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!

ABC Countdown to Summer!

Each year we do a Countdown to Summer with ABC's! 
Here is a link to the letter and calendar we use.  ABC Countdown to Summer Calendar  ABC Letter Home


I haven't been as camera-crazy this year as I have in the past, but here are some pictures of the recent ABC Days. This also collided with my school's Relay for Life Spirit Week, so we are have a crazy week!

These are the 4 kids who dressed for Tacky Clothes Day!

(I love this one!)

So, Spirit Week said it was Tacky Day, but our ABC Countdown said it was H Day - Hawaiian Day!

These 4 cuties and I (and Pete the Cat!) dressed for Hawaiian Day!

We have ABC Countdown to Summer journals that we do each day and I wanted to share this one in particular. I had shared my photo album from when my husband and I went to Hawaii on our honeymoon 2 years ago.  I showed them the black sands beach we visited and explained that the black sand was really lava from the volcanoes. 

This child drew himself on the black sands beach (I love the palm trees!), with a speech bubble that says: HAWAII!

Here we are again - this time doing the Hang Loose symbol!

The Kindergarten Team!! Love these ladies! :) 

I - Ice Cream Day!!

The deal was each student got to make their own ice cream sundae, but first they had to draw a picture of it and complete the sentence "I like ____ ice cream."

Our ABC Countdown overlapped the Relay for Life Spirit Week. So Friday was K Day - Kindness - and also Hat Day for spirit week. Here is a picture of my class all wearing hats! (And of course, we picked out a hat for Pete to wear too!) For Kindness Day, we had a competition to see which student could be "caught" being kind the most. The deal was they couldn't run and tell us that they had done something kind, they had to get caught! It made for a pretty great day!

O Day is Outrageous Outfit Day! Keep in mind that Spirit Week was just last week, so the kids had just had a Tacky Day. *sigh, so only ONE student was brave and went all out with Dory and me! Thank you sweetie! :)

Sooo, next year, I will anticipate Spirit week (our ABC Countdown was planned first!) and I plan on borrowing this idea I found over at What the Teacher Wants!

Looks like they had a blast! ;)

I added our W Day to a new post! It was a WILD day! :)

However here is our X Day! X stands for X-citing Surprises!

The first X-citng Surprise was a pinwheel! We put them in the book baskets like this:

and every now and then throughout the day, we would say "The wind is blowing!" or "Is it windy in here?"

 and the kids would blow on their pinwheel and make it spin!

The next X-citing Surprise was a silly straw with a single serving Hawaiian Punch packet. (We didn't actually do this today with the water bottles, maybe we can get more for field day!?)  I got the idea from Pinterest. They used a Koolaid packet with a card that said "Have a Kool Summer! :)