Move!

After reading the book Move!, I used the animals in the story to review adjectives, nouns, and verbs. I made  a chart with each type of word. The purple words are what I had already in the chart. The green words are what I asked the class to fill in. When it was all filled in, we were able to create sentences for each row.
 For example: The brown hare can run.

My Pumpkin Will Look Like...

After reading about pumpkins this month, we started a discussion about how we would carve our pumpkins for Halloween. I gave each student a paper with the prompt, "My pumpkin will look like _____," and they had to fill in the blank. Here are some examples of what they came up with.

fire jack-o-lantern

monster high

mummy

Spider Facts

We have been learning about spiders this week. To conclude our spider unit we made spiders with our hands and added spider facts under them.

Mostly Monsterly

To go along with the Halloween theme, we read the book "Mostly Monsterly" by Tammi Sauer. After reading the story, and to practice handwriting, I had the kids copy the sentence, "I am mostly monsterly." Then they were able to create themselves as a monster. Here are how some of them came out.

Five Little pumpkins sitting on the fence

We have been learning the song, 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Fence. To help them remember the song I gave them clip art I found and they created the song for themselves.

5 little pumpkins sitting on a fence.
A witch came flying by.
"Ha Ha Ha I'll take you home and bake a pumpkin pie."

4 little pumpkins...
3 little pumpkins...
2 little pumpkins...
1 little pumpkin..

0 little pumpkins sitting on a fence.
A witch came flying by.
"Ha Ha Ha I took you all home and made 5 pumpkin pies."

Letter C

For the letter C, I had the kids use a black crayon the make chocolate chips. Some of them chose to be colorful and make rainbow chocolate chips.



Missing Letters

At the end of each unit, I like to combine all of the sight words we learned and play fill in the missing letter. I have each student come up to fill in a letter then have them say it, spell it, say it. The constant repeating really helps them to remember the words.

These YouTube videos are also a fan favorite of my kids. They have videos like this for most of the sight words.

Fall Poem

I found this cute poem called Fall Leaves. It's great for number and color words!

Letter T

For the letter T, I had a paper with a blank uppercase T with 2 tea bags and a tea cup for the kids to color and cut out. They could decorate the T however they wanted.

Puzzle to 100

We're up to 22 days! To help us keep track of how many days we've been in school and to help us know when our 100th day of school party will be, I am using a 100 piece puzzle. Everyday during circle time we add on another puzzle piece. When it is all completed it will be the day of our party!

 

Back to School Night Helping Hands

For Back to School Night I put on my whiteboard in the middle of the room, where everyone could see, a bunch of cut out hands that had items we could use in our class. I mentioned this to the parents after I was done speaking with them that if they wanted to, it's not mandatory, they could take a hand or two and get these items at the dollar store. Some of the items included batteries, rags, stickers, bubble for outside play, and cleaning items. 

I was happy to see how many hands were taken by the end of the night :)

Alphabet Enhancement

Each week in the beginning of the school year we work on a different letter in the alphabet. Here is a preview of what we do for each letter. I'll go into more detail for each letter as the year goes on, but they're pretty much self explanatory just by looking at the pictures. :)

Halloween Crafts

It's Halloween time so I thought I would add some crafts for Halloween. 

This first one is a picture of pumpkin lanterns. I just used construction paper and used ribbon for the handle. I had the students create the faces themselves and also cut the slits themselves.

This scarecrow picture I found online somewhere years ago and added pumpkins to the paper and asked the students to create a pumpkin patch scene. 

Below is a picture of the hallway with a ghost/spider pattern handing up. I used their hands for the spider and their foot for the ghost. (It's very helpful if you can get another adult to help you with the ghost painting. :) One dips the foot in while the other cleans them off.) 

A close up of the spider. I used chalk for the smile and had Halloween stamps they used around it. 

A closeup of the ghost. Again I used chalk or white crayon to write "Boo!" and black marker for the face.

Letter A

 For the letter A, I gave each group an ink pad and they used one finger to make 3 dots for the ants bodies. they used a black crayon the make the legs and antennas.

Fall Hallway

For my hallway this Fall, I created my own pumpkin patch of sorts. I made a fence, mosaic pumpkins, paper plate scarecrows, and corn stalks. It turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself. :)

Of course my Snoopy is all dressed up for Halloween! The ghosts I have on the dog house are covering up pictures of my students that I have made. I put my their heads on the bodies of the peanuts characters. They got a kick out of that!

So naturally to go along with my Peanuts theme I had to put the Great Pumpkin!

Here are a couple of our corn stalks. All I had my students do was cut little squares of different fall colors and glue them onto the corn cutout I already made.

For the paper plate scarecrows, I made the hat, eyes, and hair pieces. The students put it together however they wanted.

Letter S

This week we worked on the letter S. For this letter project I gave the kids triangles and they decorated the S to look like a snake.

Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed Day is coming up and here is a coloring page I used that I got from http://peacelovelearning.blogspot.com/

Also here is a video about Johnny Appleseed.

Below is a worksheet that I used for my math center. I got it from http://pagingsupermom.com/?attachment_id=5112

Letter M

For letter M, I already made green rectangles and brown circles. The students turned them into dollars and pennies by drawing symbols on them to represent money. 

Back To School Night

For Back To School Night, I gave out a plain white letter to each student and asked them to create a design inside the letter. All together we spelled out, "Welcome to our room!"

Class Mascot

I love doing this every year! Our class mascot is the Phillie Phanatic and every weekend he gets to go home with a different student from class. This weekend was my turn to take the Phanatic and we went to Assateague Island. When we returned from our mini vacation, I filled in his travel journal with some of these pictures and wrote down some of the things we did while we were there. The Phanatic goes on his home visits with a bag that has his travel journal, books to read, and some dress up clothes inside it. The kids love taking the Phanatic home with them and I love seeing how creative they get when filling in the travel journal. 

1st Day of Kindergarten!

1st day of school is here!!! For each student I had the following items ready for them at their seat: a couple of coloring pages, bookmark, and a pencil. As you can tell, my classroom theme this year is Peanuts!

This is our back door.

This adorable Snoopy doghouse is in the middle of our wall in the hallway where we hang our work.

What I'm really excited about is how I rearranged my library center. I think it turned out really cute and more of a cozy place to go. As you can see I have a large book shelf in the middle with 2 little book shelves on the sides and a bench by the window. I also have 4 little chairs they can move to wherever they would like to sit. And my favorite part is the alphabet mat! It makes the center look so bright and inviting.