We are 100 Days Smarter!

WHEEEEEEEEEE! We are 100 days smarter today! We had such an exciting day. It was filled with a fun entrance into our classroom, playing a "100 Things Would You Rather" game, attempting to write 100 words in our 100 Words Book from around the room, enjoying a 100 day snack shaped like the number 100, reading through a poem that had 100 letters in it, read a story about the 100th Day of School and talked about the "Author's Purpose" for writing that book, counted to 100, made a large bundle with our straws, put 100 gumballs in our gumball machine and sorted 10 different snacks by 10's onto our "100 Days Smarter" sorting snack page! Before we were able to eat our snack, we counted up and down to 100 by 10's and described observations we saw with the snacks. The class noticed shapes (both 2d and 3d shapes within the snacks), how they thought it looked like less than 100 pieces, how some pieces looked like it was more than others because some were small and some were big and the different colors of the snacks. They were excited when I finally gave them the "go ahead" to dig in!

Below are the pictures to go with each of these 100's day activities! We will continue with a few more activities tomorrow and Friday. There were so many ways to celebrate this special day, we weren't able to fit it all in one day!

The 99th Day of School!

When I'm 99....

 

Today was our 99th day of school and to celebrate we reviewed what verbs were and then wrote them into a sentence describing something we would like to still be able to do when we are 99 years old! Some of the ideas were....When I am 99 years old I will still be able to "run, walk, skip, do the splits, play sports, sing, dance, hop, jump and read!" We then finished the writing assignment off by creating a picture of ourselves and the way we think we will look when we are 99 years old! The class had a good laugh with this one....as did I!

Writing Review Mini-Lessons!

Since we have returned from winter break we have taken the first few weeks to review writing skills we taught during the first and second nine weeks. Last week we reviewed capital vs lower case letters and the importance of spacing between words and the letters inside of a word. I wrote two different morning messages this week. One had capital letters in words that should not be capitalized…thE, BRinG, LiBraRy…the class then corrected my mistakes. The other message I wrote two words right next to each other…canyou….and words split part…..w     e, i     s….and the students had to correct my spacing.

We Have a Dream!

To celebrate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, we read stories, watched videos and shared our own dreams for the world and people around us. The students came up with some pretty amazing dreams today! A few of the wonderful dreams from my kindergarteners was....to keep strangers away from kids, to help all sick people feel better, brothers and sisters to get along and for people to not call each other names. Such amazing dreams from the perspective of a five year old!

Number Work!

Now that we have started a new semester, I have brought out new activities for Word Work and Number Work. Today, we introduced a new choice for Number Work. One of our Common Core State Standards is to "fluently add within 5" and another one is "for any number 1 through 9 find the number that makes ten when added to the given number". Using both of these skills, the students take a number bracelet and create addition sentences and number bonds with multiple ways to create the given number.

New to Daily 5/CAFE!

We have two new items to our Daily 5/CAFE time. My class feeds off of positive reinforcement, so I decided to expand that by posting an "I Caught You!" board right on our Daily 5 board that is filled with our anchor charts for each choice. Throughout the week, I take snapshots of kids I "catch" doing the right thing during their Daily 5 choice and post them on the "I Caught You!" board. When I add new pictures, I will take down the old and send them home for the student to share his/her picture with their family!




Something new during CAFE time is for me, but also effects my students as well. I have revamped my "bag-o-tricks" that I carry with me to each conference with students. My bag has a lot of activities to help a variety of skills. White board(s), markers, dice, beach ball with comprehension questions, sight words, CVC words and best of all leveled books! I reorganized my leveled books into an accordion file labeled by level. The file only has 6 sections so I am able to carry leveled books A-F. Once I have kids above a level F, then I will rework my folder again to accomodate the change in levels.

Word Work Water Painting

We have a new option at our word work choice! Students take the usual word options (sight words, class names, word families...), a paint brush, chalkboard, red cup and fill it to the line with water. They use all materials and "paint" words with the water. It dries quickly and they paint again!

Syllables Around the Room

We are learning all about syllables this week. Today each student found a spot in the room and either stood next to something or held an object in their hand. We went around the room, the student named the object and we clapped out the syllables! When we were finished, they asked to do it again!

Counting Tiger for Math with Someone

One of our Daily 5 Math choices at the beginning of the year is practicing counting with a partner. We call this activity "Counting Tiger". The students count back and forth with a partner using a stuffed animal. We start off by doing this activity as a whole group using a tiger, which gives it the name "Counting Tiger". They love practicing counting with their partner!