Graduation Day!

It's graduation time already! These last few weeks have been so busy and stressful lately! Here is something funny that happened to me today - The assistant principal sent around a few second graders to collect teacher edition text books. I was having trouble finding my math book with the bar code (we have two copies of the math book). So I was scrambling around the room, searching all my book shelves, trying not to make these kids wait on me. (I hate feeling so disorganized!) It made my day when one of the boys said, "Don't stress yourself out over it! We can wait." :)
Anyway, kindergarten team decided last year that we should take pictures of the set up so we could reference them this year! So here they are - last year's graduation set-up photos!

I didn't get the hallway, I guess, but we had the hallway leading down to the cafeteria decorated too! I'll add this year's photos next week after my kinders graduate! :)

I was so exhausted graduation day, I forgot my camera! My husband is a band director and we went to Washington DC so his band could march in the Memorial Day Parade! (It was amazing!) If anyone is interested, my photos from that trip are on my facebook page and here: https://picasaweb.google.com/carmenhathcock/WashingtonDC

So anyway, we had only 2 kids stay after graduation and only 3 come to school today. And believe me, we put them to work! Here is our classroom now:

And the hallway:

A Wild Day!

Today was the W Day in our ABC countdown and we did a few really cute things! We ate watermelon and read some "wild" stories! The end of the year is always kind of wild anyway, so it felt very appropriate to have W stand for wild as well as watermelon today!

We read Miss Bindergarten Has a Wild Day in Kindergarten

and

Where the Wild Things Are!

I found this adorable writing paper on Pinterest!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Wild-Thing-Text-to-Self-Connection-Freebie

Here are a few of my students' writing! Too cute to keep for myself! 

"When I feel wild, I knock stuff down." (For the record, I do not believe this for a second about this child!:) )

"Maybe I will not be wild."

"I would feel wild if my room turned into a jungle."

"When I feel wild, I want to run outside crazy."

And the best one....(I know it's hard to see...)

"When I feel wild, I will not be wild!"

I LOVE IT! :)

Hopping into First Grade!

Sooo, here we are. The last two weeks of school! (My class graduates kindergarten on May 29th! Oh my!)

We LOVE the Froggy book series in our room! (If you are unfamiliar with the series, I highly recommend any and all of them and guarantee that you and your kiddos will fall in love that little guy as we have!)

This picture will take you to an author profile for Jonathan London and all things Froggy!

We have been reading the Froggy books all year long, and I put out my summer read aloud basket a few weeks ago and the kids were particularly interested in one book called Awesome Amphibians!

So, we read Awesome Amphibians and a few more Froggy books and then made our very own frogs! (I got the frog pattern from a friend and fellow kindergarten teacher at my school.) So I had my kinders color their giant frogs as morning work and then write a story about the frog (or toad, as some of them noted the bumps on the picture!).

 "My frog is jumping on a lily pad and it went in the water."

"My frog is loving the water because it lives in the water. If it doesn't go in the water, it will die." 

"My frog is poison. Do not touch my frog because it's poison". 


I couldn't resist sharing this, too! I was assigned a School Buddy this year since it is technically my second full year. This is what I found on my door handle last week. :) 

 So cute!

And this my message board that I use to display some of my gifts from my students! I also added my School Buddy's note! :)

The End Is In Sight!

Oh my goodness - it's already the end of the year! (Or should that be FINALLY the end of the year!??) :) 

 

I can't remember where I downloaded this butterfly template from (I am pretty sure it was Pinterest, but I can't find the pin). The person who shared it showed it with an ending sound (Ex: ell) on the butterfly's body and the student wrote a word with that ending on each of the four circles (Ex: shell, bell, well, tell). Then, students put the butterfly together! 

I tweaked the activity for use during math time - I assigned a number to each student and they came up with number sentences to make that number! It was fun!

 6 = 2+4, 4+2, 3+3, 5+1

 8 = 5+3, 3+5, 6+2, 4+4

 I have added to my color wall a little bit and I plan on making it better for next year. I got paint samples from Walmart for each of my colors to show my kids that "purple" can be all different shades!

 My collection of fake flowers from this spring. :) Sweet.

A few more Ocean Room photos! This was Pajama Day!

These cuties set up the sand table in a cute way! They left it for the next class to view! How thoughtful! ;)

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

This week we are studying insects! In the fall, near Halloween, we did a unit on spiders. Now it's all about insects!

I found a cute song on youtube to teach the parts of an insect, but of course I can't access it from school! So I wrote the words on chart paper and taught my kids the words and we do it our way! :)

Here is the link to the song on youtube:

This song is so cute and an effective way for kids to learn the body parts of an insect! 

Today we made this little project as a science and math lesson - bugs and shapes AND following directions!

This one was the model I made, and students were given squares of each color paper. I told them what shapes to cut and how to label and then I showed this one and had them glue their insects together!

When the insects were complete, I let my kiddos choose where to hang their creepy crawlies in the room! Very cute!

Ocean Exploration Room - Kids!

So, the Ocean Room is finally complete! And the kids have been going for a week! --They LOVE it! 

Hula girls 

Going to the beach

making fish from play-doh

Making a marina out of blocks

Pete got to visit this marina!

More pics!

Ones of the classes put a "growing" turtle in some water for us to all watch over the next few days!

Nancy wrote a note for us (meaning the 5 other classes) and wrote a few quotes from her students. I added one of mine today!

These two sweet girls are reading together in the reading pool!

These two are hard at work in the Creation Station! I can't wait to see their completed projects - they had to leave them to dry until next time. 

 These two were having a picnic and dancing at the beach! :) 

 

The writing center - two kids are "fishing" for letters and writing each other notes!

The Creation Station - hard at work!

How cute is she?! She made flip flops from construction paper, pipe cleaners, and star fish stickers!

Remember those turtles and other animals we put in the water to "grow?" Well here they are a week later!

These are the live fish and snails!