September 12th-September 16th

These are face cookies from Mrs. Voss' class.  The kids were worried about having to eat their face but they really enjoyed it when they made these!!

This is a bus pocket chart that has the character from Frog Street Press "driving" the bus.  It puts the character with each of the 5 vowels so by the end of the letter of the week we have sung this song 21 weeks!!

We are hoping for fall weather soon.  It has been so hot and dry here in West Texas.  This week is the West Texas Fair week so some of our kinders are out late at the fair.  We have lots of fun things planned this week.  It is Freedom Week and we are talking about the flags of Texas and the USA.  We are celebrating the Constitution of the USA and trying to explain what it is to our 5 year olds!  We are continuing our study of all about me.  Soon child size bodies will appear in the hall and pictures of the brand new (again!) food pyramid will be displayed.  We want our kiddos to make wise choices about their bodies and we want to teach them how to keep them healthy!  We still play lots of songs and games that count to 5 and are learning to write those numbers.  We are starting our letter of the week and we begin with M.  I am going to try to download our song about Marvin the Monkey.  Ethan is singing it and he is adorable.

We are making a vocabulary book this year.  AISD is really pushing for a vocabulary program to be used across the district.  This is what we are using this year.  It is from Kim Adsit's Literacy Vocabulary Book on Teacherspayteachers.  The word is famous.  When I asked who was famous they gave me names like Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana, Usher and Lady Gaga!  They did know who Obama was but not George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.  I guess that was before their time!

These are the 4 new tubs I got for this week!  I love how this is working and the kids love playing with the baskets every week.  It is exciting to see new things to play and they are simple enough that even the kids with not as much experience can feel successful!

Friendship salad and stolen cookies!

 Oh my!!  These kinders love to eat friendship salad!  We ate the entire bowlful and it was huge. 

 This is an adorable paperclip head doll from a VERY wonderful friend.  I love her (the doll and my friend!)

My kids thought it was hilarious that my picture was in this book at the end.  I didn't show it to them until we played the game and made the pages.  I read the completed book and surprised them with the ending.  They. Loved. It!!!!

All About Me and what I can do

 More sorting happening today!  We sorted by long hair and short hair.  Then we read Chrysanthemum and sorted our names by how long they were.  No one had a name with 13 letters!  We had 10 names with 6 letters though!

We thought about all the things we can do now.  I used riding a skateboard as an example so lots of my kinders drew that!  I hate when that happens...:( !  We made our faces and put our names with all the letters in order (welll, mostly in order!)

Taking care of me

We sang the song I Take Care Of Me.  It is on the How Does It Do What It Does CD from Frog Street Press.  It is an interactive song and we loved it.  We made the poster first and after singing the song, we added new ways to take care of us. 

More literacy stations...

These are my 4 new literacy stations on the rotation!  My kinders have to match upper and lower case in one station.  I divided the 6 kids into two groups.  Another table did lacing gingerbread men and another wrote on a long sheet of paper.  I wanted to tape the paper to the wall but I have no unused wall space!  The 4th tub was opening a jar, putting a block in the jar and putting the lid back on.  This is to help with finger movement for holding a pencil.  Easy and fun and the kinders love it!!

I can do it!

We read the story Franklin Plays the Game.  We talked about how we have to practice when something is hard for us to do.  Franklin came up with a plan to help him do what he wanted to do and his whole team helped him.  We made a book about things we can do or things we will learn to do if we just make a plan and practice!

We are learning about celebrating us!

We learned about ways we could sort today.  First we made a graph and listed the children in the room by their hair color.  Then the children played a game with these great graphics from Kim Adsit.  You need to look her up in the teacherspayteachers and buy everything she does!  First we sorted boy/girl and then the kinders had to come up with a way to sort and then share with their friends. 
Then we made a glyph and recorded the data.  We displayed this great art in the hallway!