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!

I am still working on these (I think) but here is a start on penguin centers.  We will be learning about penguins next week and I wanted to create some centers for the kiddos that expanded on what we will be learning about penguins.  I also found a really cool blubber science experiment that I am going to TRY to do on TPT, but of course I can't find it again. ARGH!

Well, it worked. Our class has been doing everything we can think of to get it to snow.  We have written about snow, we have drawn snow, and yesterday, we had a snow ball fight!!

And then it snowed outside!

How did we have a snowball fight before it was snowing? Let. me. tell. you.

It was a sight word snowball fight.  The kids each got 5 pieces of white paper and a marker.  Then I went around whispering "secret" sight words to each child. After the words were written and they checked their spelling on the word wall, I checked for spelling. Then we crumpled! We crumpled each paper and got ready for the sight word snowball fight. Girls on one side, boys on the other (only because this was a visible and quick way to sort the kids). After a review of the rules - the snowballs flew! The kids got to throw one, then read one to me.  At the end, each child picked 5 snowballs to bring to his/her seat and read.

Then...

They got back up and had a snowball fight against me! We repeated the ending part, and each child read more words. It was a fun, quick way for the kids to practice their sight words.

Thanks to Katie Mense from Little Warriors for the idea: Snowball Fight! She had some great response sheets to go along with it, but I thought that we would run a practice round first!