Handwriting Club

This is something new that I will be trying in our classroom to help motivate the students to write neatly and improve fine motor control. Check it out!

How to form DNealian letters

Rocket Writing Test

Handwriting Club Note to Families

Handwriting Club Student Tracking Sheet

100th Day Snack Mix

100th Day Snack Mix

100th Day Activities

The 100th Day of School is this Thursday!

Here are some of the activities my kinder kiddos will be up to:

100th Day Dice Roll

100 Steps

100 Years Old

100 Finish the Sentence

100 Dollars

100 Days Ago

All of the fun fonts can be found on fontspace.com and downloaded for free!

Daily 5 Anchor Charts

This week, we are about to start the 4th activity in our Daily 5 reading routine: Work on Writing. Each time we start a new activity the students and I create an anchor chart of expectations. I have attached the anchor charts below as examples.


Daily 5 Anchor Charts

Assessments

Here are some items that I created to help me assess my students, they follow the common core standards for kindergarten.

Phonemic Awareness Assessments (we use Heggerty each day- it is based on this)

Assessments continued

Word Wall Words: Printable!!

I wanted a word wall for my classroom, however most word walls are printed on manuscript print. My school system still uses DNealian...which is impossible to find at times! I spent a Sunday afternoon create my own word wall. I want to give you a preview of what it looks like! All of the words are in shape boxes and vowels are colored red. If you would like the entire power point, I will email it to you!! There are around 30+ slides of words, so I did not want to upload them all! Here is a preview...

Shape boxes with HF Words for Word Wall

More words

Upcoming School Wide Fun Fair

Flint Lake Elementary's Annual Fun Fair will take place on Friday January 27 from 6-9 pm. Come out and support our school and enjoy food and games! Pre-sale tickets are available at this moment for a discounted price or you can buy them at the door for regular price. I hope to see you there!

Check out the student coupons available during the kid raffle!

Student Coupon Raffle

Report Card Sight Word Info.

Below are the attachments explaining the 30 sight words that the students will be tested on for the first term report card (sent home on January 27). Please practice these words nightly with your child! The goal is 80% accuracy, 24/30 words correctly with immediate recognition (no decoding, these are sight words).

Sight Words for 1st Term Report Card

Note Home

January Documents

I have included attachments for each of the January documents that I sent home earlier this month. You will find the January "Book It" reading log and our January classroom calendar.

January "Book It" Log

January Classroom Calendar

Things to look forward to!

Here are some upcoming classroom themes for the month of January! The students will be participating in many math and literacy related activities revolving around: snowmen and the arctic tundra through penguins and polar bears!

Our previous author studies on Mo Willems and Laura Numeroff, were a huge success. I know that te students will be excited to do another. Our 3rd author study of the year is going to feature Jan Brett! The students have been introduced to a few of her stories: "Gingerbread Friends," "Gingerbread Baby," "The Night Before Christmas,"  and "Who's that Knocking on Christmas Eve." During our upcoming author study we will be reading the following: "The Mitten," "The Hat," "Home For Christmas," and "The Three Snow Bears."

Looking further ahead....February - 100th Day of School Celebration and 101 Dalmations! March - Dr. Seuss week!

Jan Brett's website

Subway Art

I love being creative! I wanted to try to create some subway art (pinterest inspired of course) but I don't always have the greatest handwriting or stenciling skills, but what I can do is work the computer! I was able to make this teacher inspired subway art for a friend (Miss J!) and myself. I used Microsoft Power Point and came up with teacher related words. Then I changed fonts (all the fonts I used were downloaded from the www.fontspace.com website....if you haven't checked this out before, it is AWESOME!), I also changed the colors, orientations, and sizes- VOILA, SUBWAY ART! If you like this idea and would like the actual attachment to manipulate; just send me an email and I will send you the digital copy :)

Pinterest

If you know what this site is then you know the AMAZING ideas you can find on it. If you don't know about the Pinterest website then I strongly suggest you check it out; however, here is my warning- you WILL spend immense amounts of time and stay up very LATE and may lose sleep because you are laying in bed thinking of all the ideas you want to try! I have several Pinterest boards which include topics relating to : classroom ideas, (I've already used tons in our classroom this year and will be incorporating others very soon!),  DIY, fashion, photo ops, and wedding ideas (I'm not getting married, a girl can dream right??). Anyways the amount of ideas and varying topics are amazing, I will click on one pin and the next thing I know I am off on a tangent and have 7 webpages open! I am a firm believer in this site, CHECK IT OUT! You can follow one or all of my boards by simply typing in my name into the search box, choosing the people tab and clicking on my name OR if you need an invitation to join the site email me and I can easily send you an invite to the most amazing site ever! Enjoy!!

Pinterest

Mac the Moose

As you may know, our Kindergarten classroom has a mascot. His name is Mac the Moose. He loves going on adventures with the students! Each weekend Mac goes home with a student. Along with Mac is a journal and his favorite Laura Numeroff book "If You Give a Moose a Muffin." In the journal the students find fun information about Mac such as his birthday, favorite foods, favorite activities, and more. The journal also contains entries from each student who has spent time with Mac. Each child writes what they did with Mac during their weekend adventure. The student may also draw illustrations to go with their entry or attach photos with the help of a family member. The following Monday, the student shares what he/she did with Mac over the weekend and the journal goes onto the reading shelf so that each child in the class has an opportunity to see all of Mac's journeys. The students enjoy spending time with Mac and adding to his traveling journal! Mac also joins us on any special classroom occasions such as field trips and celebrations.

I promised the students that over winter break I would take good care of Mac. If you scroll down you will see a Photobucket slideshow containing some of the things Mac and I did together over break! Mac received some Christmas presents: a new backpack (his went missing!) and a Purdue t-shirt (my alma mater of course!). We traveled in the car to the mall to visit Build a Bear workshop and Cinnabon, yum! We also took part in Christmas day, opening presents, playing games with family, and having a delicious meal (which included Mac-n-cheese, his favorite!). As you can see Mac is an important addition to our classroom and has brought many wonderful memories to the students and I! If you would like to know more about Mac's journal or the students' assignment please feel free to email me. Have fun creating a classroom mascot and traveling journal!