Fun! Fun! And More Fun!

     We had so much fun this week!  We've been working on All About Me and Five Senses this week. I wish I could have three or four more hands, so I can snap more pictures!  I also sometimes wish I could be cloned, so I can get everything accomplished!  Here are a few things that we did this week:

We made our heads for our Hokey Pokes books.  They had to tell me what color hair they had, and then they glued on their hair.  We then graphed whether we had short or long hair.  This idea is from here.  

We took our shoes off and sorted our shoes.  We sorted according to dress shoe, tennis shoe (laces or velcro), sandals, and loafers. :)

Then we graphed our shoes.  We completed a graph on paper after that.  I'm hoping to get it uploaded, but I'm having problems with Google docs!

Zero the Hero visited for the 10th day of school!  He read Ten Black Dots and counted to 10 with us!

Counting to ten Zero style!

Our special Zero snack.

We had Five Senses Centers today, so much fun!

Smelling Centers- We had six different smelling jars.  My super smart assistant painted baby food jars, so they could not see what was inside them!  We had picture clues for them to try to guess what each smell was.  Then they glued to match the picture.  Once again, I cannot get my docs to upload! GRRRRR

Sight Center-  One of my smartie pants :)  realized that not only was this a sight center, it was a touching center , as well!  They fingerpainted to mix colors together.

Hearing Center-  This was just like the Smell Center, except we had ten jars for them to guess what sounds they heard.

Tasting Center

We tasted baking chocolate (bitter), pretzels, (salty), sugar cookies (sweet), and lemons (sour).  They were so funny about the chocolate!  One of my boys said that was sneaky chocolate!  It's suppose to taste good, but it was horrible! Lol!

These Five Senses Hats are just too stinkin cute!  I stumbled across them, and we just had to make them!  This comes from Dr. Jean, and you can find it here.

Touch Center-  They had a Touch match board to complete.  They we glued objects down to demonstrate smooth, soft, bumpy, and rough.

Working in the hearing center

The smelling center

Tasting Center

I love when they taste the lemon! :)

Sight Center

This picture just makes me smile! :)

     We had a great week, and I'm looking forward to finishing up our All About Me and moving on to Families!  Have a great weekend!

More Fun the Second Week of School!

     This week just flew by!  I'm so happy with my class and how they are adjusting to the routines, learning the rules, and are ready to learn!  My camera died a couple of weeks ago, and then my phone was stolen last weekend!  I was unable to take many pictures because my replacement phone did not come in until Wednesday.  I don't have many pictures to share and honestly, these are not that great, but will do for now. :)
     My goal this year is to post more of my original materials and lesson plans.  I'm working on a couple of units for Math, Literacy, Bible, and Science that I hope to post really soon!  I'm a little challenged with technology, but I have a friend that is going to help me with my challenges.  Yah!  I'm also really trying to do better with blogging this year!  So, with that being said here is a snapshot of our second week of school.

Our Wheels on the Bus Name activity.  We sang the song and then substituted for the first letter of our names.  They rounded off the squares to make circles for the wheels.  

I don't think I posted this earlier, but this is our door from Open House.  I just love how these turned out!  They loved the blue yarn for the hair!

This is from Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten Back to School packet.  I love this because it helps them practice only using one dot of glue.  The kids loved being in glitter world! :)  We were also working on our Creation book page where they had to put glitter on their stars.  Let's just say our room was very sparkly! :0

Fine Motor Center- Different Play Doh mats for birthday, faces, and pets.

I wish I had a better picture!  This was our Math Center.  They had to sort a bag of warm fuzzes, and graph how many of each color they had.  Then they used bingo dot markers to mark their findings.

Word Work-  They used Bingo Dot markers to spell their name.  Next week we will measure with links and cubes to see how long their names are.

Relaxing doing our Weekly Reader (I actually don't think it is called that anymore, but it will always be Weekly Reader to me!)

I took this idea from Deanna Jump and changed it a little bit.  We read the poem Rainbow Hair and then made our own Rainbow Heads.

I did not get a good completed project, but these turned out so cute!

     Next week we will be working on All About Me and our Five Senses.  We will be having special centers on Thursday.  I can't wait!  Have a great weekend!

First week of school

Well, I've been MIA for a very long time.  Partly because my camera completely crashed.  I lost everything!  It was totally devastating.  The other reason I've just had a lot going on personally and didn't have it in me to do much blogging.  The good news is I'm on the road to recovery and I'm just going to use my phone to take pictures for a while.  These are not the best pictures, but will give you a peek into our class!  I will have to say this is a sweet little class, and I think we are going to have a fantastic year!

We keep it fairly simple the first week with centers.  They are more play based to help establish routines and procedures.  This is the puzzle center.

Art Center- We are painting the first two pages of our Creation books.

Housekeeping Center

Block Center- I added the school house and bus to go along with the theme.

The girls preferred the toys more than the blocks. :)

Our lesson on how to use markers-
This is Marker Happy all sharp and new
He can color anything, just tell him what to do!
His cap is on tight pushed down with all your might
Marker Happy will sleep so well tonight!
His tip is sharp and ready for art
Marker Happy is so lucky and smart!
This is Marker Sad, all grumpy and mad.
His cap is gone and is all dried out!
So all he can do is cry and pout
His tip has been broken with a pound, pound, pound.
Look at Marker Sad with his big frown.

I did not catch the picture, but after learning about how to use correctly use markers., we sorted them by color.  We also matched the correct tops to the markers.

We are going to make a class book with these cute cat in the hat pictures! :)

Learning how to use scissors

We had a giant pair of scissors that we used to demonstrate how to hold the scissors correctly, and then practiced cutting.

They had a few different sheets to practice cutting- straight line, wavy line and zig zag

I'm so excited about my new partner!   She is going to be a great asset!  We are already having a great time bouncing ideas off each other and planning.  This is going to be a great year!

     I'm off for the weekend to visit my son at college!  Hotty Toddy!

5..4...3...2...1 BLAST OFF!

During our Space theme my camera was still not working, so I have very few pictures.  These are pictures that I took with my phone, so they are not all that great.  This was the book we did to go along with our theme from Musings of Me.  Some of the pictures are not complete because we had not painted some of the details yet.

We learned about the moon.  We read a fiction and nonfiction book about the moon.  In centers we played with moon sand.  You can buy it or make the recipe from here.  We also painted a moon and wrote a sentence about the moon.

On our star day we read a book about the Big Dipper and discussed how stars can make a picture in the sky.  We were going to make constellations with stickers, but ran out of time!  We also learned about the sun and discussed that the sun is actually a star.  

They loved learning about the planets!  I told them when I was their age Pluto was a planet, but now it's not.  They thought that was so funny, and they thought I was really old! LOL!  We also made coffee filter Earth's and wrote sentences about what we learned about our planet Earth.

Rockets and spaceships were a favorite!

This page also went along with our moon day.

We discussed satellites.  I really did not get into spaceships or aliens, but told them that was just for fun.

I have a little mini unit that I like to do with the book Aliens & Underpants, but we were running out of time, so I did not do that this year.

We had a fun time learning about astronauts!  We ate the same ice cream that astronauts ate and then graphed whether we liked the taste of it or not.  Most of the class did not like the astronaut ice cream. :(

I love our Space theme, and I'm so disappointed that I don't have many pictures of our activities....there's always next year! :)