Beginning of the Year!

I am so excited that I have a whole new group of kinders this year! The beginning of the year is always hectic and stressful, but totally worth it.  I wanted to share some of the things that I do those first few days of school. Along with rules, procedures, and expectations we do lots of stories and activities with getting to know you themes.  The first day I read The Kissing Hand and we made these cute Chesters:

                                  

I also read David Goes to School and we discuss appropriate behavior and actions at school. We also did a Kagan structure called Find Someone Who, where they go around a find someone who likes pizza, sports, ice cream, etc....I also made the students "Magic Playdoh" to start off the day right. It is seemingly white at first, but as they play with it the Playdoh turns a color.  They are so excited and amazed.

The second day I read Monstergarten and we made these glue dot glitter monsters to teach about glue control.

                                 

We also read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and make torn paper trees, which we put foam letters on to spell their names. Sorry, I forgot to get a pic of these! My favorite first week project is the name rainbows shown below. I read Chrysamthemum and then we make our name rainbows out of torn paper. I usually leave these up all year if they don't fall down because of the crazy Kansas humidity!

                                   

I simply cut a sheet of construction paper in half lengthwise and then write their name with a Sharpie. They then have to cover up the letters with paper, going in the order of the rainbow.

The first two full weeks of school we study a color each day and do a special activity, along with wearing that color. It is neat and I will post more about that later.  I am so excited to be off to a new year with my new kiddos!

End of the Year ABC Countdown

This year for the last 24 days of school the Kindergarten team did an ABC countdown with a special alphabet themed activity for each day.  My kinders then wrote about the day in their ABC countdown journals.  They LOVED doing the activities and it made the last month of school extra special.  Here is what we did.

ABC Countdown Letter

 This was one of the student's journal for C day. I love the stink lines coming off of the socks ;)

 For outside day, we went out and drew on the sidewalk with chalk.

This is our classroom quilt that we created with all of the students and adults that work in my room.

 

 

I had pictures for all of the days except for the last few, but somehow can't find them on either my phone or my camera, so I am afraid they have probably been deleted somehow :(  Hopefully this will give you a few ideas of how to keep your students engaged those last few weeks of school!  Enjoy your summer.

Donors Choose

Donors Choose is a great organization that allows teachers to post projects asking for donations for supplies and other things for their classroom.  Donors get to choose exactly where their money goes and to whom.  I have recently posted 2 projects for my Kindergarten classroom.  Any donations will be doubled in the next couple of days with the match code "INSPIRE" at checkout.  Please take a moment to check out the website and my posted projects.  Thanks!

Book Binding

Wonderful Workstations

100th Day

Hello all!  It has been way too long since I posted last.  I didn't realize that I haven't done any posting since September....yikes!  There has been lots of happenings in our classroom.  I wanted to let you all in on our special 100th day of school and what activities we did.  The kiddos had an absolute blast!

I always send home a note beforehand asking for the students to bring in 100 items to make a snack mix.  They love the mix and it usually lasts us a few days.

 I had my students fill in a blank number grid, writing their numbers from 1 -100.  I keep these grids to put into their 5th grade memory books.

We did special 100th day stations all afternoon that day.  Here are the stations that they got to participate in:

 This station was stringing Fruit Loops onto yarn by groups of 10 to 100.

 This station was coloring and cutting out a 100 puzzle that they got to take home.

 This station was a roll and color grid to 100. They each had a dice and they colored in how many squares they rolled on the dice until they filled up their whole chart.

 This station had a jar will 100 small circles.  They used mini stamps to make 100 stamps in their jars.

 This station was making a cup structure using 100 Dixie cups. They were trying to use all of the cups in a pyramid without making the cup fall.  Too fun!

 We did this coloring sheet as a fun activity after lunch.

 I am a class book addict.  We made these two books on the 100th day as well.

I don't know why this picture is sideways....

We also made "100 Days Smarter" crowns when they came to school and they were able to wear them all day.

We had so much fun on the 100th day, which was the end of January, and they learned so much.  This is one of my favorite days of the school year and I love planning different things for them to do on this special day.