Farewell Kindergarten...Hello First Grade

For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.   Throughout all my years of college, I wanted to teach kindergarten.  I was overjoyed that for my first teaching job I started teaching energetic, sweet  five year olds. After four years of teaching kindergarten I've now decided to up and move schools.  
This year I'll begin teaching at Pleasant View Elementary.   

My decision for the change is for one that my awesome and kick butt little sister teaches kindergarten there! For the last two years we have shared ideas and our classroom stories.  We have faced time our classes and had our children write letters back and forth.  In March my sister told me that a few people would be leaving and that they were looking into getting another k teacher!  The more my sister and I talked the more it seemed a dream could come true! Teach with my SISTER!?! 

April and May went by so quickly and before I knew it I had interviewed and got a call from the principal.  "I'd like to offer you a position as a... first grade teacher."  I immediately accepted of course, but slowly it began to hit me.  I will be a first grade teacher.  All of my materials are for kindergarten.  All I've ever known is kindergarten.  I LOVE kindergarten! 

It took a little while but now I find myself very excited about this experience.  And HEY maybe the kids will already know how to stand in line, raise their hands, and follow directions, right!?! 

Although I will not be teaching right next to my sister, I will at least be two doors down.  Needless to say they may have to turn the lights out and kick my sister and I out to get us to leave!  

From now on 180 Days in Kindergarten may be 180 Days in First Grade.  :) 

Fairy Tale Fun

We studied different types of Cinderella stories. Here are a few activities that we did with it. 

The children designed and painted this castle.  I did the cutting of course! 

Water marker art!?  I ran out of water color paints, so we decided to use markers and paint over it with water! These turned out beautifully!  

The next week we learned about the three little pigs.  The children chose one from two activities.  The one below is the write a newspaper article telling whether or not the wolf is guilty.  The other was write a letter to the wolf from Mother Pig.  

"The big bad wolf he just done it on an accident."

"Wolf why did you eat my pigs. Wolf can't you go some where else? Woof you made me really sad."

A busy first day back!

So it's 10:30 at night and just got home! I got to the school at about 2 this afternoon and was so excited to see that the nice maintenance man had moved my boards for me! But I had to paint yellow where the old boards were once located.  Once I get started it is hard to STOP!

Ahh a little scary how much work has to be done!  I thought I would at least start on my bulletin boards.  

Before 

After

Before (front of room) 

After: 

Who knows, it may change again tomorrow.  I am so happy to have this little board moved next to my promethean board!!! Thank you maintenance man   Eddie!! :)

Sight Word Song

Sing THOSE Sight Words!

I feel like over the last few years as a newbie teacher I've tried countless strategies to teach sight words.  This year I tried something completely different.  I placed ALL of our county required sight words on different colored index cards and placed in a pocket chart.  I made a up two songs, one for the first half of the words and a second for the rest.  I sang the words to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" and the last part to "Twinkle Twinkle".  I had little group of singers this year so I new they would love it!  There were rules to singing and chanting the chart.  They had to always be looking at the word being pointed to and if I stopped on a word, they also had to stop singing or chanting.  Sometimes I treated it like a game, I stopped to randomly select a word and call of students to see if they knew it.  

 Click on the image the watch!

The children LOVED this last year and often during their free time they would pick up the pointer and sing the words themselves once they memorized the tune.  They used it when they could not recall how to read or write the word.  By the middle of the year several of the students knew all 54 words. Many started reading 1st grade words and 16 out of 19 could read books that blew my mind! Yes at first they are dependent on the song to read the words, but when they see them over and over they quickly file it in their memory! I will continue to do this every year!

*IMPORTANT:  When testing DO NOT display the words in the same order as when they sing.  I also make sure there was not a chart anywhere in sight! :)

Flirty Birds Classroom Decor

 Flirty Birdie Decor

SORRY I've been absent from blog writing lately.  I have difficulty posting since I do not have a computer during the summer.  I am redecorating my classroom next year.  It was VERY difficult for me to decide what theme I wanted to do! (umm,  it is hard for me to make any decisions... lol)  I took at look at what color bins I have in the classroom.  Mostly lime green, hot pink, and bright blue.  My walls are light yellow. Well, I'm an outdoor gal so I chose...dum dum dum dum! Boho Birds! I have really gotten into making my own funky style clipart, so I've started to make birdie nameplates, calendar pieces, daily five posters, etc. There will be more to come, but WOW does it take a loooong time to create! 

Click the picture to get the Daily Five Posters!

Click on the picture above to get the Flirty Birdie nameplates! 

 

Martin's BIG Words

Martin's BIG Words

We have been so busy in kindergarten!  It has been awhile since I posted!  Here are some things we did this week!  We read, Martin's BIG Words.  The kiddos and I dicussed why words like love, freedom, together, and peace are BIG words.

We are a little different on the outside, but inside we're are the same. :) The kiddos really enjoyed talking about treating other people with kindness and that we have differences that make us special!  

R is for Reindeer!

We had some exciting fun this week!  We learned about the letter R which follows our reading series that our county uses.  I don't like that the story is about ducks.  I like to do themes with each letter! Its MORE fun and makes more sense to the kiddos! What's more perfect than... reindeer for letter R week!?! 

I found SO many awesome fun ideas from teachers pay teachers and made up a few of my own.  I wanted to share the activity packet that I purchased from TpT. 

We learned reindeer facts and then made a chart of what reindeer ARE, what reindeer HAVE and what reindeer CAN do.  The next day I asked the kids to look at the chart and write down three things they learned about reindeer. They had to write three COMPLETE sentences example Reindeer can live in snowy places.  I told them they had to include a fact from each section of the chart.  The children blew me away!  It took a little while for some of them to catch on, but they were able to do as I asked.  I wanted to challenge them a little bit ;).  One things I've learned is to NEVER underestimate what they can do.

I stole this idea from a little sister who is also teaching kindergarten for the first time this year!  If we worked in the same building who knows what would happen! She told me to give each child 1piece of brown paper, a piece for the background,  a small square red and a small piece of white paper. I made a sample to give the children a guide to make their own reindeer.  They turned out SO cute and funny!

Here is a color reindeer book we did! It helped my kiddos learn their color words AND rhyming words!  It was a three day Writer's Workshop activity. 


The first day I modeled how to cut out and order the pages. They colored the cover and the color words on the second page. The second day we read the rhymes to fill in each color word.  They colored the nose. 

We did only about four pages and I let them color Rudolph on each page.  The third day we colored another four pages and finished the book!  What a clever little idea for changing Rudolph's nose!

The last thing we did was make reindeer food.  I have never done it before so I didn't really know what I was doing I just thought it was a cute idea.  Well I didn't use glitter which is the whole point right?  So it shines on the grass so the reindeer can see it on Christmas Eve?!  Well I used whole oats, baking peppermint pieces, and chocolate mint chocolate chips.  I told them that real reindeer like the oats but Santa's magical reindeer love sweets and goodies.  Once I mixed up our mixture it smelt SO nice and minty. Orginally was I going to put the "reindeer food" in a plastic baggy, but I was lying awake the night before thinking of what I use to make it look like a reindeer.  Then this came to me!

The children colored a coffee filter with brown crayon (or I'm sure you could the recycled brown filters) and place the reindeer food in the middle.  I folded one side to the other like a taco or semi circle and folded the rount side a little to keep the food from coming out.  Then I twisted the sides and secured it was brown pipe cleaners to look like antlers.  They children drew the face. BOOM! It was Rudolph!  I hung them in our little classroom Christmas tree until our last day.  I knew that if I sent them home they'd lose it and be sad they didn't get to sprinkle it on Christmas Eve.

I found a poem online to go with the reindeer food that used glitter.  Well this didn't work for me obviously so I made up a new one!

Tthe best way to attract a reindeer is with their sense of smell,

and for the taste of reindeer food,

they’ll travel through rain, sleet or hail.

Ssprinkle on your lawn the night of christmas eve,

Tthe reindeer will smell it

and visit those who truly believe.

Websites:

http://www.teachersmousepad.com/Christmas/reindeer_fun.htm