Kindergarten Parent Gift

As a parent, my favorite Christmas tree ornaments over the years are the ones my daughters made in elementary school.  I especially love the ornaments that have school pictures and the year made!  For that reason, I always have my kindergartners make an ornament where they write their name and year (I add the school picture later).

It doesn't get much simpler than this: I buy 3 sheets of fun foam, which usually runs $1 per sheet.  I used the school die cut machines to cut out a holiday shape.  On the back, I draw a line for the students to write their name.  The students use a Sharpie to write their name and school year.  Then they turn over the ornament and decorate with sequins and glitter glue.  When they dry, I glue on their school picture and poke an ornament holder through the top.  That's it! Inexpensive and minimal work for me at a very busy time of year!

Dot Painting

My art parent cancelled on me last week, so I had to come up with an art lesson quick!  Always having done a successful pointillism lesson in the spring, I drew a few holiday pictures and adapted the lesson to the season.

Starfall.com has some wonderful books on artists.  For this lesson, I showed the Georges Seurat book on my interactive white board.  The book shows his paintings and has a magnifying tool that allows the reader to zoom in on the detail of the dots used in several paintings.  The students were amazed!

To complete our paintings, we used cotton tips and tempura paint.  Now we have some Christmas art on display in our hallway!

Kid Writing

Writing in kindergarten... how many times have we followed our language arts manual and given our students a topic to write about?  What followed in my classroom were moans and groans, and then 20 students all needing my help at the same time.  It was the worst part of the school day. I had no idea how to teach beginning writers!

Everything changed when a new principal came to our school who had ACTUALLY TAUGHT KINDERGARTEN!!!  She bought all of the kindergarten teachers the book Kid Writing by Eileen Feldgus and Isabell Cardonick, and then came in to our classrooms and modeled some lessons.  What followed amazed us all.  The students couldn't wait for journal time, and they became independent writers!  By the end of the year most of my students could write two to three sentences on a topic with no help.  They also were writing yes/no surveys and notes to each other during free choice center time!

The philosophy of Kid Writing is that writing and reading go hand in hand.  Phonics is used while journal writing, which transfers into reading skills.  The students write the sounds that they hear as they stretch out words.  Word walls with sight words are up and used as needed.  

What makes Kid Writing so different?  For me, it was that the students get to write about whatever they want - not a prompt from a teacher's manual!  Also, the teacher models lessons from his or her own life to demonstrate the process.  If the student cannot hear any sounds in a particular word, it is ok to make a "magic line" for that word.  Meatball spaces are put between words.  So kid friendly! In my classroom, I circulate from table to table, listening to their "story" as they draw their picture.  Then I help kids stretch sounds as they write. When they are finished writing, they read to me (pointing to each word), then I write "grown up writing" underneath.  Little by little, the higher students are off and running and I can devote more time to those who need a little more help.  It is an amazingly effective process. 

There is much, much more to be learned by reading the Kid Writing book!  Here are some pictures of the progression one of my lower students has made this year.

First month of school (August)

September

October

November....phonetic spelling with no help needed!

Halloween Fun!

                                                      

This year I finally bought the book Where's My Mummy by Carolyn Crimi.  Here are some activities I found on other blogs and Teacher's Pay Teachers.  My students loved the book and had so much fun completing these themed literature extenstions.

Character Analysis

My class loved completing a Baby Mummy character analysis from Mrs. Jump's class. I loved that Mrs. Jump included choices that did NOT describe Baby Mummy.  As the students completed the chart, they had to give evidence why that character trait was to be included.   This and other great activities can be found here:

http://mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com/2011/10/wheres-my-mummy-activities-and-freebies.html

I like to include math in all my themed units, so this was a great addition to the Where's My Mummy unit.  This can be a differentiated activity as also included in this freebie is a sheet containing higher numbers! These freebies can be found here:

http://www.classroomfreebiestoo.com/2012/10/wheres-my-mummy-counting.html