A Few Things I'm Finally Getting To!

Ok, I am finally posting a few things I've been thinking about and storing for the last month! I do apologize that it has taken me so long--it's been a bit crazy, but here it is!

First, I want to tell you about the best idea I've ever had: hot gluing paper clips to the wall. Yep, you heard me right, I hot glued 50 CLOTHES PINS to the wall outside my room. It really didn't take that long (about 30 minutes) and you have to make sure you have a long enough extension chord to reach, but otherwise it was pretty easy! My reasoning behind this? I am tired or putting tape on ever paper I want to hang in the hall (especially since I have 45 kids) and I'm also tired of wasting the tape. It takes forever to put it on and then you spend forever taking it off and then it just goes in the garbage. You wouldn't believe how many rolls of tape I have gone through this year. It was finally time for a change. And it's so EASY! I love how convenient it is, you just slip the paper it and you slip it out! I really recommend it! Also, the hot glue doesn't leave marks on the wall like the tape does. 

Best Idea Ever!!!!

 The next thing we've been working on is Winter activities and ideas. The groundhog saw his shadow which means we have six more weeks of winter so it's still OK to talk about it. I got this idea from The Teacher Wife and it was a pretty fast and easy activity. You just have them draw triangles on a piece of white paper, glue the colored paper on top (you need to cut the colored paper into squares first), then they cut out their triangles, glue them on, add a trunk, use a white crayon for the snow and snowflakes and you are done! So cute!

 At the beginning of January we were talking about hibernation and migration. We didn't really do a big project for hibernation, but for migration we make geese! They turned out so cute! The kids traced their hands for the wings and then used our templates for the head, tail, and feet. We then used googly eyes on the head. My only recommendation if you choose to do this is to have glue dots, because regular glue won't hold the paper onto the paper towel rolls. It will just come right off. So on these I had to hot glue every little piece myself and it took FOREVER!!! I do not recommend doing it if you don't have glue dots because it's not worth the time you will spend hot gluing them. I'm sure there's another way you could do it to make them still as cute without needing a glue gun, you'd just have to get creative!

We had a flock of geese in our classroom! Some were going South and some were going North.

We watched Sylvester and the Magic Pebble to inspire our writing.

 We have a new writing system for kindergarten this year and I LOVE IT! This is one of the things we did when talking about non-living things. First, we watched Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (if you haven't seen or read it, you should!) which is a great story to create this writing activity from. Then the kids had to pick their own magic pebble (we just had them bring a bag of pebbles to school). First, they had to sort their pebbles by attributes, and then choose the one that was "magic"! After that we had to write about the pebble. And first we used our brainstorming charts. This was wonderful--see the examples below! Then they had to transfer their brainstorming ideas (or pre-writing) ideas to their final draft. They turned out great!

They had to choose their magic pebble. I then hot glued it onto a piece of cardboard. 

Final Draft!

Final Draft!

 For Non-living we also talked about the attributes and what things are living and which are non-living! These are the posters we made--I like using sticky notes because then you can continue to re-use the posters over and over again, and then you don't have to make the kids stick with the clipart you've picked out, but they can come up with a variety of things.

Living vs. Non-living

 The next few pictures are from my birthday party, and I just thought they were so wonderful and funny that you would enjoy them:

These are the things my morning class think I should get for my birthday.
My morning kids are especially worried that I don't have a baby, that
was the most popular choice when they actually wrote down what I
should get for my birthday (oh, and a crib of course, because you can't
have a baby without a crib!!!)

A great gift from one of my room moms!

Aren't they adorable???

Birthday presents I got from my kids! I love the plate:)

These are the things my afternoon kids think I should get for my birthday!

 Last week we were learning about cubes so this is one of the activities we did for that: they had to make a variety of things out of cubes and then I took pictures of them, they really loved it. We then took the pictures and made a a book with them.

 Last Wednesday was the 100th Day of school for us so we had a district wide read-a-thon where we had to read for a full 60 minutes and the district was supposed to read 4 million pages by the end of the day. In order to help my kinders do that I had second graders come and read with them. In the end we read 3000 pages. For ever page read my kids got to put up a sticker! It was a lot of fun!

 Ok, now we're finally to Valentine's Day!! YAY!!! We made some adorable "Love Bugs" and then wrote notes to one of the kids in our class. They did not get to pick who they were writing to, just someone from our class and they had to say something kind to them.

This one says: "Yoor my love bug."

This one says, "I like how Fern raises her hand."

This one says, "I like you."

This is what they looked like when we hung them up--we're going to give them out on Valentine' s day!

 Now, these next pictures are some of my favorite!! Yesterday, we were talking about maps and specifically globes, and the kids had to make their own "globe" and label it with land and water. Didn't they turn out so great?!?! I love not having worksheets but doing our writing in a writing notebook, it really makes them stretch and they do an amazing job!!!

 Ok, the very last thing I wanted to share with you are some pictures from our play in December. In December we put on a Gingerbread Man play. The kids all have to make their masks and it takes about 2 weeks of practice before we're ready. The kids write the play themselves and then I record it for them. It was so much fun this year: my morning play was called "The Gingerbread Dance," and my afternoon one was called, "The Gingerbread Princess and Ninjas." If you want more details on how to do this in your own classroom let me know and I'll put up a format!