage!

In the classroom, we made a leprechaun trap! The kids decorated the box with tons of green items. They made gold coins to go inside to attract the leprechaun.

While the kids were outside playing, the leprechaun visited the classroom. He left clues around the classroom that the students followed to find the treasure he left behind. They loved searching for each clue and reading the riddle to see where the next one would be! The scavenger is a must do again! I will upload the clues shortly so you can use them if you're interested.

Memorable Moment

Every day we send home Daily Activity Reports with each child. These reports tell the parents what we did in each subject area and the curricular goal that was to be achieved by each activity. This sounds like a lot of writing, but we just make one for each day and make copies for every student!

In addition we also write a memorable moment for each child. Unlike the rest of the report this is tailored individually to each child. In Kindergarten, we like to ask the children what their favorite learning center was every day. This process can be quite time consuming (we all know there is not enough time in the day) so I developed a more efficient method!

I created an area on the side of shelf entitled, "My favorite center was...". Below the title are six buckets. The first five are labeled 1-5 and the final one says names. Each child decorated a craft stick and I wrote their name in nice black letters. Now they can each take their stick and place it in the bucket that was their favorite center! This has made my life so much easier, and it looks cute too!

Dr. Seuss

In honor if Dr. Seuss's birthday we spent a whole week learning about this amazing author. We gathered up all of the books we could find and read them throughout the week. The books were also available for the children to read on their own. The students had a blast creating their own crazy worlds, just like Dr. Seuss did!

On Monday, our amazing director of education came to school dressed as none other than, The Cat in the Hat! She went around to each classroom and read to the children! They loved it! It truly made the story come to life!

Healthy Heart!

February is heart awareness month, so we ended the month learning all about how to keep our hearts healthy. The students learned that we can keep our hearts healthy by eating healthy food, exercising, and staying away from smoke.

They also learned how important the heart is to the body. We discussed how the heart helps blood and oxygen move throughout our bodies. One of our wonderful parents, Dr.Todd, came in to explain about the parts of the heart and how it all works! She did a fabulous job- especially answering all of our questions! Dr. Todd also brought in stethoscopes to donate to the class so the students can listen to their own hearts. We are very thankful!

We read several books to help us understand how the heart works:

The Magic School Bus has a Heart by Anne Capeci

The Magic School Bus Explores the Human Body by Joanna Cole

A Heart Pumping Adventure by Dr. Heather Manley

Presidents Day

I know this post is a little late- but better late than never! In honor of Presidents' Day we did some really fun activities. We learned about Lincoln, Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt. We also learned about Mt Rushmore and how it was made. The students helped color a life size drawing of Abe Lincoln! Boy was he tall! Some of the awesome projects we made were George Washington pictures using cotton balls, American Flags, and a delicious snack: George Washington Cherry Pies! Check em out:

Love Day!

We had so much fun celebrating Valentine's day with the kinders! We did tons of fun activities including: candy heart math, love note mad libs, conversation heart sentences, and my favorite- crystal hearts!

I found a wonderful post on Pinterest about making crystals using two simple ingredients- borax and boiling water. I was a little skeptical about whether or not this would work, but it worked wonderfully!

Each of the students shaped a pipe cleaner into a heart. Then the tied a string to their pipe cleaner and the other end to a Popsicle stick. In a large cup we mixes the solution of borax and boiling water. We used 3 TBS borax per cup of water. When the solution was mixed we places their hanging shapes into the cups. This is the best part- they only had to sit for one day! The next day the students ( and myself) were surprised at how many crystals had formed on their pipe cleaners! Our cups were not quite big enough to put the entire pipe cleaner into the solution, so each one is only partially covered with crystals.

Take a look out how they turned out!

Sugar Rush

Today we learned about junk food and how unhealthy it is for you. We decided to check out our own lunches to see how much sugar is in our junk food. I was very surprised to see some of the results.
We used the measurement that
4g=1 tsp.

Graham cracker- 1 g
Poptart crisps - 5 g
Watermelon - 9.5 g
Fruit by the foot- 10 g
Fruit snacks - 11 g
Marshmallows - 16 g
Lunchable - 17 g
Yogurt raisins - 18 g
100% juice - 22 g

Penguins!

This week we are learning all about those cute, tuxedo wearing Penguins! We read several Tacky the Penguin books by Helen Lester. The students discussed how it is okay to be different than everyone else. We got out our abstract abilities and made some adorable penguins out of cardboard tubes. They students had a blast gluing feather, beaks, feet, and eyes to the tubes to make some delightfully TACKY penguins!

100 Day!

Today marks our 100th day of kindergarten. We have had a blast doing many 100 day activities today. The students drew a picture of what they will look like when they are 100, played race to 100, made a necklace out of 100 pieces of cereal, and made 100 day hats! They also wrote a prompt," I would like 100 _____ but I don't want 100 ______!"
My favorite part of the day was our 100 day museum. The students all worked hard to being in 100 items from home. They were so creative with the projects- no two were alike! You can check out all of their hard work in the photos below!
Happy 100 Day!

Hibernation and Bears!

This week we are learning all about bears and hibernation. We have read tons of books on these subjects. I think the favorite so far has been More Bears by Ken Nesbitt and Troy Cummings.
The students have also participated in my projects and activities. We have built a class cave, made snow caves out of paper plates, an made some cute beats.
On Monday the students tried bear food- strawberries, honey, and tuna fish. Then we created a class graph of our favorite type of bear food. Honey was our winner! An surprisingly strawberries and tuna tied for second place!
Today the students wrote poems about hibernating animals. They did a really great job. You can check them out below!
Friday will be our hibernation day. We will all wear our pajamas and bring on our favorite teddy bear!

Happy new year!

Happy new year everyone! I am excited to get back into the swing of things and start the second semester! This is going to be a good one! I am really going to try to update the blog at least once a week- but let's not get out hopes up too high!
Last week we started DRA2 testing and have seen amazing progress from all of the kids! For the month we are learning about all things winter- snow, penguins, and bears- oh my! You can check out some of the fantastic books we will be reading below. You can even have your child get some theme related books from the library( hint: Eric Carle is a great read)!