Each year, I like to save certain things my students do that parents may want to keep to look back on as their child grows up. I also understand that many parents may not know what to consider "important" as far a milestone in kindergarten and what they might regret losing throughout the year.
So, this year I put "3-ring binder" on my class supply list. Many parents were concerned about their 5 year old needing such a notebook in kindergarten, but others willingly sent in a binder filled with notebook paper!
My plan was to use these notebooks as memory books or scrapbooks for each child's kindergarten year!
Here is what he have so far:
I keep the notebooks arranged like this in alphabetical order by first name in the back of the room on top of the blanket cubbies. They are out of the way, but easily accessible when we need to add to them.
Here is a peek inside one of the "scrapbooks:"
The first day of school, I read "The Kissing Hand" to my class (as I do every year - I love that book!). After reading the book, we discuss it a little bit and then I have the class color their own "Chester Racoons." We also ask them to write their names on these if they can. This gives us a really good idea of who is where. Some kids cannot write their names, while others already have pretty good handwriting! We can also tell a lot from the way the children color - color choices, staying in the lines, etc. I also make sure to date everything that goes into this binder. This way the parents (and kids when they get older) can see the progress throughout the year!
This is an activity after we read the Big (Rigby) Book, The Monster Pet. Each child got to make their own monster. We put these in a sheet protector since they used pompoms and feathers. (We didn't want any part of the creativity to get lost or messed up!)
The first predictable chart I do is "My name is.." I write "My name is" on large chart paper and have each child use the complete sentence to tell me their name. I also ask them to spell their name if they can. Then I cut the sentences into words and have them put the sentence back together, glue it to a piece of construction paper and illustrate. (We do this with other predictable charts as well, and later I have them copy their sentences to work on spacing, capitalization, and punctuation!)
Beside the name page, I added something that this girl did in the art center. She found pictures of butterflies and made a collage! This hung in the room for a long time before I placed it in her memory book!
Next, I added the page the children completed about apples. They colored this sheet and then wrote a sentence about apples. I also let them choose one apple to add glitter glue to! (This picture doesn't show that very well, I know.)
When the fire department came to visit our school, my class had the most guests - parents, grandparents, etc. who came to the school to learn about fire safety with us! The school guidance counselor took a class picture and made a copy for each student to have. This is one of those things I thought might get lost throughout the year if we sent it home the day we got it, so we put the photos in the memory books. This way every child has a class picture!
Left: Our class pumpkin patch! Each child brought in a pumpkin for our life cycle of plants unit in the fall.
Right: Hand print turkeys for Thanksgiving! Each child also wrote what they were thankful for.
For the new year, we made resolution hats!
Penguin unit - we made booklets! The cover page is the penguin and we stapled that to the writing paper that is the same shape! Very cute!
For the 100th day of school, we made self portraits from the future!
"When I am 100 years old..."
For President's Day, each student wrote about what he or she would do as President!
This all we have so far. As the year comes closer to an end, I will let each student decorate the front of their memory book. I think this is will be a great end of year gift for the families!
