Happy Grinch Day!

We had a great Grinch Day in kindergarten!! We made grinches and wrote about what we would do to make the Grinch grin! We spent time talking about how the Grinch needed some help to "Fill his Bucket" and help grow his heart! We also had the green Oreos for snack! In Math we skip counted by 2s using the grinch! It was a very grinchy day!


I will post my grinch counting activity in the morning when i get to school. One more day!!
-Lindsey

Holiday Activities

Here are a few holiday ideas for your last two days! 

• We made Rudolph and gave him a setting. 
•  We colored a reindeer and labeled his parts from our teacher's example.

• We made unity cups to learn about Kwanzaa.

• We made a Kinara.

• We made a Menorah.

• We made elves.

• We made Santa and Christmas tree paper bag puppets.

• We made and wrote about reindeer.

• We made a dreidel from pretzel, marshmallow, and a hershey kiss!

Two more days to go!!!






















- Lindsey

Gingerbread

So I know going into the holidays that most people have already done their gingerbread unit but if you haven't I wanted to share what we did! We spread our unit over two weeks reading and comparing a different version each day! 

We read The Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Girl, Gingerbread Family, Gingerbread Baby, Gingerbread Girl and the Animal Crackers, Gingerbread Cowboy, Gingerbread Man is Loose in the School (only after our hunt) and I'm excited next year to add the Library Gingerbread Man! 

Below is one of the retelling ideas I found on pinterest that we used to retell the gingerbread girl. We made two huge story maps like this and each student was responsible for a part/character. Then we as a group retold the story and I stretched out the words. The gingerbread girl is in the basket below the picture on a popsicle stick so the kids can use it for retelling.


 




After a week we followed directions to make our own gingerbread men.






















Before....
And then I took them home to cook on cookie sheets so they could cook in my oven. 











This is one of two pictures to prove to the kids that I did cook them! They didn't run away!




 







The next morning the kids came in and I showed them my pictures and the pan of cookies. Then while we were working the cookies got up and ran away! We found a note on the empty tray which led us on a hunt around the school! Once we caught our tricky cookies we got to decorate and eat them!!





We made gingerbread men in math and used buttons to sort them as even and odd.






























Last we had homework to disguise a gingerbread man so he or she didn't get eaten! These were such awesome projects for the kids!
- Lindsey

Amazing Holiday Door

My amazing holiday door created by one of my parents!! After the holidays the elf will come down and I'm going to have my Kinders make snowflakes to make it a winter scene!



- Lindsey

Whoooo are you looking at?

Owl Art Center

So last week was our non-fiction animal research week and my class voted and we decided to study Owls. Thankfully there were lots of great owl activities on blogs and posted on Pinterest to inspire me!

We read owl books and wrote in our own owl research journals to record what we learned each day. We had an owl tear art center, which they loved and turned out so cute!!! We made owls to work on one more and one less and had a great time! Here are a few pictures from our week!

Owls to show what we know, what we want to know isn't pictured
and these two show what we learned "Owls have and Owls Can"

Show one more and one less on your owl

Our Owl Counting Board

- Lindsey

Math Work Stations - Revisited

So Math Work Stations... How is it going out there?

I'm linking up with Mrs. Parker for this review!
I have to admit after reading the book this summer I was very excited to get started and then became quickly overwhelmed but then once I got started I was thrilled with how well my kindergartners did at their stations.  So first off how do I organize it, see my blue pocket chart. I have 12 Math Work Stations or at my school we call them Zones and students work each day with one partner at their zone for about 20 minutes.

My Math Block: 60 Min~3x20 min groups
Last year we stopped with teaching a "whole group" lesson in math and moved to a 3 small group rotation each with a lesson catered to their ability level and their math needs. With little guys that have the attention span of a fly I've found this works so much better and I really know what each student can and can't do.  The green mini chart with pictures are my 3 groups and I use the larger green chart to show where my three groups move so they rotate from with me in a 15-20 min lesson with guided practice then they have independent practice and then they can go to zones.



So how did I get Math Work Stations set up and started? Well first I purchased matching bins with blue tops from Kmart.  Why blue tops well a) they're pretty and b) I can quickly identify them as my math bins and c) Well when they are all uniform they make my room look more organized! Then came the "I Can" charts on top. After much trial and error I found that when I put them on the in side of the box tops (as suggested in the book) my kids didn't look at them. I tried them in the actual bins (and until they get laminated that's how it works) but the I Can page often was left on the carpet and not put away. So I settled on velcroing them to the top. Voila!  Don't they look beautiful! :-D
So I followed Debbie Diller's tips on starting with exploration and having students write "I can" statements for each manipulative we were using. So for example with links, my kids came up with:

• I can...
• sort
• count
• make a pattern
• color a pattern
• Talk about my pattern with a friend

I hand wrote my kids "I can" posters and hung them up. They were so proud that they "came up with what to do!" Yes, I guided them but they really did it and I think that's why they have taken such ownership over their zones this year.

A Scholastic Seasonal Pattern and counting set.
Stamp a Number in a ten frame activity w/ mini stamps.

How often do I change Math Work Stations?
Not very often maybe once a month I start phasing in an activity to replace one or two that the kids have become bored with. Because they are limited to one station a day and I have 12 stations they get to each of the stations 2x in a month so they last! So long are the days of changing math activities every week!



So how have my Math Work Stations evolved?
My kids LOVE their daily stations and god forbid I forget to change the chart in the morning, they will let me know! My whole kindergarten team has embraced the new format for math and together we come up with more play based activities to keep the kids coming back for more! We're actually having a K, 1st, and 2nd work study group to support each other and come up or redevelop old ideas to fit this new philosophy!


So what's in a Math Work Station? Here are a few!

I Can...
1)Count and Match: Ghostly Counting is a mini book I made with pictures and numbers. The kids put ghost erasers on the page to match the number.
2)Clip It for Position Words: Top Middle and Bottom.
3)Sort: Halloween erasers from the $1 store.
4) Make Patterns: With erasers above
5) Read a math book
6) Use Math Talk

I Can...
1) Count and Match the leaves (Centers In a Bag)
2) Clip It Counting (Moffit Girls Blog)
3) Put the numbers in order (found online)
4) Read a math book
5) Use math talk

I can...
1) Count the Legos (Legos work mats I found online)
2) Sort the Legos
3) Count and color the dots
4) Put the numbers in order
5) Read a math book
6) Use Math Talk




So what's been working for you and what new ideas have you come up with for your work stations?

- Lindsey

Giving Thanks.... Donors Choose

Giving Thanks is my theme for this month and instead of venting I'm going to share and give thanks for the many wonderful things in my life.  So where to start, I love when people support education and this summer I made a step into the unknown with my first Donors Choose project. If you don't know Donors Choose I hope you will it's a charity site that helps to make teachers dreams for their classroom come true. Through Donors Choose...I received my amazing new carpet!!!

This year my class room exploded from 17 student to 24 and there wasn't enough room for all the kids! Through all the amazing donors online, many I know and many I don't know and the wonderful match donation made my Lakeshore my dream for my classroom did come true. And thank goodness for it because some days that carpet is all that's keeping my sanity together! Thank you for reading and this and I encourage many of you to take this month to give thanks to those things, people, and gifts that help to keep your head screwed on and allowing for your instruction to continue!

Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops

So today I took on my first challenge with cake pops for my kickball league's annual pumpkin bake off! I have so much respect for anyone who makes cake pops on a regular basis I was prepared to spend hours but didn't realize it would take 5+ hours to make. Be warned!!

Step 1: Follow the directions to make and cook the cake and let it cool completely. (Do this the night before) I used the Betty Crocker spice cake mix with some added pumpkin seasoning.
Step 2: Use a fork to break up the cake into a large bowl.
Step 3: Then I mixed in a container of cream cheese frosting, in the future I will only use 3/4 of a container of frosting because I feel like a full container was a little too much.
Step 4: Then I used my hands to roll pumpkin balls and place them on wax paper on a cookie sheet.
Step 5: Put the sheet of pumpkin balls in the freezer for 10 min.
Step 6: I used a bamboo skewer to make notches in the sides to make it like a real pumpkin.
Step 7:Then put the cake balls back in the fridge till they are cold but not frozen.
Step 8: Heat up a small portion of the candies and dip the stick in the melted candy and stick them in the cool cake balls.
Step 9: Stick back in the fridge.
Step 10: Melt the rest of the candies in a double boiler, I did one bag at a time next time I'd melt two bags at once.
(I stopped by Fancy Cakes by Leslie after the bake off today to ask some advice and they suggested using white chocolate gnash next time and adding food coloring to get a smooth texture on the cake balls. They also said to make sure the cake pops don't freeze or the candy shell will react badly.)

Step 11: Dip the cake pops into the melted candy coating. I saw lots of examples on line of people who dipped completely under and the pops came right out to get the bottom. Well that didn't work for me every time I dipped the pops would fall off and go for a swim so I defaulted to a dunk and spin method that left them looking like this picture. Yes I got to eat those little swimmers, yummy!
Step 12: Put the pops in Styrofoam to harden. I poked holes in the Styrofoam in advance so I had places to put the pops.


Step 13: I had green candies to melt to make the green stems but I had to leave for an event downtown so at this point I used store bought green topping. They look cute but not exactly what I had hoped for. But here's the finished product after drying!





So, I didn't win the pumpkin bake-off today but I'm proud of my first attempt at cake pops and had a great feedback from the crowd most of which thought I had won! I got a 9 out of 10 for taste and only a 3/5 on creativity (for real?? One of the judges said he didn't like that it was on a stick- isn't that creative??) and 3/5 on presentation (I have no idea what they were looking for here it was a pumpkin patch! How else could I show the cake pops off?) so a total score of 15/20 points. The winner had a pumpkin cheesecake pie (where's the creativity in that??) and oh yea she's a professional baker. Oh well... my pops did stand out on the entry table and they were gone very quickly!