Apples Galore!

We read a story about a farmer named Annie.  She grew in the apples in an orchard and then took them to market in a truck.  She sold muffins, and pies, and lots of apples.  We created a flow map to show the order of the book.

This is the orchard.  Notice one child said someone cut down one of his trees!

These are our trucks going to market.

Market place is fun.  We have a farmer's market so some of the kids were familiar with this.

Here they are at my house for me to eat!

 We had a tasting day on Friday with lots of parents helping us out.  I never knew apples could be fixed so many ways!!

Each class made a graph of which color apple was our favorite.  It was surprising!

We saw a clip on Brain Pop, Jr. about Johnny Appleseed then we sequenced the order of apple planting from seed to tree.  It takes 10 years for a tree to produce fruit!

Each class made a class wide promise on the rules we would follow this year as we became leaders in our school.  The children helped brainstorm the ideas for the rules and every child in the class signed the promised...just like in the constitution of the USA!

We are learning syllables in kindergarten.  We clapped each name the child put his or her name on the correct number of fingers!

Recycle, Reuse. or Restore?

This grade level is very into reusing things.  Pinterest is our BEST friend.  We talked about how glad we are to have someone who picks up our trash.  We watched trashy town and then we created these adorable trash men.  I think we saw them on Chalktalk blog.  We glued these in our science spiral next to a recycle symbol.

The Leader in Me

We are beginning a new process at our school.  If you have never read The Leader in Me go right now to the nearest bookstore and get a copy.  We are hoping to change our children's lives by teaching them how to be prepared for what the future holds.  They are all leaders and we are finding the strengths in each one and polishing it so that child will feel good about themselves.  The book is based on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Sean Covey.  We are teaching the 7 habits right now.  Kinder had 30 students until a week ago so we are just on habit 5 this week.

      

The first habit is to be proactive.  We tell the children they are in charge of themselves.  They are responsible for making good choices even when no one is watching them.  They are also responsible for the attitude they carry with them.

The second habit is the have a plan.  We made a plan on how we can all get to first grade by May!  We post our weekly goals in the room and review them on Friday to see if we met our goals.

The third habit is to put first things first.  We tell the children work before play!  We talk a lot about this habit and the benefits it can bring!
Habit four is to think win-win.  We brainstormed lots of ideas of how everyone can be a winner.  I don't have a picture of our anchor chart yet!

We wrote a grant the week before school and we found out on the 19th that our plan was accepted.  We were able to buy 5 digital cameras to take pictures of the children doing the leader in me activities.  As soon as I figure out the camera I will take lots of pictures!

Has anyone seen our gingerbread man?

 We colored our boys and girls then cut them out to create a graph.  We have more girls in our class than boys.  We learned to use kindertools like scissors and crayons.

 We used glue in this activity.  We learned to color first, then cut, and then create a gingerbread man puzzle.

 When we went to get our gingerbread man from the cafeteria, he had run away!  We made a lost and found poster to hang in the hallway.

 After touring the entire school all week, Ginger was found hiding in the principal's office.  Mrs. Fulkerson told us all about how she captured him!

 We used gingerbread playdoh to create our own gingerbread man and then we got to take a small bag home with us!

 We did a science experiment of what would happen to the gingerbread man if he jumped in the river.  Not a pretty sight!!

This is all that is left of our gingerbread man.  I wonder what we will do next week!!

New School year 2013-14

 This is my classroom for this year!  Lots of children to start with at 29!

 Mrs. Voss has a reading loft in her class.

 Mrs. Shelton's room has a cool tree and lots of lights.

 Mrs. Diaz is our new bilingual teacher.

Mrs. Anderson has a bright classroom.  She is also a bilingual teacher!

Leader in Me

We are hoping to develop a whole new atmosphere on our campus this year!  Who would like to be a leader?  Well, we plan to have a over 600 leaders at Ortiz as we search for the strengths in every child!  Watch out world here we come!

New year with lots of changes!