Our 100 Day Celebration!

After lots of snow days and postponing our 100 day celebration several times, we finally were able to go ahead and celebrate! The kids arrived to school so excited! Each child brought 100 items to school. We had 100 goldfish, M&M's, rubber bands, Teddy Grahams, paperclips, BoxTops, Smarties and more...such creative kids!

After dividing up into groups, the kids all rotated through six stations to work on different 100 day activities. We counted, stacked, weighed, stamped, colored, and more!

The "crowning" activity was making our celebration crowns! 

After our crowns were assembled, we ended our time with a "parade" for the office staff to wish them happy 100th day! Ugh...I forgot to get a group picture with the crowns. They were so cute!

Thanks so much to all the parents/grandparents who came in to help. I think they had just as much fun as the kids!

River, Lakes, and Water Cycles, Oh My!

This week we've been studying rivers and lakes as part of our study of America. We learned all about how the water cycle works and even made it rain! Here is what the kids wrote about our activity time today.

We put some water in the microwave. We called the microwave the sun. After the water was hot, we put a plate on top of the jar. We waited and talked about the water cycle. Mrs. Keppley lifted up the plate. It rained! This showed us the water cycle.

We ended our time eating some "fishy" snacks! We had blue jello with fish floating inside. They were certainly a hit!

Next week we'll finish up our study of rivers and lakes by talking about insects that live in and around water. I have a few students who are especially excited about this!

We've finally gotten back into a routine after the holidays and all our snow days! This week we started a new unit on America. We started by talking about mountains. On Tuesday we learned all about volcanoes and even set up a model volcano and watched "lava" come out. The kids were so excited when it started bubbling over the top. We wrote this story together to tell about our experience:

The Volcano

The volcano looks like a mountain. Mrs. Keppley put powder in the volcano. It exploded! Red lava came out. It was so cool! It looked dangerous.

The second highlight of our week was panning for gold! Everyone got to pan for a little gold (corn kernels) and decide what they would do if they had real gold. There were some pretty creative responses! Some kids decided they would spend their gold - a Playstation 3, a Rainbow Loom, an art box, a tutu (that one mad me smile!), and a car were some of the purchases to be made. A couple decided they would sell their gold, and one precious kiddo decided he would share it with others. What a crew! 

Stay tuned - we're talking about prairies next week and we will end our week with a "Prairie Picnic!"

A Busy End to October

We've been so busy in kindergarten this week! Here are some of the things we've been working on...

We finished up our October calendar notebooks this week. The kids are loving these! I think the patterns are their favorite part, especially when I let them choose their own colors. Every child can make a three or four color pattern and label it now! A few of them even came up with some patterns today that we haven't worked on yet.

October Calender daily page

Coming to the whiteboard to work is a favorite!

We've been working on dot patterns during math time. One of our goals in kindergarten is to be able to recognize a number by looking at the dots (without counting them.) These Monster Roll and Color pages are so fun for the kids to work on this skill! This week we started using two dice at a time and working on bigger number dot patterns.

Of course, the highlight of our week had to be Teddy Bear Day! Everyone brought in and shared about their favorite teddy bear and we did lots of activities to go along with it! All the teddy bears were very well behaved and allowed to sit at our tables with us. The highlight of the day was making our how-to book for making a teddy bear paw print snack...and then making our snacks!

Teddy Bear Day Fun!

Watch for more fun news...kindergarten is a very fun place to be!

October Has Been Busy!

October has been so busy that I've barely had time to take pictures of our busy-ness! We were very excited to welcome our pastors to school this month for our Pastor Appreciation Breakfast. We've been working on the song Be Bold! during class and in chapel, so it was a great choice to sing it for our pastors. Our favorite part of the morning was having our pastors drop into class to visit! It was so exciting for the kids to see how much their pastors care about them by stopping by to see them. The day was topped off when Pastor Billy stopped by with his guitar to talk about music with us! We had been talking about music books and instruments this week, so the kids were really excited to watch him play his guitar.

The kids were so excited to sing with Pastor Billy as he played his guitar!

We were also visited by Mr. Spiker, who showed us how to play the drums and Mrs. Miller, who showed her flute. These visits produced the quietest, most mesmerized group that I've seen yet this year. We may have some musicians of the future in this class!

Hopefully I can remember to snap a few more pictures of what else we've been doing during our days! The kids were EXTREMELY excited when I announced that today would be our last day of resting on mats. There were absolutely NO arguments when I told them to carry their mats down to the dismissal line! We will fill our afternoons with crafts, review games and other exciting activities from now on! Yay for no naps! (Although I think I could use one this afternoon! These kiddos wear me out!)

Friday Fun Day!

We spent most of this week reviewing our first unit of letters, sounds and words. Several fun activities made the review so enjoyable the kids forgot we were learning! Oohs and aaahs were heard as the kids came back in the room from music and there were crayons posted all over the ceiling with our sight words on them. We turned off the lights and took turns finding words with a flashlight.

Another review hit was Super Speed reading! We took turns reading rows of words and then used dot markers to highlight all the words on our pages in different colors.

The last several years I have named Friday as "Friday Fun Day." We try to do fun things throughout the day with one special "fun day" activity that they have to earn during the week with good behavior as a class. These kids work HARD all week long. I expect a lot out of them, so on Fridays we relax a little and have a lot of fun!

Our fun today included our "mystery" reader and a special outdoor review game. We reviewed numbers 1-10, with each correct answer earning a toss of the beanbag at the target.

We ended our day with a few more review games and--gasp!--didn't even lay down for our rest time! We were too busy working on ordinal numbers! It was a super end to a super week! (And I'm ready for a nap and a couple days off to gear up for next week!)

Field Trip Frenzy!

Our very first field trip of the year...I'm so glad it was right on our own soccer field. I'm not quite ready to take these kinder kids off campus yet! The WVU Hospitals medic helicopter landed on our very own soccer field yesterday.

We all watched in great anticipation as the copter landed!

The excitement mounted all day..and I mean ALL. DAY. LONG. We enjoyed a lunchtime pizza party for being the class to see the most pizzas for our fundraiser and the control I like to think I have over the class went downhill from there. By the time we got to the soccer field the kids were dizzy with enthusiasm for the impending helicopter landing. Of course, the helicopter was about 20 minutes later than expected! They had some trouble getting cleared for takeoff, but once the kids heard the sound coming over the trees there was no calming them down. The kids watched in great anticipation as the copter circled around the soccer field...and I held my breath as the copter came closer and closer to the beloved soccer field...praying the entire time that the soccer field would not be ruined smack dab in the middle of soccer season! (Boy would my name be mud...sorry Coach Hobbs!)

My son, Jared, was so proud to have his picture next to the helicopter!

Each and every child got a chance to get inside the helicopter and ask as many questions as they wanted. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful week, but boy was I tired by the end of the day! Good thing these things are planned for Fridays!

(And for those of you who are wondering...the soccer field is still in top condition. Whew! Coach Hobbs can take me off his doghouse list!)