It Seems We've Just Begun, But Now We're Almost Done!!!

Wow,  It's May, and I haven't written since Dec....  Busy year, but it flew!!

We are getting ready for our K celebration and the end of school!

I've been pinning ideas for stage decorations and table ideas for our reception. :)

Here is a pic of our backdrop, our kinder~garden!!

We used handprints for everything. ;)  The grass was several handprints, the sun was palms and fingers, caterpillars were the side of hands,and  lady bugs were just the palm print.  To finish off the flowers and bugs, we used markers.  It's very happy and bright, and the kiddos are so excited about it!!

The countdown is on!!  We are almost done. :)  Happy summer!!

Christmas Time is Here!!

Merry, Merry!!!  Don't you just love Christmas?!?  Such a wonderful time of year with so many fun things to do!  Hope you are having Merry days wherever you are!

Our journal this coming week is how to decorate a Christmas tree.  Saw something on Pinterest that I tweaked. :)  

Here is the sheet the kiddos will fill out.  I did circles with 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th so they can write or draw the things to decorate a Christmas tree.

Here is our Housekeeping center~ Gingerbread Bake Shop!    My puppet stage likes to play dress up a lot!!

We made our Gingerbread dough on Wed., and we were going to bake him tomorrow, BUT we are out for a snow day!  So, Gingy will have to sit in the freezer until Mon. 

Merry Christmas!  

"It's Almost Time For Thanksgiving, It's almost time for a Feast!!"

I LOVE Thanksgiving in K.  We've done many things that we've done in past years, you can check them out out on the blog.  Here are a few new things this year!

My Kiddos were the Pilgrims for our feast this year, so we made Pilgrims.  The girl's bonnet is 1/3 of the paper plate rim with center cut out.  Use the center on the back of the hat to make the bonnet puffy.  The neck on both the boy and girl was about a 1/4 of the plate rim.  Glue the point behind a pink or flesh colored circle.  Boy hats were just back construction paper.  I let them use markers to decorate their Pilgrims!  Fun project and easy. 

This year I found a Martha Stewart hat pattern on Pinterest.  Loved it!!!

Here is the link~ http://marthastewart.com Pilgrim bonnett. :)  It was easy and turned out so cute!!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families!!  Christmas is coming soon!!  I think I'm starting a new tradition with a stuffed Gingerbreadman.  He will be a bit like the elf on the shelf.  

Be sure to check out Dr. Jean's Happy Everything for some fun Thanksgiving songs.  We are done until Dec.:)

Pumpkinology!

My K kiddos paired with 4th grade to do some pumpkin study!  What a fun morning it was.

We drew some pumpkins.

 We tasted pumpkin in a can, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin seeds.

We estimated pumpkin seeds.  The big one had 403 and small one had 223, we didn't count the gourd...

 We counted pumpkin lines.

We tested to see if a pumpkin could sink or float...  It floats!  I learned something new! :)

We measured several pumpkins with cubes, chains, inches, and feet.

At the end, the kiddos put together a book with their findings.  It was a fun morning! Each pair had a sheet so they could record their findings and they each got their own book.   When the kiddos were all finished, we read Liz Curtis' book, The Pumpkin Patch Parable and made a Happy pumpkin.

Happy fall to all!!

50th Day in K~ Sock Hoppin' Fun!!

Tomorrow is the 50th Day of Kindergarten!  We are 1/2 way to 100, so we are going to have some 50's fun!!  Housekeeping is  the 50 Days Cafe!  Used my puppet stage to make a frame/store front, we'll take pictures of the kids with the Happy 50!  Found some food baskets and paper at Target $ spot for the food, and made floats with some shimmery gift bag filler. ;)

We are going to celebrate by having rootbeer floats as a treat!  Our journal and craft are going to be "How To Make A Rootbeer Float".  The kiddos are going to write directions on paper that is shaped like our float cup, after they finish both the craft and the paper, we'll put them together to make an individual book. 

We are going to have a hula-hoop contest and a bubble gum blowing contest too!  

Also, found a freebie on Teachers Pay Teachers with how things differ from the 50s and today~  it's by Erica DeMaria.  We printed it off and will let the kiddos graph them under 50s and Today. :)  We'll also measure records with tootsie rolls, it's going to be fun to see if any of our kids have seen records!  I have a bean bag C.D. with 50s songs on it, so I'm sure we will need to do a sock hop with bean bags too!!

I'll post some of our fun day soon!!

Happy Teaching!!

End of the Year Memory Project

It's hard to believe that we are almost to the end of the year!

Where has this year gone?!  Yesterday we did our end of the year memory project, the handprint pillow case. ;)

This is one of my favorite projects, and I know the kiddos love it too. :)

Hope your end of the year countdowns are full of fun!

Poetry Cafe~ Open Mic Day!

April in K we've been studying Nursery Rhymes, Fairy Tales, and Fractured Fairy Tales and studying poetry. :)

We have a pretend mic and stand in dress up so the kiddos dress up and act out some of their favorite poems, fairy tales, etc...  

We also have a "poetry apron".  It's just a cute apron I found with pockets and I've typed out all our poems and songs throughout the year and they can pull them out and say or sing them.  They are having lots of fun with that!

Friday was our Poetry Cafe.  It was tons of fun!  I'd found the idea on Dr. Jean's blog for April.  We had each of the kiddos bring a mug for hot chocolate and we served cupcakes.  We set up several tables, placed lamps around the room, and turned out the overhead lights.  We gave the room a coffee house feel.  The mic and stand were at the front and we even had a beret if they wanted to wear it. :)  The kiddos were encouraged to either write an original poem, learn a new poem, or share a poem we already knew.  Instead of clapping we snapped.

It was a fun morning, and the kids loved sharing!