Who Took The Apples From the Apple Tree?

My kids love this book! They have sat on the rug for the past two days reading it (during reading time) and when they get to the end they just laugh and laugh. It was so much fun to do. It's similar to the "Who Stole The Cookies From the Cookie Jar" but is instead "Who Took The Apples From The Apple Tree?" Each page says, "___________took the apples from the apple tree. Good Grief, said _________. Not me, not me!" Each of the kids had to write their name on the paper and attach a picture of them and an apple (any color they wanted). After that I put the book together and secretly added a page at the end that said, "Mrs. Hardy took the apples from the apple tree!" They were so surprised and about fell over laughing because they thought it was great!

We're Starting To Get Eggs

We're finally starting to get eggs back on our 35 Book Challenge Wall and it makes me so excited! The kids have to read 35 books (by themselves) before they can color in the egg and return it to put under Horton. We read "Horton Hatches An Egg" during the first week of school and it really motivated the kids.

A Letter + A Sight Word + A Number A Day

This year the other kindergarten teacher and I have started a new program. Simply we call it the "Letter A Day" program, but in reality it's much much more than that. It also includes a sight word a day and a number a day. We use white boards and markers for this and it takes up about 20 minutes of our day. We talk about the letter for the day, what sound it makes, and how we write it. Then we write it on our white boards, we do the same for the sight word and the number. We simply rotate through the alphabet (changing it's order every time we go through it) and our sight words. That way the kids get their alphabet and sight words 6 more times during the year instead of just focusing on one a week. It works so much better and already I can see a huge improvement in my students. For the number we just use the number from that day in the month. For example, today's number was 4 because today is October 4th. This way you hit each of the numbers 1-31 multiple times during the year. Click here to get the specific format for this program.

Sorting on Our Johnny Appleseed Hats

So last week we spent quite a bit of time learning about Johnny Appleseed and I knew my kids were dying to make their own Johnny Appleseed pan hats to wear home. However, instead of just making the hats, I turned it into a sorting activity. I gave each child a handful of colored shapes and they had to decide how to sort them. As you can see in this picture, this little boy sorted by color. This way they weren't just doing a fun activity but were also re-enforcing their sorting skills.

Dr. Seuss Hats

We made these Dr. Seuss hats the other day. The kids colored them, cut them out, and then we added their pictures on the bottom! It's a great classroom decoration!

5 Senses: Smelling

One activity we did for the sense of Smell was "Guess that Smell!" I put out four cups with four different types of items inside (peanut butter, lemonade, honey, rotten egg) and then I put tin foil on the top with a small hole. The kids then had to smell each one and guess what was inside. They then drew pictures of what they thought was in each one. I had shapes on the cups for the kids to be able to draw for example that in the circle cut they guess it was peanut butter, etc. It was great and it was a little difficult for some of the kids but they loved it!

Writing With Paint Bags

My wonderful husband helped me fill these bags the other day with paint! Thank you honey! These are so great because after they are made the kids can use Q-tips or their finger tips to write letters, shapes, etc onto the bags. I would make sure to use really heavy-duty bags so they don't rip especially if they're using a Q-tip because the Q-tips can rip through the plastic. Once you have the bags filled you just tape them onto a piece of poster board and you're ready to go. The poster board helps the letters, shapes, etc show up better. I use them in centers or when I have students who struggle with writing specific letters.