Merry Christmas and have a blessed New Year!!



Christmas Break!

Well, Christmas has come and gone for 2011.  It was fun and everyone enjoyed their gifts and the food.  I tried to make everyone's gift from ideas I got from pinterest.  My family seemed to love everything!  I have not been to the classroom since we got out on the 21st of December.  I did get my Christmas stuff down but have not organized for when we come back!!  So.....on Monday I will be there working and planning.  I have my Jump and Adsit units on my computer at home so I can look here and then decide what I am doing.  Thinking of doing New Years stuff on Thursday and Friday when we get back just so we can talk about a new leaf and following the rules, etc.  I have several mini units in my stuff and I got Kim Adsit's newest unit so I am all set, just have to decide!

The Grinch

 We read the story of the Grinch and talked about how Mr. Grinch was at the beginning of the story and how his heart changed at the end of the story.

 We made ourselves into Grinch's and talked about what would make us happy and make made us grumpy.  We had some examples of both types of personalities this week!!

 We recorded ideas of ways to make the grinch happy.  I have got some great artists coming along.  Now if I can just get them to write!!

I was a grinch sometimes myself!  Merry Christmas everyone and see ya next year!!

Three Billy Goats Gruff

This was the week of letter G and we did lots of activities.  I read the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Most of the children knew it from pre-k and they helped me as I read.  They created the setting on a piece of manila paper using their markers.  Then they colored and cut the characters out and placed them in the appropriate place for where they belonged in the story.  Some put all the goats before the bridge and some put the goats after the bridge and the troll was upside down in the water.  It was fun to see if they could use the right order of things.

 One of my brilliant children wrote a sentence using the sight words when we did the literacy tubs!  I was so excited!!!!

This is the picture of spill the beans.  It was a great game and they are learning to share and take turns!

 Mrs. Shelton's class recorded their reindeer research in the hall.  They traced their hands on a piece of fun foam and the antlers are pipe cleaners.  They added lots of details like hooves and a red nose.  Some of the reindeer are in the blue water because reindeer are excellent swimmers!

 Her class also made lights with the children's name on them.  It was interesting to see if the kids could put their letters together in the correct order from left to right!

 Mr. Grinch is getting full of good random acts of kindness.  We hope to fill him up the 3 days we come to school next week!

Mrs. Shelton and Mrs. Jordan made stockings with wants and needs on them.

Christmas Joy!!

These are the literacy tubs for this week.  I don't think I took any pictures last week.  Sorry!!  This time of year is crazy with all the normal stuff and then Christmas thrown in.  We are also testing for report cards and GT testing! 

 This is a game where the dice is "rolled" and that number of ornaments is added to the tree.  Each child has his own tree and die and the bags have a numbered ornament so the center can be cleaned up by the kids.  That's the way I like it!

 Writing sight words on a chalk board with chalk was so exciting to the kids!  They had no idea this used to be the only way to write.  They L.O.V.E.D it!!!

 Matching uppercase to lowercase with stamps was a lot of fun this week too.

 This tub had three games that required pinching (like a pencil grip!) to pick up the pieces.  They made pictures with little pegs.  A lite brite would be awesome here but I did not have one! :(

This one was Ants in the Pants.  It worked better once they moved to the tile floor. The ants hopped better.  The third game was Don't Spill the Beans.  I didn't get a picture of it that I could find.  My batteries often run out right in the middle of a great opportunity and I forget where I was.

We have been reading lots of Christmas books and doing activities along with them when we could.  We read a darling book about different animals wanting to pull the sleigh and how the reindeer came about to be the one to do the job.  The kids then drew a sleigh and added any animal they wanted to.  I have some real artists in my class!

 We wanted to do some writing and one of the ways a writer writes is to make a todo list.  I showed them my todo list and we talked about moms having lots of errands to run.  We created these elves and then copied a todo list to add to each one.  I loved the way they turned out.

 We made Santas today and I want to add a list to his hand with something each child wants for Christmas and something each child needs for Christmas.  We are discussing wants and needs.  I wish I had known the difference when I was growing up!!

Miss Hood did a lesson with sequencing with the kids.  They set the tree right side up to begin with.  They decorated the tree with lights, then ornaments, then the star.   She had them cut pictures and words to glue under a flap book in the right order.  It was fun and the kids did a good job.  And she let me keep the tree until after Christmas so I don't have to set my own up.  Yeah!!!



 

 We sequenced our names on press out lights and glued to a yarn string.  The kids got the letters in order mostly but some of them started on the right!  We had to fix that!

 These are our ornaments.  They are made with a handprint painted white.  It comes with a little poem and the kids will take it home on the last day of school.

 This was from Deanna Jump's Christmas book on Teacherspayteachers.  We graphed if we like candy canes or not.  The stars do not like candy canes and the candy canes do like them!

Reindeer!

 Our favorite book about Reindeer by Deanna Jump.

Yummy Reindeer to eat.  I found this adorable little guy on Pinterest.

 We made reindeer that were trying out to be Santa's helpers. 

Mrs. Jordan made reindeer using hands and feet.

This amazing door was made by Emily Hood.  She is an intern from ACU and will student teach in the spring.  She did a wonderful job on this door.

Kindergarten team has fun in Temple!

 It was my birthday recently and 4 of us were able to escape to Temple to see Vanessa who is a dearly missed part of our team.  She took us to a place that had wonderful food but I thought it was very cold!  That is why I am wearing my coat!  I got a birthday treat that we all shared.

 We drove a little way down and went to Salado where they had a big Christmas shopping area set up over the entire town.  Who knew that Kettle Corn was so good!!!

This is Billy Goat Gruff and the troll as we were going over the bridge!

 There are several men that go to church with me that collect and study rocks.  They donated a shiny tumbled rock to each child in Kindergarten to take home.  We read Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor and then gave each child a rock of his or her very own.  They were really beautiful rocks.  Thanks Roger Taylor!!

 We recorded many facts that we learned about rocks in our rock hound book.  There is a lot of information about rocks that I didn't know!

Another friend from church, Lou David Allen, came and brought us some rocks to look at and we saw how they looked with a microscope and how some are opaque!  Mr. Allen was great and the kids enjoyed listening to him.

 These are our literacy tubs from last week.  I am a little behind because of the Thanksgiving break and testing for GT and all the Santa stuff we want to do this next week.  In this tub, the child chose a nest and made the correct number of eggs for each nest using those finger muscles to pinch and roll the play doh.

 This one also required some finger manipulation as the kids roll the dice and put the correct number of ornaments on the tree.  This was in the book club basket because we have Christmas tree books in there.

 The reading tub was one where the kids matched the color word, then wrote the word and then colored the space the correct color.  This one took some time to complete and most times the kids worked on finishing it later in the day.

This is fishing for the correct letter and the kids laid them out in ABC order.

 Mrs. Claus

 Mr. Eason (a parent of 2 of our Ortiz children)

Dr. Alcorta (the nurse's husband)

These were the readers for our parent connection held Thursday night at 6:00.  They read Christmas stories and then the parents read a story to their own child.  Then it was on to the cafeteria for cookies and milk and decorating an ornament.

  We are studying reindeer this week and talking about the real facts.  I am trying to decide how to approach the red nose and flying issue.  Maybe I should just leave that part alone!

 The kids did a great job of listing the attributes on a schema chart and then we used that information to record on our tree map.

 This Grinch is very tall and Mrs. Jordan created it for us.  It hangs in the hall and we are going to add acts of kindness on hearts as we see our kids being kind.

These Santas were drawn and painted in art as Mrs. Jenkins tells the kids step by step what to draw.  She always comes out with amazing work!!