Last Day of School- Move Out Day

 Today was a 1/2 day for students.  We are not allowed to move the first piece of furniture into the hall until all students have left.  (That means your free child labor has left the building. ;)  So at 10:55 a.m. you see a nice clean hallway. By noon, the path is narrow.

So, now I am left with a blank canvas to be thinking about. I want to rearrange and make better use of the space I have available. Luckily, for me, I have arranged with the custodians to be second in line for floors to be done.  That means I get to move it all back in NEXT WEEK. I would really like a game plan by then.

Fun Friday

My students work hard all week toward earning the privilege of FUN FRIDAY.  We have wake up work Monday - Thursday doing interactive calendar and Free Expression Writing.  On Fridays, the students get to do FUN things.  Surprisingly, they love the old school games.  I have loved teaching them how to play these. Of course, technology always is popular with some.  Imaginative play is also available. I don't have a pic, but I always put out an art center with either markers or water color paints. 

100th Day

We celebrated our 100th day in February.  I'm a little late posting about it.  I have celebrated the 100th day of school 13 times.  Never once in any of those years did I have ZERO parent volunteers show up... until this year.  I had to back up and go to plan B.

I had all things ready for our 100th day celebration the next day.  All centers were prepped and ready.

1. I can write 100 words (write the room)

2. I can fill in the missing numbers. (Use red, blue, and green markers for 2's, 5's, and 10's)

3. I can make a portrait of myself at 100 years old. (torn paper pictures are so cute.)

4. I can make a crazy 100th day hat. (using 10 different ways on 10 different strips to make 100).

5. Which jar had more than 100, equal to 100, less than 100?

6. I Can Make GORP (100 piece trail mix)

But, plans had to change... 

Before we had our afternoon celebration, we got the party started with a little friendly competition. 

All three classes got together and popped 100 balloons in a relay race.  

After my Para-Pro came in, she pulled kids to the back to make their crazy hats... we skipped the 10 different ways and just went with do a dot paint.  I handed out the work sheet pages and let them work on them while we pulled kids to work on hats, GORP and 100 year old portraits.

 I had to put in a movie (we were studying penguins, so I put in Scamper) and pull 5 kids at a time to the back to make their GORP.

I had a parent come in for the last few minutes of the day (she had been subbing all day).  My student helpers also came in at that time. It was nice to have a little help at the end of the day to help tidy up and check work.  

While I have never had a more exhausting day, and I wanted to declare that there would never ever be another celebration of any sort ever again, the kids enjoyed the day immensely, so it was worth it in the end. :)

Dr. Seuss Week

We love celebrating reading at our school! We do Top Hat Tuesday.  Each student writes words from the _at word family and adds a sentence at the bottom if they can.  They then color in a red and white pattern.  We attach a sentence strip of long construction paper strip to make the hat.

Wacky Wednesday is always fun, too. You never know what these kiddos will wear.

Thursday is Theo Thursday and we also ask THIRD GRADERS to come read to us.  They choose a Dr. Seuss book on their own to read.  I love this so much because the third grade teachers send students that we had in kindergarten back to us to read.  It is wonderful to see my older kids reading to my younger kids.

Friday is FUN FOOD FRIDAY.  We celebrate the week by having green eggs and ham in the morning while our assistant principal reads to us.  In the afternoon, we had birthday cake while the principal read to us.

I also love to integrate the ideas here into our Math Mat Centers. We review our addition skills, greater than/less than/ equal to, and measurement.  The kids love being able to tie things together.

We also ended the week with READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY.  Our local elected officials and emergency workers came and read different books to our students.  I believe there were 28 guest readers in the building on Friday. 

New Way to Spin

I have avoided using things in lessons before simply because of its need for a spinner.  The paper clip flying off all the time drove me crazy! But, I found a better way!! I used a safety pin. It worked wonderfully well.

Pull out groups

I am absolutely in LOVE with the way we collect data at our school in Kindergarten. We use ESGI.  It is sooooo worth the money.  If I had not talked my county into getting it for all the k teachers in our district, I would have paid the money for it myself.  (shhhh, don't tell them that. ;)  So, I assessed all my kinder kiddos before Christmas break and worked on grade cards over the break.  I made a spread sheet of which kids needed to be pulled out and for what. It was super easy to make because ESGI breaks down all of the data so easily.  My Super Hero Para-Pro has a schedule of when to pull out kids and what to work on with them.

I have created a few freebies that I will be using with my pull out groups.
Syllable Practice

CVC Spelling/ word family sort

ABC mat/ letter or sound recognition


Hope these are successful for you!