Our 100th Day!

The highly anticipated 100th day of school has come and gone for us, but we had oh so much fun celebrating...as 100 yr olds!!

 Don't worry...that's only 1/2 my class.... I do have more students.

Anyways, to celebrate the 100th day & being able to (mostly) count to 100, we decided to dress up as 100 year olds and write about it! And BOY, did they get creative this year! See that little girl with the walker? Her dad made it our of PVC pipe and spray painted it pink, just for our celebration! She and her cousin also had cotton balls glued to the inside of scarves for fake white hair - adorable!

I don't know what it is, but seeing them dressed up as 100 yr olds just had me and my co-teacher just cracking up all day long!! 

We did have to get serious (kind of) for a minute to write about what we will look like when we are 100 years old. Thank goodness we had the Aging Booth app to help with that!

I just downloaded the app to my phone and took a picture of each one of the kiddos. You can also use pictures that you already have. 

How cute are they?! After I take each child's picture on the app I drag and drop it into my writing prompt. Voila  - all set! All we needed to do then is brainstorm what 100 year olds do and then we could get to writing!

This one is my fav!! "I am going to knit in my rocking chair with my knitting and my blanket"

 Love ya girl! "I will teach kids."

 My little athlete here has some lofty goals for 100. But the "I will like to have naps, " is right on point! 

And last, "When I am 100 years old, I am in college." Never stop learning kid, never! :o)

You can grab this 100th day writing and more 100th day activities here!

In other news we made some pretty sweet 100th day hats that made the organizational freak in me go bananas...but the kids had fun...so it was worth it right! ;o)

How was your 100th day? What did you do that fun and memorable!?

RUN RUN!

'Twas the last day before break and all through the school not a child was breaking any single rule...

...that is, until our Gingerbread Man escaped the oven!

We baked him and decorated him and stuck him in the oven. While we read our final Gingerbread Man story of our unit, he escaped! 

Video done by our AMAZING literacy coach Leah O'Donnell.

Yes, we are crazy. 

Yes, we did let the kids chase our Assistant Principal in a gingerbread man costume. 

The kiddos had worked hard all week comparing and contrasting Gingerbread Man/Boy/Girl/Pirate/Cowboy stories, learning in their theme-based centers, and generally behaving the week before school let out. So we planned a fun little morning for them. 

We don't have a big holiday party and have a number of students who don't celebrate, so the Gingerbread Man is a fun anchor that we can use for literacy, math, and team-work concepts. 

Anyways.... after our week of Gingerbread stuff, we culminated by joining all 4 Kindergartens into one class to walk through the steps of making a real gingerbread boy cookie (we will use this to into "How To" writing in January). 

Everyone got to decorate our little cookie by putting 1 M&M on him. 

Then we stuck him in the school oven. 

While we read Gingerbread Man Loose in the School, our AP, dressed as the Gingerbread Man created a little chase for us. 

We even had to run outside!

The chase led us back to her office, where our very wonderful AP presented us with our previously-cooked cookie. She was such a doll for playing along with us!

The kids were a little stunned how it had all happened. There was so much chatter about what could have happened and how, so we just let them reconstruct the events as everyone tasted our cookie. 

Everyone was so worn out from all the excitement! After lunch we had a small relaxing celebration of the Gingerbread Man in our own classrooms and dismissed for break. 

Scholastic had The Gingerbread Boy Loose in the School for $1 so all my kiddos got a copy of that to take with them. 

I also use the Gingerbread Man unit from Katie Mense at Little Kinder Warriors.

What GB Man activities am I missing out on? How do you do the GB Man? 

Too Many Tamales! FREEBIE inside!

For the past two weeks we have been trying something new in our kinder classes - using one anchor text per week to develop our fine motor, math, writing, and reading activities around. This week it was Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto!

We started on Monday by taste testing tamales!! Then we graph who likes/does not like tamales. Next, we read the text, introducing the mini lesson - character expression and setting this week. We also introduce the multi-step writing, which we work on each day during the week.

Tuesday we re-read and introduce the close read - WE ARE READERS! The kids color the close read and put it in their binders. The kiddos use their magic pointer fingers to read every. single. word. And we do it again and again independently, then with partners.  This becomes a daily practice until Friday. Of course, the kids can read it anytime they get into a bubble spot for read to self.

On Wednesday we re-read the text again. It was also day 3 of the multi-step writing, so we took some time going back, editing our last 2 days work, and brainstorming the next two steps again.

Thursday was just a re-read and writing day.

Then Friday, we culminated the experience with a REAL LIVE TAMALE project! The kids read their writing to each other to get really own the steps for tamale making. We used the kiddos writing as our tamale-making directions!

Heres what you need for no-cook, fine motor tamales:
-1/4 canister of yellow playdoh for each child
-cut up green pipe cleaners for chiles
-wax paper for corn husks
-tape to close it

SO EASY!!

We had boat loads of fun working with our Too Many Tamales all week!! Our bilingual teacher Ms. Gelacio planned most of this unit on the heels of the pervious week's Thanksgiving focus - she is amazing!! She has so many good ideas and is always challenging us to think of new culturally inclusive ideas!

As a team, we are really loving our little week long theme units.  It allows us to incorporate all the literacy themes we need to hit, while giving us opportunities to work on fine motor, social learning, science, and developmentally appropriate skills/topics.  It's a nice way to wrap everything up into a neat little package. :o)

Does anyone else do a tamale unit? What else can we add for next year?
Here are the links to our FREE close read and writing!

Gingerbread Man

Happy New Year Everyone!

Over break, I have been working on preparing for our Mitten Unit with centers and activities. But I wanted to post this update from before break about the Gingerbread Man Unit!

As part of our unit, we got together with our 4th grade reading buddies to complete this science experiment and answer the question - "What will happen when a gingerbread man is submerged in water?"

The 4th graders helped us write our our predictions and observations as the kindergarteners dictated to them.  

...and here is what happened!

     

After the gingerbread man cookie was submerged in water it sunk, expanded, broke, floated back to the top and lost its coloring! Try it at home and see if you get the same results!

Polar Express Week

Ah! The holiday season is so short! We already explored various holidays so this week it was all Polar Express! We had Polar Express Math and Literacy Centers all week long (sorry no pictures in action!)

Oh, and Optimus (our Elf on the Shelf), was found riding the Polar Express on Wednesday!

To review our shape unit form October, we took various shapes and each student made a Polar Express train car.  Then we hung them up, connected them, and let the magic take over our room!

On our Polar Express movie day, the kids got tickets and bells from Santa's sleigh and we hopped aboard the Polar Express to watch the movie! Hot cocoa and 3 musketeer candies followed!

As you can tell... It was a fun day!

Halloween Fun

Be boop! Halloween was tons on fun in the K wing. Our team dressed up as minions, which all the kids got a huge kick out of! 

We had a parade around the school and gym, then went back to class for party centers and snacks.

Here's bingo and pin the heart on the skeleton.

Then, we also had bowling, pumpkin (bozo buckets), and a foam craft.

Rewind to Wednesday, when we carved our HUGE pumpkin  to get ready for Halloween. I cut a large whole/mouth for the kids to scoop out the seeds and "guts."  They all picked one seed to wash and take home.  We put the pumpkin out in the hall for all to see!

This week, we will use this jump start activity to finish our pumpkin unit and growth cycle crafts. Goodbye October - Hello November!