This Week in Kindergarten

This was our first week of doing work stations and the children have done an amazing job! Each week we will have 6 work stations that everyone will complete by the end of the week by doing 2 a day. This week's work stations were going to Starfall on the computer, listening to Splat the Cat, reading Colors Around Me with me, putting the letters of the alphabet in order, sorting letters and matching everyone's name to their picture.

Here is a picture of how I organize who goes where each day.

The morning names are blue on the left, the afternoon names are red on the right and I take photographs of the stations. The concept of my work stations came from reading the book Literacy Work Stations by Debbie Diller. In our work stations this week we practiced reading color words. You can practice this skill with your child by following the link below:

Game Classroom

In math we have been sorting buttons and attribute blocks. We did this fun, quick sorting activity on the SMART Board this week:

Sort

Show and Share: My Desk

Michaele, who blogs at

Kindergarten's 3 R's: Respect, Resources and Rants,

sent out a request to see everyone's desk.

So here is my desk as it looked when I arrived at school today:

I have my weekly organizer from Lakeshore, my water bottle, a picture of my family, my Busy Body Book, post-it notes (I love post-it notes!), my computer ( I love my Mac) and some binders (I organize everything in a binder). But, at the end of the day I took a look at my desk and this is what I saw:

Piles, piles and more piles! My water bottle was replaced with a Diet Coke, there are buttons, letters, and papers that I need to do something with. I decided to take this picture, grab my purse and backpack and head for home.

Hopefully my desk will look like the top picture again soon.

Thanks Michaele for the fun post!

Drawing

We have been very busy during Writing Workshop drawing fabulous pictures! Some of our pictures are of things that have actually happened to us. We found out that Tomie DePaola wanted to be an illustrator when he was 4 years old and he likes to draw about things that have happened to him. We also looked at some of Dr. Seuss' illustrations and talked about how he uses his imagination to draw. This summer I read the book Crafting Writers by Elizabeth Hale and I have been using her ideas about using craft techniques in drawing that are located on page 84 of her book. It is so exciting to see the children trying some of these techniques as well as others we have discussed. In the above drawings Ava and Rosie "filled up the white space" with their drawings, Isaac added the detail of drawing weather in the background of his picture, Madeline used the brand name McDonald's in her drawing, Steven and Carter added words by adding names to their drawings and Madeline and Mattie are starting to add words by adding labels to their pictures. Ask your child about what they are drawing in Writing Workshop.

Looking forward to reading their comments.

Whooooo Likes Kindergarten?

First Day of School

Jack and Brian Bell

Here are 2 of the 3 Bell Boys on the first day of school. These 2 headed off to the middle school, one "king of the hill" as an 8th grader and one "bottom of the barrel" as a 5th grader. Brian's excitement of going off to middle school quickly came to and end when he couldn't open his locker. (A trauma that will surely stay with him for the rest of his life.) There are no pictures of Casey because he did not want to go to school and wanted nothing to do with getting his picture taken. His first day of school started with him having to be surgically removed from me, but he quickly recovered and had a great day:)

Paige and Mrs. Bell

Our first days of kindergarten went smoothly. We drew pictures of what we did this summer during Writing Workshop, played tic-tac-toe in math, read The Night Before Kindergarten and made our own book about what we did the night before kindergarten. I enjoyed getting to know all of the children this week. I can tell it is going to be a great year in kindergarten!

The Boys (and 1 girl) of Summer!

We have had a great summer!  Brian and Casey played baseball, I went to see Coldplay, we went to a Reds and Dragon's game, went to Sunset Beach, North Carolina, Casey learned to ride a two-wheeler, went canoeing, played on our friend's largest slip n' slide, Brian broke his wrist, we went to the pool a lot and an old car show.  I am looking forward to drawing and writing about what I did this summer.  What did you do this summer that you can draw or write about during Writers' Workshop?

A Story Written by Isabella

Fly Me To the Moon!

June 2oth marked the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon. The following are resources to share with your students or children about this historical event.

1. Find out how to view the moon in Google Earth at Free Technology for Teachers.

2. Read about 5 great books about astronauts at this link to 5 Great Books.

3. JFK's "We Choose the Moon" speech at Free Technology for Teachers.

4. Unearth places to find quality images at The Whiteboard Blog.

5. Anastasia's Suen's Book of the Week post shares information and activities to go along with her book Man on the Moon.

6. Video timeline of Apollo 11 moon landing at Free Technology for Teachers.

Children's Literature

I love children's literature!

Anastasia's Suen has 5 blogs about children's literature that I love following on Google Reader. My favorites are Picture Book of the Day, Book of the Week and 5 Great Books. Picture Book of the Day introduces you to a book and gives you an idea about how you can use the story to motivate writers. Anastasia says, "Teachers are busy so I get right to the point. Monday through Friday I post a new picture book on this blog with a 1 or 2 line plot summary (no spoilers!), a short quote from the text (in italics), and a writing activity for one of the six traits" Anastasia's Book of the Week blog is a place where she introduces you to one of her books. She posts the cover, a brief description and links that you can use after you read the book with your class. The purpose of the 5 Great Books blog is to provide a thematic book lists for children learning to read.

SMART Board Websites

Spelling City from

Teachers Love SMART Boards

Bembo's Zoo from

Getting SMARTER with SMART Boards

Mr. Young's Bouncy "A" also from

Getting SMARTER with SMART Boards

I got a SMART Board about 4 weeks before the end of the school year. I have spent a lot of time this summer looking for SMART Board tips, tricks, websites and Notebooks. These sites are my interactive websites "finds" and the links to where I found them.

This final website is a great place to find and download

SMART Board Notebooks.

SMART Board, AirLiner, and Senteo Activities